Dream (Contract)

While all changelings are capable to some extent of entering and manipulating a sleeper’s dreams, the Contracts of Dream are a particularly potent means of doing so. They grant the changeling more power in the dreamscape, allowing her to control and direct a sleeper’s dreams, and also to manipulate the nature of dreams themselves without means of a pledge. They may also grant some insight into the dreamlike nature of the Hedge. (For more on dreamshaping without Contracts, see Dream-Shaping.)

Pathfinder (•)
The first and most basic clause allows the changeling to divine the nature of the Hedge in a certain area. Pathfinder can find Hollows, trods, paths to and from Faerie and other details of the local Hedge, such as what sorts of goblin fruits grow there.
 * Cost: 1 Glamour
 * Dice Pool: Intelligence + Wyrd
 * Action: Instant
 * Catch: The changeling must have plucked a Thorn from the local Hedge and shed a single drop of blood while doing so within the last day.

Roll Results
 * Dramatic Failure: The Contract yields wholly inaccurate information about the Hedge, suggesting paths where there are none, marking poisonous fruits as beneficial or otherwise utterly confounding otherwise useful information.
 * Failure: The changeling learns no useful information about the local Hedge.
 * Success: For each success on the roll, the changeling learns a single pertinent fact about the local Hedge. In most cases, this information is just that — a statement about whether something exists. It doesn’t necessarily point out where a Hollow or pathway might exist, just the fact of its presence. The distance in which such information-drawing is effective is the changeling’s line of sight. Therefore, this power may be curtailed by a mysterious fog in the Hedge or a smoke cast by the Hedge’s burning.
 * Exceptional Success: As with an ordinary success, but the achievement of the exceptional success yields information about the location of features known to be in the Hedge.

Suggested Modifiers

Forging the Dream (••)
The changeling invoking this clause becomes as the director, cinematographer and editor of a movie, only the media in which she works is the dreaming mind of her subject. The changeling may literally change her subject’s dreams to depict whatever the changeling wishes, from bucolic idylls to lewd romps to harrowing tribulations. She may plague her subject with vicious antagonists or rain a cascade of rose petals down: the details are fully under her control. The only limitation is that the changeling may never depict the subject’s death, though she may certainly imply it. Crafting dreams in this manner is very much an art form among changelings. Some prefer to work with overt themes, while others use subtle symbolism and soft focus to create feelings more than literal episodes. Indeed, some changelings are so adept with dream-craft that they can provoke strong emotional responses from their sleeping subjects that they can glean Glamour from them.

The changeling must be able to see her subject in order to use this power. She needn’t be in the character’s actual presence, however, and some changelings use this power on subjects they view via video cameras or even from painted portraits or still photographs.
 * Cost: 1 Glamour
 * Dice Pool: Wits + Wyrd
 * Action: Instant
 * Catch: The changeling must stand or sit beside her subject, touching her own temple and that of the dreamer.

Roll Results
 * Dramatic Failure: The attempt to manipulate the sleeper’s dreams fails and leaves the changeling discombobulated, unable to tell the real world from the dream he was attempting to shape. For the remainder of the scene, the changeling is unable to focus sufficiently to expend any Willpower. Further, the sleeper (eventually) wakes from sleep remembering a distinct image of the changeling, even if she has no idea what he might have been trying to do.
 * Failure: The Contract fails to function but otherwise involves no sign of attempted use.
 * Success: The character may edit the sleeper’s dreams and dictate their content, with the sole exception of depicting the sleeper’s death. Each use of this Contract works for a single, vivid dream, which the subject recalls distinctly upon waking. If one of the Fae is in the sleeper’s dream as well, the changeling must vie for control of the dream as usual (p. 198).
 * Exceptional Success: No additional effect.

Suggested Modifiers

Phantasmal Bastion (•••)
This clause bolsters the changeling’s ability to participate in and withstand conflicts with other changelings in the dreamscape. Using this power conjures an elaborate suit or even edifice of “armor,” or conjures a fanciful weapon, both of which exist only in the dreamscape. Both weapon and armor appear as the changeling wishes, though depictions of seeming, kith and Court are extremely popular expressions. (For more information on combat in the dreamscape, see pp. 198–199.)
 * Cost: 1 Glamour
 * Dice Pool: Invoking this clause involves no roll, but the changeling must choose which type of fortification she wishes to invoke. If she chooses a defensive augmentation, she gains a number of phantom points of Willpower for the purposes of determining how much damage in the dreamscape she may suffer before falling to exhaustion. These phantom Willpower points are lost first during the oneiromachy. If she chooses an offensive augmentation, she may double her Wyrd for the purposes of seeing how effective her attacks in the dreamscape are. A changeling may invoke this power for both offensive and defensive augmentation, at a cost of one Glamour each, but she may not “stack” multiple offensive or defensive augmentations.
 * Action: Instant
 * Catch: The changeling carries a token of favor, such as a garter belt or ring, given freely to her by a living enemy or one of his loved ones or family members.

