Pact-Bound

Every Magus, priest, Druid, and Artificer has some answer to the question “Where does your power come from?”
  They point to the Tapestry, to the Worldstream, to their faith, to their craft. Their hands may be dirty with stolen fire or blessed by a thousand rites, but at least they can say, with some confidence, what they are touching.
  A Warlock cannot always do the same.
  For the Pact-Bound, the answer to that question is another question: “Who gave you your first taste?”
  Warlocks are those who did not learn their art in a tower, at an altar, or in a circle of stones, but through a bargain. A voice in a dream, an offered hand in a moment of despair, a presence discovered in the dark places of the mind—something Other made them an offer and Pushed a shard of its own essence into them.
  From that moment on, they become a door.
  Through them, power flows. Sometimes it rides in along the Tapestry’s threads. Sometimes it disturbs the skin of the Worldstream. Sometimes it seems to come from nowhere at all, as if the patron has carved its own private channel into the Pact-Bound’s bones.
  Divine casters receive gifts that can be withdrawn. Arcane workers take what they dare. Warlocks are given the ability to take, and that unsettles everyone.

What a Pact Is

Ask a Warlock to describe the moment their life changed and you will hear stories that sound like foxfire and madness.
  A drowning sailor seeing a shape in the deep, not quite fish and not quite god, offering breath in exchange for “a listening ear, now and then.”
  A failed novice in a temple, praying one last time in bitterness, hearing a voice answer—not the god they served, but something that offered them power with no sermons attached.
  A scholar staring too long into the Rift, feeling the Tapestry twitch, then finding a new pattern in their dreams every night until they agreed to “try it, just once.”
  What happens in that moment varies, but the result is always the same: the Warlock wakes up with someone else’s mark inside them.
  To those who can see essence clearly, a Pact looks like a foreign knot:

• A small, dense point of Otherworldly power lodged in the Warlock’s soul.
• Threads running out from it into the Tapestry, the Worldstream, or some unseen elsewhere.
• A subtle tension, as if the knot is always pulling in two directions: toward the patron, and toward the Warlock’s own desires.

That knot is not a spell, and not a simple blessing. It is more like an organ—a new piece of metaphysical anatomy that does not belong to mortals. Through it, the Warlock can:

• Sense certain lines in the Tapestry they could never have found alone.
• Bend certain echoes in the Worldstream without the land’s consent.
• Call for power directly from the patron when both are willing.

In theory, the Pact could be a one-time gift. In practice, it rarely is. The patron’s essence does not just sit there; it changes the Warlock:

• Their dreams fill with places they have never seen.
• Their shadow moves oddly, a fraction out of step.
• Their moods lean toward the patron’s nature—more fervent, more cold, more hungry.

They are no longer merely someone who does magic. They are someone through whom something else acts.

Classification by Patron

On the scholar’s grid, Warlocks are a problem.
  Metaphysically, they sit on a diagonal: their power begins as Gifted, Otherworldly—a shard Pushed into them—and then is wielded as Claimed, Transcendent or Immanent, depending on how the pact-knot hooks into the world.
  You cannot draw them as a neat box. You must draw them as a line.
  So the learned of Duskfall, being practical when diagrams fail them, sort the Pact-Bound by patron instead.
  A Warlock whose patron is a Celestial being, Titan, or acknowledged god—one whose power clearly flows from beyond the world and is bound up in temples and scripture—is quietly folded into the Divine corner.

• Their pact is called a “special covenant” or “unusual vocation.”
• Churches argue over whether they are proper clergy, but they are usually allowed near altars.

A Warlock whose patron is a thing of the Rift—a Great Old One, a mind tangled in the Tapestry, a presence that speaks in angles and impossible colors—is shoved firmly into the Arcane corner.

• The Order of Magi calls them “hazardous assets” and demands the right to supervise or sequester them.
• Temples wash their hands of such souls, muttering that “no true god makes deals like that.”

Those who name Fey Queens, shadow-kings, dead cities, ancestor-hosts, or vast beasts as patrons are argued over endlessly.

• Are such beings part of the Worldstream, exalted Primal powers in their own right?
• Are they lesser gods and so properly classed as Divine?
• Are they merely local masks worn by Tapestry-things to lure mortals?

In law, when law bothers to speak of such things, there is a simple rule adopted in most realms: “Until the patron is proven, the Pact is Arcane.”
  Unknown Warlocks are treated as if they were dangerous Magi, placed under the eye of the Order of Magi or its local equivalent. The reasoning is straightforward: if you must choose who supervises a walking hole in reality, give it to the people who specialize in holes in reality.
  Warlocks hate this. Priests dislike it, seeing it as Magi “poaching souls.” Primal circles quietly approve; better the Pact-Bound be penned in stone towers than wandering the wilds.
  But until a Warlock can demonstrate—and convince others—that their patron belongs clearly to one corner or another, the default answer remains:
  Arcane, for safety’s sake.

