The Fleeting Winter Contracts allow a changeling to manipulate the signature emotion of the Court: sorrow.
Contract Levels
• The Dragon Knows
The character can tell why a person is sorrowful, guessing her regrets with but a glance.
- Suggested Modifiers
- +1 The emotion is evident.
- –1 The subject is hard to see.
- Action: Instant
- Catch: The character looks into the subject’s eyes for a moment.
Roll Results
- Dramatic Failure: The character cannot figure out why the subject is sad, but it afflicts the character as well. His mood lasts the rest of the scene and inflicts a –1 die penalty on his Social dice pools.
- Failure: The character fails to discover the subject’s regrets.
- Success: The character discovers the root of the subject’s sorrow. This Clause reveals only the cause of the sorrow the subject feels now, and returns no result at all (even if successfully used) if the subject is not currently experiencing sorrow (or sadness or another similar emotion).
- Exceptional Success: If the subject is not currently sad but was within the last hour, the character finds out the cause of that and why it ended.
•• Slipknot Dreams
The changeling forces a person to forget about her sorrows just long enough to deal with the matters at hand.
- Suggested Modifiers
- +1 Minor or distant sorrow (goldfish died, weeping over the state of the world)
- –2 Deeply personal tragedy (entire branch of the family dead in accident)
- Action: Instant
- Catch: The subject has accepted something from the character within the past 24 hours.
Roll Results
- Dramatic Failure: The subject becomes even more sad, making it even more difficult to deal with her.
- Failure: The character fails to put off the subject’s sorrows.
- Success: The subject completely forgets why she feels sad, or even that she was sad just a moment ago. She acts as though everything were perfectly all right for a number of minutes equal to the successes rolled.
- Exceptional Success: The character may, if he so desires, cause the subject to remain blissfully ignorant for a full hour.
••• Faces in the Water
The subject remembers a sad memory from her past and dwells on it, filling herself with sorrow.
- Suggested Modifiers
- +1 The subject has a doleful personality.
- –1 The subject is naturally upbeat.
- –1 Something good just happened to the subject.
- –3 The subject has no genuinely sad memories (a truly innocent child, for instance).
- Action: Instant
- Catch: The subject is carrying a photograph (or other image) of an older relative or ancestor on her person.
Roll Results
- Dramatic Failure: The attempt fails, and the subject is immune to the character’s Fleeting Winter Contracts for one full day.
- Failure: The subject remains unaffected.
- Success: The subject recalls one sad or painful memory, and it causes her sorrow. The character has no influence over what memory surfaces. The subject’s Social rolls suffer a dice penalty equal to half the number of the character’s successes; the same penalty is applied to people attempting to influence the subject. The recollection and sorrow last for one scene.
- Exceptional Success: The character may also choose to trigger another such event (which may or may not be a different memory) at a set time within the next 24 hours.
•••• Fallow Fields, Empty Harvest
The character eliminates a person’s ability to experience positive emotions for a significant period of time.
- Suggested Modifiers
- +1 The subject is already sad.
- –1 The subject is experiencing positive emotions currently.
- –2 The subject’s positive emotions are notably strong.
- Action: Instant Contested; resistance is reflexive.
- Catch: The character has made the subject happy (or happier) within the last 10 minutes.
Roll Results
- Dramatic Failure: The subject remains capable of positive emotions and becomes immune to the character’s Fleeting Winter Contracts for one full day.
- Failure: The character does not affect the subject.
- Success: The subject loses all capability to experience positive emotions such as joy, happiness and variations thereon for one day per success rolled. She becomes unable to regain Willpower by acting on her Virtues or Vices, and suffers a –2 dice penalty to all Social rolls.
- Exceptional Success: The subject’s positive emotions remain deadened until the changeling releases them.
••••• Every Sorrow a Jewel
The character magnifies the emotions of a person already feeling sorrowful to such extremes that the subject becomes incapable of taking any action.
- Suggested Modifiers
- +2 The subject’s sorrow is already great.
- +1 The subject’s sorrow is strong.
- –1 The subject’s sorrow is quite minor.
- Action: Instant Contested; resistance is reflexive.
- Catch: The subject has tasted one of the changeling’s tears.
Roll Results
- Dramatic Failure: The subject remains only moderately sad, but the character is momentarily overcome with great sadness. He loses his Defense until his next action.
- Failure: The character fails to inflate the subject’s emotions.
- Success: The subject’s sorrow grows to unmanageable proportions. She can do nothing beyond curl up and feel terrible for a number of turns equal to the successes rolled. The subject may take no actions and may not move but retains her Defense. This Contract affects only subjects already feeling sorrow.
- Exceptional Success: The subject’s emotion so overwhelms her that she loses her Defense for the Contract’s duration.