Cobblethought (••••)
Using this clause allows the changeling to reach into his subject’s dreams and extract an item or image from them that then exists or plays out in the real world. The subject need not be asleep for the changeling to attempt this; he simply must have had a dream at some point in recent events, which allows the changeling a trove of such experiences and artifacts to draw from.

The exact nature and duration of the Contract’s ability to echo the dreamer’s thoughts depends on how successful the changeling is at invoking the power. In general, though, images and symbols will mostly as they did in the dream (as with a changeling who assumes the “costume” of an entity in the dream), while an item will appear by and large as it did in the sleeper’s thoughts. Determining which objects may be available from the subject’s dream is largely the Storyteller’s responsibility, though the Storyteller may choose to let the player take more creative control of the subject’s dreams, as long as such control isn’t abused.

Items pulled from dreams in this way have a hazy, imprecise sensory quality to them. A dream-sword, for example, would feel like soft metal and fade around its edges, but would cut nonetheless. Objects are treated as normal, unexceptional equipment despite their appearance. The guise of a terrifying night-fiend might shift subtly each time onlookers see it. A murky fog drawn from a dream might leave a runner feeling as if he were plodding through oatmeal, even though he was running as fast as he could.

Items drawn from dreams in this manner are made of dreamstuff, and thus don’t have to be reasonably carried by the changeling. That is, the changeling could conceivably draw out the fog mentioned above, a rainstorm from a dream, or even something bigger or heavier than a person, such as a life raft or a heavy wooden door. The limitation is a single object or idea, however — the changeling could not withdraw a full castle (made up of walls, hallways, doors, stairs and towers) or a functional car (with its own distinct parts and pieces).

One more limitation is that this Contract may not draw people or thinking entities from dreams. While a changeling would be able to draw the appearance of an individual from a character’s dream, this would manifest as a sort of “costume” that the changeling or another character would wear, and not the individual herself.
 * Cost: 1 Glamour
 * Dice Pool: Intelligence + Wyrd
 * Action: Instant
 * Catch: The changeling must possess at least a single fiber of her subject’s bedclothes, whether a thread from her pillowcase or a full nightshirt.

Roll Results
 * Dramatic Failure: The changeling reaches into the dreamscape to grab the object of her intentions, but instead pulls back something else entirely, and probably hostile. If it’s an inanimate object, it’s wholly inappropriate to the changeling’s original intentions, and if it’s some conscious creature, it probably reacts with appreciable hostility at being removed from its lair.
 * Failure: The Contract fails to function but otherwise betrays no attempt on the changeling’s part to rifle the character’s dreams.
 * Success: The changeling draws forth one concise image or object from the character’s dreams. The image or object remains in reality for a number of turns equal to the number of successes obtained on the roll.
 * Exceptional Success: As with a normal success, but the object remains permanently in reality. In addition, the changeling may, at any time, banish the dream-item back beyond the wall of dreams.

Suggested Modifiers

Dreamsteps (•••••)
The changeling climbs into the dreams of a nearby sleeper, briefly appearing in her sleeping thoughts, and then emerges from the shared realm of dreams in the proximity of another sleeper. He traverses an actual distance by using the landscape of dreams as a proxy for physical travel. This travel takes place instantaneously, or at least at the speed of thought.
 * Cost: 1 Glamour
 * Dice Pool: Intelligence + Wyrd
 * Action: Instant
 * Catch: The changeling must carry a physical object that he crafted himself on the journey, which he leaves behind in the dreams of both sleepers. Both sleepers will remember this object, and will feel an inexplicable link to the changeling if they meet him in their waking lives, as they subconsciously recall this item connected to him.

Roll Results
 * Dramatic Failure: The attempt to travel by dreamways goes horribly awry, with the changeling unable to extricate himself from the dreams at his leisure. Instead, the Storyteller should run a brief nightmare scene in which the dreamer and changeling are both tormented by dreams-turned-nightmares. After that, the changeling is forced out of the dreamscape in the proximity of a sleeper… somewhere.
 * Failure: The changeling is unable to enter the dreamscape and thus unable to use it as a shortcut in the physical world.
 * Success: The character enters the dreamscape and may use it to instantaneously traverse physical distances. The physical distance traveled is not greater than 10 miles per success obtained on the roll. The changeling emerges as close as possible to the physical place of his choosing: He emerges from the dreams of the sleeping individual closest to his ultimate destination.
 * Exceptional Success: As with a standard success (and the extra successes are their own benefit), but with the additional reward of being deposited exactly where he wishes to be. If any changelings understand exactly how this works, they aren’t telling, and those dream-travelers who enjoy the luxury of the exceptional success describe the phenomena as if the stuff of dreams itself carries them exactly where they want to be and then recedes like an unseen ether.

Suggested Modifiers