Emily McFlannigan

Pathfinder

The first and most basic clause allows Emily 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 kinds of goblin fruits grow there.

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.

Tread Lightly

Emily can partially remove herself from gravity’s influence. Under normal circumstances she cannot even jump further than normal, but falling, regardless of the distance, won’t kill her. In addition, she can walk or run over any solid surface even if it would not normally support her weight, such as tissue paper or thin panes of glass. She can also walk across mud, dry sand or any other surface without getting her feet even damp.

Catch: The character is wearing fancy and delicate footwear that would be ruined if she did not use this clause.

Evasion of Shackles

Emily can automatically slip out of any handcuffs, straightjacket, or other restraints or confinements.

Catch: The changeling has been unjustly imprisoned for some crime or offense she did not actually commit.

Breaching Barriers

Emily can walk through any closed or locked door or window that he could fit through if it were open.

Catch: The character has been deliberately imprisoned by another changeling.

Elegant Protection

Attacks swerve to avoid Emily. While using this clause, she always looks elegant and poised when defending or even while dodging.

Catch: The changeling is unarmed and not attempting to attack anyone. If the clause is invoked while using this catch, the clause will instantly end its effects and burn away some of her Glamour if she attacks anyone while it is active.

Phantom Glory

Emily temporarily becomes completely intangible. In this state, she is immune to all physical attacks and can pass through all physical barriers. Normally, she is unable to affect the physical world in this state.

Catch: The changeling carries no weapons and wears no armor. If the changeling picks up or dons either while using this catch, the clause instantly ends.

Emily was shown the method for learning the Contracts by the Searce, an Elemental Seeming Air-touched Kith, who recruited her, as a sort of parting gift.

Cloak of the Elements

This clause protects Emily from the natural manifestations of air. She becomes comfortable in weather associated with this element and is protected against damage by its more extreme manifestations. Emily can stand in the middle of a tornado or a tropical storm with no issue. However, the clause cannot protect against damage from objects created or modified with the intention of harming someone.

Catch: The changeling bears some symbolic representation of the element in question, such as a souvenir T-shirt depicting a mountain for earth or a small mirror for glass.

Armor of Air’s Fury

Emily clothes herself in hurricane-force winds, providing limited armor and damaging anyone who touches her. Emily can control the extent of this manifestation. The element does not harm Emily or anything she is wearing.

Catch: The changeling holds her hand out to a strong breeze or the wind from a large fan

Control Air

Emily takes control of the air, causing it to move and act in a directed fashion. The amount she can control varies depending on how well she enacts the Contract.

Catch: The area is completely dominated by air. (air on top of a narrow bridge, in the midst of a windstorm of some sort, or other such places)

Calling the Air

Emily calls the wind from a distant location. Emily must either know the location or see the source of the air she is calling and the air must physically move toward her in as natural manner as possible. If physical barriers prevent the air from reaching Emily, it gets as close as it can.

Catch: The changeling is calling the element solely to awe and impress viewers, perhaps as part of a performance.

Become the Primal Foundation

Emily literally becomes a living manifestation of air, imbued with incredible speed. Her clothing and any small objects close to her skin, such as phones or wallets, blend into this elemental form. In this form, she is largely immune to harm.

Catch: The character must sit and contemplate a large amount of the specific element for at least half an hour immediately before transforming.

Cupid’s Eye

This clause takes the first step in fulfilling a person's desires- or teasing him and stringing him along- by revealing what those desires are.

Catch: The character has kissed the subject within the past 24 hours, or the subject's object of desire is the character.

Growth of the Ivy

Humans are fickle creatures, changing desires with the day or the season. This Contract allows Emily to direct a subject's desires. Normally, the effects are temporary, though they can be extended beyond the duration of the Contract through natural interactions.

Catch: The character is acting to make the subject desire her or is doing so to resolve a pledge.

Wyrd-Faced Stranger

Emily appears as whomever the subject most desires to see at that moment.

Catch: The character has recently offered food to the target and the target has accepted, or vice versa.

Pandora’s Gift

Emily creates an object that another person truly desires out of nothing but emotion, dreamstuff and random materials.

