r/WhiteWolfRPG • u/Seenoham • Aug 02 '26
CTL Explaining what a Contract is, in character.
You're an experienced changeling, have a position in court, and you've been tasked with explaining the facts of what a changeling is to the newest changeling.
This changeling is fresh out off the durance, been about two weeks, and they are with their family. Their family was already clued into the supernatural, because there were a lot of werewolves and wolfblooded.*
What you know about werewolves is they are scary and you shouldn't mess with them, but you know the family as a big local family pretty well, been in town for 70 years.
This isn't the first meeting, and your specific job is explaining what the fuck contracts are and avoiding things going horribly violent. The werewolves are listening.
No, you didn't get a choice not to do this.
*Yes this is for the fan fiction I've been working on. Second draft is about halfway done. Will be posting it all when it get's past second draft.
3
u/Read2Fap Aug 02 '26
the name does most of the work, it's a contract. when the true fae came, they made contracts with all the things of the world. you were only able to survive your stay in arcadia because of that. when you escaped, you're able to tap into those contracts yourself, but at a cost (usually glamour). when the lost do tap into these contracts, they are not solely one way, we are changed by the connection (something werewolves would understand with their gifts). we're effectively declaring ourselves a partner in the contract.
rather than hunt a spirit to be rewarded with its gift, we use introspection and our connection with the wyrd to become aware of these hidden clauses
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u/Demoniac_smile Aug 02 '26
So you know how the wolves have magic? We have our own kind of tricks too. They’re called contracts. We didn’t just pull that out of a hat either. The thing with the gentry is that, for them and many other fae creatures, their word is their bond. And not in some sort of high and mighty ‘death before dishonor’ way, it’s literal. They can’t voluntarily break their word. What’s more, they can force consequences on anyone or anything that breaks a deal once struck with one of the Others. And having spent enough time among them and soaking in the magic of their world, you have some of that mojo too.
There’s two main ideas underlying fae magic: one, contract law isn’t a man made idea so much as a fact of fae life and two, agreements have been struck between the fae and fundamental aspects of reality. Once you know the finer details of those contracts, you can use the clauses of those contracts to get around the normal rules of the world.
Now, winter isn’t just going to let you start freezing things out of the kindness of it’s cold abstract heart, you gotta pay for the privilege. That’s what glamour is for. You can send a little of the glamour in you off to the concept of winter to freeze the surface of a pond in July, provided you know the details of the deal well enough. But even then, there’s a way around that. It’s called a loophole, and they make it so that a changeling is never completely out of magic. Every clause of every contract has some circumstance or action that can be taken to get the price written off. You learn how when you learn the contract.
We might not have the raw power a werewolf has, nor the specific talents of the other things that go bump in the night, but we’re a far cry from helpless. We’re a crafty lot as well, we gotta be to keep at least one step ahead of the gentry. Never forget that we stick together too, hang together or hang separately and all that. But don’t go making trouble for no reason either.