Why Warlocks Are Feared

Every kind of magic has its dangers. Arcane misfires can tear the Tapestry. Primal overreach can poison the land. Artifice can sour the echoes of the Worldstream. Divine power can be abused in the name of distant Thrones.
  Yet none of these frighten people quite the way a Warlock does.
  The first reason is simple: no one knows who they truly serve.
  A priest wears their allegiance on their sleeve, literally. Their symbols, rites, and behavior all point to a patron you can study, bargain with, and, if necessary, curse. Even if you hate their god, you know its name.
  A Warlock’s patron may be:

• A Titan the temples do not acknowledge.
• A nameless mind in the Rift that no one has mapped.
• A forest-spirit made too strong, now thinking thoughts a forest should not.
• A dead god clutching at relevance, working through one last desperate soul.

Or it might be all lies—a mask, a false identity given by something that thinks “truth” is a joke mortals tell themselves to sleep at night.
  The second reason is worse: no one knows what that patron wants.
  Divine faiths, for all their contradictions, make their gods’ desires public. There are commandments, myths, threats, and promises. You may not believe them, but at least you have words to point at when arguing with a priest.
  Warlock patrons rarely publish doctrine. Their will is expressed in private terms, whispered in dreams and crises:

• “Bring me that book.”
• “Do not let this line of blood die out.”
• “Open the door under the old well.”
• “Live. Grow strong. I will ask my price later.”

From the outside, you see only a person whose power increases when they obey voices you cannot hear.
  The third reason is that Warlocks themselves are often unsure where they stand.
  Some believe, sincerely, that their patron is benevolent. Others are certain it is monstrous but have bound themselves out of love, desperation, or spite. Many do not know, and so they lie, even to themselves:

• They tell villages they are simple hedge-witches, blessed by the land.
• They claim to be priests of a lesser-known saint.
• They pose as tired Magi, muttering about “experimental Tapestry paths” when strange phenomena follow them.

Every time a Warlock hides their nature and then loses control—every time a bargain’s price comes due in public—the fear around the Pact-Bound deepens.
  So the stories grow:

• Of Warlocks whose eyes glow with their patron’s presence when angered.
• Of towns bought and sold in a single whispered conversation, because the patron wanted a foothold there.
• Of entire bloodlines carrying the echo of a Pact down generations, each child born with the same “imaginary friend.”

Some of these tales are exaggerations. Some are not.
  Either way, they all end with the same advice: “If you must keep a Warlock near, keep someone braver than you between them and your children.”

Masks and Hunts

Because of all this, Warlocks learn quickly that survival depends on passing.
  Most of them acquire a second skin as soon as they can.
  A Pact-Bound whose patron walks the Tapestry will emphasize the Arcane trappings of their craft:

• Books, circles, wands.
• Grumbling about the Order of Magi’s examinations.
• Carefully chosen “mistakes” that look like the misfires of an ordinary Puller.

They frame their more unsettling abilities as “experimental spells” or “side effects of Rift exposure.” As long as they do not display gifts that no known Magus can replicate, most people are content to file them under “Wizard” and move on.
  Those favored by Celestial or Titan patrons cloak themselves in Divine rites:

• They adopt symbols similar to those of accepted faiths, or present their patron as a “forgotten aspect” of a known god.
• They learn the shape of proper prayers, if not the words, and fold their invocations into that form.
• They perform public works of healing and protection to earn goodwill before their stranger wonders appear.

If they can persuade a temple hierarchy that their patron is “on the same side,” they may even be ordained, their Pact quietly written into the margins of doctrine.
  Pacts with worldbound, fey, or shadowed powers are the hardest to hide.
  Such Warlocks sometimes pose as Primal workers—wandering wise-folk whose spirits are simply “unusual.” Others stay close to cities and claim their tricks are Artifice, odd songs and devices no guild has yet catalogued.
  For every mask, there is a hunter.

• The Order of Magi maintains quiet cadres of “pattern readers” whose job is to watch casters and decide whether what they are seeing fits known Tapestry paths. When they notice workings that bend both Tapestry and Worldstream at once, or power that arrives without a visible route, they start asking questions.
• Certain churches keep inquisitors trained to sniff out deviation from proper miracles. They listen for prayers that do not match doctrine but still produce results. They watch for priests whose power never falters, even when they should have angered their god.
• Some Primal circles mark those whose presence makes the Worldstream flinch in odd ways and quietly arrange for them to “lose their way” in the wild, if they seem too dangerous.

To be caught as a Warlock is not automatically a death sentence. Some are bound into service, forced to swear oaths to king, church, or tower in exchange for their lives. Some are studied under heavy warding, treated as living windows into their patrons’ realms. A few are quietly recruited, their pacts judged “useful” so long as they point in the right direction.
  But even in the best of cases, a Warlock who has been unmasked is never merely a person again.
  They are a relationship, walking and breathing. A line drawn between Duskfall and an Elsewhere that may or may not wish the world well.
  And in a land already braided with rivers of life, hung about with Tapestry, and crowded with thrones both holy and mad, few things are more unsettling than one more unknown hand on the loom.