Turn around seven times widdershins at twilight, and a new path opens. Promise you’ll always be by your sister’s side and you will, even if it means following her to the ends of the Earth and beyond. Meet a mysterious stranger who saves your life and prepare to hand over your firstborn child someday. Take the power of the Fae for your own, but remember it has no trouble biting the hand that wields it. The Wyrd is the ineffable force that governs all fae magic. It binds pledges and connects changelings to Faerie. The Gentry embody it, and it runs through Arcadia’s veins. The closer a fae being is to the Wyrd, the more powerful they become. From its coffers flows Glamour, a currency paid in feelings and passions that buy fae miracles.
But those are all just symptoms. The Wyrd has no guiding impulse, but it gives and it takes in equal measure, always. It’s the power of exchange. It makes the rules and doesn’t care if you never got the memo. Even the masters of Faerie capitulate to the Wyrd’s decrees.
Just as gravity is the force that says when you drop an apple it falls down to the ground, the Wyrd is the force that says when you gain something you must pay something in return. This is why all fae creatures make deals and promises. If you don’t define the price when someone gains something, the Wyrd will do it for you, and nobody wants that. This is also why, when somebody breaks an oath or skips out on what they owe, the Wyrd steps in to make restitution happen one way or another.
The Wyrd’s tender of choice is Glamour, the stuff of pure emotion and daydream. You know it as the tantalizing scent you pick up when your neighbor’s little girl cries alone on the porch, and when your lover’s breath catches as he speaks your name; the rush of feeling alive as you take in these cherished moments and breathe them back out as power. They give, and you take; then you pay, and you receive.
Embracing the Wyrd
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A fae can tear their mortal guise away in a dramatic fashion, opening themselves to the Wyrd. Their appearance burning or breaking or literally crawling off of them for a while. Doing so gives them much more power with their Contracts, doubling their capabilities and removing the glamour requirements for each but causing the fae to 'burn themselves out', like lighting a candle with a flamethrower. After a short while the mortal form reasserts itself and if not tended to they often collapse on the spot from exhaustion. This also renders them bright, shining beacons to anyone who can detect the fae, such as Hunters or other denizens that would love nothing more than to snack on such a font of emotion and glamour.
Wyrd Evolution:​
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As a fae's connection to the Wyrd rises, their mortal form has a harder and harder time hiding their fae nature as it leaks and peeks through the cracks. A man who was a sentient bonfire while in the fae realms might look normal at low levels other than a faint sense of warmth and comfort around him, but gradually his hair might speckle with embers, even higher and it full-on ignites as his skin turns into a smooth bark with small candle flames for eyes.
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Drawbacks:​
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Visibility: Fae with higher Wyrd attract more attention from fae entities or others that might be hunting them, including the True Fae. While even at Wyrd Level 1 they find themselves immersed in a world of magic and dreams, the True Fae don't pay much attention to them unless they escaped them directly. At higher Wyrd, such as 6+, they have begun to rival the lords of Arcadia in grace and power and become far more interesting to them not as a pawn or toy but as a possible rival.
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Addiction: At 6+, fae start to become addicted to Glamour. A fae must harvest glamour equal to half their Wyrd level rounded up within a number of days equal to their Wyrd or risk going through starvation and withdrawl-like symptoms, starting when they fall beneath their wyrd rating. As such, more powerful fae may seem to hoard glamour, getting it from whatever source they can when the opportunity presents itself. As an example, goblin fruit provides one Glamour point, so a Wyrd 10 would need to eat 10 of them to recover from the starvation effect while a low-tier Wyrd 1 could go right to empty and not suffer any effects.
Frailties: Fae compulsions or materials that harm them. As Wyrd rises, a fae is restricted by more and more. They come in two types: Major and Minor. A minor taboo is somewhat resistible but distracting. Usually something fairly uncommon but not exactly rare. Examples include being unable to enter a dwelling unless you've been invited. Minor Banes are things that cause harm, such as a revulsion to milk left out or the classic iron. Major taboos are somewhat commonplace, like the inability to leave a building while the moon is out or performing a favor if someone says your name three times. Major Banes can rapidly prove fatal as just their touch can cause burns and pain, like feeling intense nausea around children or being burned by touching glass.
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Major taboos cannot be resisted, while minors may be resisted for a short time. Minor banes cause damage roughly equivalent to a slice wound with a knife where they cause physical wounds, while Major causes intense burning, crippling migraines that are so painful the fae must crawl away from the source, etc.
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Any physical damage caused by a Bane cannot be healed by magic and must be healed naturally. However, accelerations to natural healing rate such as Toski's Arcadian Metabolism boon or the Chirurgeon 4x healing rate if tending to himself function for this purpose.
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Hallucinations: The higher the Wyrd 'score', a changeling has, the more they tend to anthropomorphize the world around them, seeing things such as lighting a lighter might see a little sprite made of flame whispering at them to remind them of their bargains with Fire, or if they check a disguise in the mirror their reflection might briefly chastise them for the deception or might point out flaws, they might see a street lamp as a bulb filled with fireflies that occasionally escape when the bulb burns out. High-clarity changelings recognize them for the glamour-infused hallucinations they are, but only the foolish would ignore them entirely, for they can serve as reminders, advice or early warning from the Wyrd itself for those that pay attention. The more bargains and fae links with elements of the surrounding world a 'ling has, the more frequent these become, such that maintaining high clarity is necessary for many high-wyrd changelings to function, lest they be confused and debilitated by their own glamour-addled senses.
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Benefits:
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Wyrd for an individual changeling is rated on a 10-point scale. Benefits include:
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Inhuman Attributes: As the Wyrd rises, the fae nature increases until it tips more towards the fae than human, allowing the changeling to break mortal limits at 6+, though they must still make the effort to improve that far. If a "rating 5" intelligence is an academic mastermind, 6 or even 7 may be a Steven Hawking level genius, while it would max out at 10.
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Supernatural Resistance: The Wyrd protects against hostile supernatural powers, but not 'physical' ones. For example a high-wyrd changeling would find it easier to resist a vampire's hypnotic gaze, but could not suddenly become immune to the vampire using its magically enhanced strength to punch them in the face.
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The Grand Hunt: The Wyrd acts as a beacon to other fae beings, allowing them to track high-wyrd fae easier. Both a benefit and a curse, depending on which side you're on.
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Fae Permanence: The Wyrd makes it difficult for disease and time to take hold. The higher the wyrd, the less a changeling ages and the easier they can shrug off diseases, until at Wyrd 10 they are considered unaging and all diseases barely find a hold at all.
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Goblin Fruit: The Wyrd enables the changeling to sustain more Goblin Fruit on their person at one time, until at Wyrd 10 they could carry functionally unlimited fruit if they could carry them, such as with a shop selling them to mortals.
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Glamour Bank: As a Changeling's Wyrd goes up, they are capable of storing more glamour within them and spending more in turn. For example, a Wyrd 1 changeling can only hold 10 glamour, while a wyrd 10 can hold 75. Higher wyrd also allows them to spend it faster, with Wyrd 1 only being able to spend 1 at a time while 10 could splurge as much as 15 in one shot. 1-5 it increases by 1 each, 6-8 is increments of 5 while the spending still goes up by 1, and then the last two levels jump to 50 / 10 and 75 / 15. Glamour is spent fueling tokens for 1-2 each, fueling contracts for as many as 3 at max, opening gates to the Hedge for 1, among other things, even as a currency on the markets.