Catch: The subject has recently (within one week) given the character a gift. This gift comes with no strings attached, including any expectation of this gift.

Waking the Inner Faerie

Emily makes a target pursue his greatest desires, regardless of other considerations.

Catch: The subject of the Contract has voluntarily and without coercion confided his desire(s) to the character.

Gift of Warm Breath

Emily's power rejuvenates a single living target, filling the target with energy and vigorous life.

Catch: The subject of the Contract has freely offered the changeling some form of sustenance since the last sunrise.

New Lover’s Kiss

Emily calls a rain down from even a cloudless sky.

Catch: A mortal human has commented, within me character's hearing and within the past hour, that it looks like rain.

Warmth of the Blood

The power of Spring is strong enough to heal injuries and soothe pain. This clause allows Emily to channel the verdant might of Spring into a person's body, mending his wounds. This power works only on living creatures of flesh and blood.

Catch: The target has honestly professed a heartfelt and deep love, romantic or familial, for the changeling.

Yesterday’s Birth

Emily endows a living object or creature with a season's worth of growth and maturing in an instant, though she may endow the subject with more under special circumstances.

Catch: The character spills two drops of blood on the target object and cups it in her hands.

Mother of All Deaths

Emily makes the region around her extraordinarily verdant and rouses it to fight on her behalf.

Catch: A man bled to death on this soil within the past year.

Emily doesn’t remember much from before her Durance, which she usually attributes to how young she was when her Keeper took her. Almost everything that she could claim as hers was wiped away by her time as a trifling amusement for the Gentry. Trapped in a realm with an impossibly large dome of ivory and jade in the midst of an ornate and meticulously tended meadow, she was one of the many sculptures that ringed the dome. Her task was only to maintain whatever pose she was ordered to assume with perfect stillness, with any slight deviation being harshly punished, with the occasional reward mixed in to keep her wanting for more.

Escaping the Menagrie Dome was no easy task, not with her Draconic fellows, spurred by the prospect of how the Gentry would reward them, hunting her. Regardless, she evaded their pursuit and finally escaped Arcadia and then the Hedge. Of her former self, only two things remained. Her name, and the memories of what she’d proudly declared would be her future profession when she grew up, all those years ago.

Adjusting to her new existence was difficult, and at times the only thing keeping her going was that childish dream, but she eventually came to terms with herself. It was that same dream, that same desire that kept her from giving up, that soon caught the attention of a Searce of the Spring Court. The Searce took her under his wing, introducing her to the right people and showing her the political ropes, but maintaining a fairly hands-off approach. It turned out for the best as, with nothing but the connections she’d forged with her Searce’s limited help and her own abilities, she worked her way up the political ladder within the Spring Court.

At the same time, Emily decided that she would pursue that childish dream, going to study at a medical school while keeping up with the political situation of the Court as well as she could. Though not a simple task by any means, it was one Emily rather enjoyed. Eventually, she managed to get through medical school, moving on to getting a job at a local clinic.

By this time, Emily had been acting as Spring Queen for a few years, not a simple task by itself, let alone when it was balanced with studying for a pharmacology exam or some other such trial involved in her chosen career path. While she would hardly go down in the annals of history as a great leader of her freehold, the time of her reign was hardly one of the dark times remembered only as a cautionary tale to future Vernal Sovereigns. At least, it might have been, had an Autumn Queen not taken advantage of the subtle internal conflicts between those who saw nothing wrong with Emily’s rule and those who didn’t appreciate a Spring Queen whose attention was divided so.

It was a close thing, but Emily managed to avoid any outright conflict or bloodshed in the process of calming things down, though she decided to step down soon afterwards, content to endorse the rise of a new ruler who she could influence from the shadows as a trusted adviser.

Deciding to take a break from the medical profession, Emily decided to take a trip to Japan, where she happened across the AFW. Having been trained to an degree by a fellow Changeling (not to say that their little sparring sessions never became something more entertaining), Emily decided that she might as well try this out. With that in mind, Emily decided to sign up for the AFW, curious as to where her chosen road would take her.