Changelings who use the Eternal Autumn Contracts affect harvests, autumnal natures and weather.
Contract Levels
• Last Breath Isaac
The character brings a plant to its ripest point of the year, ready for harvest. Changelings often use this clause to gather food when necessary, but some also find it a way to gather more baneful fruits such as mistletoe berries.
- Suggested Modifiers
- +1 Within a month (either way) of the plant’s natural harvest season
- –1 The month opposite the plant’s natural harvest season
- Action: Instant
- Catch: The plant or tree is unclaimed, or the changeling has permission to harvest from it (to any degree).
Roll Results
- Dramatic Failure: The plant withers a little and will bear no harvest for the next year and a day.
- Failure: The character fails to make the plant bear fruit.
- Success: Over the next minute, the plant bears a ripe harvest. A pumpkin plant grows a few plump pumpkins, an apple branch grows heavy with juicy apples and so on. This Contract can only affect parts of the plant around which the character can put her hand. She can affect the branch of an apple tree by putting her hand around it (and the entire branch from that point out is affected), but not the whole tree. Likewise, she could only target some branches of a blueberry bush unless she could circle her hand around its very base.
- Exceptional Success: The entire plant is affected, even when the character could only target a portion.
•• Withering Glare
The character can wither any plant to any degree with a simple glance. Her gaze will also sicken animals that cross her glare.
- Suggested Modifiers
- +1 Plant is not overly robust or well cared for.
- –1 Plant is remarkably robust and well cared for.
- Action: Instant
- Catch: The plant bears the changeling’s name (or common moniker) on it somewhere, carved into the bark or written on a tag.
Roll Results
- Dramatic Failure: The character fails to harm the target and suffers one point of bashing damage.
- Failure: The character fails to affect the target.
- Success: The character makes the plant progress toward Winter or toward death as she desires, but she cannot make the plant grow more Spring-like or healthier. She may make the plant instantly shed its leaves or retract into a bulb as though it were the deepest Winter, or make it shed its needles, leaves or petals and completely dry up into a state of near-death. Plants forced into the Winter season remain alive and prove it with the advent of true Spring, but only the most skilled gardener could bring a plant back from near-death.
If this clause is used against an animal, including a human being or even a supernatural entity, this clause inflicts one point of bashing damage for every success. Armor does not protect against the glare, though Defense still applies.
- Exceptional Success: The character can completely kill a plant. She may also choose to make the plant act as though it were Winter for a full year and a day, recovering only when Spring comes after that time.
••• Brother to the Ague
The life of the world wanes with the advent of Autumn. This clause inflicts the same fate on a changeling’s enemy.
Roll Results
- Dramatic Failure: Rather than enervating an opponent, the character loses energy herself. She suffers a –1 die penalty to all dice pools as if she had stayed awake for 30 hours straight and suffers one point of bashing damage as if she had been deprived of water for several days. (See the World of Darkness Rulebook, pp. 175–176 and pp. 179–180, for more information on water and sleep deprivation.)
- Failure: The character fails to weary the subject.
- Success: The subject takes one point of bashing damage per success, as from dehydration. In addition, he suffers a –1 die fatigue penalty to all dice pools for every two points of the character’s Wyrd (rounded up). The subject actually becomes tired, so his fatigue penalties only disappear after sleep. The subject does not actually become severely dehydrated, so his bashing wounds heal naturally.
- Exceptional Success: The subject actually does become dehydrated, so points of bashing damage inflicted through this Contract do not heal until the subject has rehydrated.
•••• Riding the Falling Leaves
The changeling becomes a temporary avatar of Autumn, transforming into a colorful spray of dry Autumn leaves. This ability is typically invoked to move inconspicuously or evade harm.
- Suggested Modifiers
- –1 Spring
- +1 Winter or Autumn
- Action: Instant
- Catch: The character catches a naturally falling leaf at the moment of the clause’s activation.
Roll Results
- Dramatic Failure: The changeling’s innards temporarily transform into leaves, but not the entirety of her body. She takes two points of bashing damage from the shock.
- Failure: The transformation does not take place.
- Success: The changeling’s body transforms into a spray of dry Autumn leaves. Despite the fragmented physicality of this form, the changeling is still a single entity, and the leaves are highly resistant to being separated or scattered. These leaves are also resistant to damage, though the changeling can still be injured in this form. While in this form, she receives an additional six Defense; this does not apply to attacks that could conceivably damage a great many falling leaves at once, such as fire or being sucked into a large fan. The character may fly in this form at –3 Speed, gaining altitude on unseen
thermals. She may also pass through openings too small to admit her ordinary form. However, while riding the leaf-form, the character cannot manipulate physical objects or cause any damage.
- Exceptional Success: The character’s Defense bonus rises to eight, and she may fly at her full Speed.
••••• Tears of Autumn
The character calls a hailstorm from the sky, which can be light enough to just keep people off the streets or heavy enough to inflict major damage.
- Suggested Modifiers
- +1 Already cloudy and cold
- –1 Not cloudy at all
- –1 Completely unseasonal
- Action: Extended (5+ successes; each roll represents 10 minutes of commanding the sky)
- Catch: The character holds a key encased in ice that finishes thawing at the start of the ritual.
Roll Results
- Dramatic Failure: The attempt to command the weather fails. A localized hailstorm of the desired strength forms, just large enough to hover overhead of the changeling and drop hailstones on only her. This lasts for one full hour, and time spent indoors (or otherwise safe) does not count.
- Failure: The character makes no progress.
- Success: The character makes some progress. If she accumulates successes equal to or greater than the required number, the hailstorm begins anywhere within her line of sight. Five successes summons a minor hailstorm with stones that might sting but do no harm. For every 10 additional successes required, the character causes the hailstones to do one point of bashing damage to anything caught in them each turn, to a maximum of three points of bashing damage. The hailstorm lasts for a number of minutes equal to the changeling’s Wyrd, and covers an area equal to 100 yards radius per point of Wyrd.
- 'Exceptional Success: The character makes excellent progress.
