[Lurker37]

Actually it's more like eight court contracts, two for each court, most of which have a court merit prerequisite. Buying your own court is cheaper (affinity contracts cost less XP), but you still need court mantle, and the more dots you buy the more mantle you need.

You can't get all the dots in the other courts' contracts, and each court has a goodwill merit, which you need a minimum number of dots in to learn each cross-court contract power. The higher-dot clauses require more dots in the merit to buy.

Similarly, you can learn contracts from other seemings - it's just more expensive. In this case no merits are required, though.

And you must start the game with at least two dots in contracts from your own court or seeming.

Next, Beast and Elemental changelings need not buy the contract that matches their physical appearance. An avian changeling that was actually a griffin in Arcadia may have a contract affecting cats, another avian that was kenneled with dogs may have spent more time learning how to relate to them than to birds. An elemental that was a fountain may be made of stone or metal, but have control over water, whereas a scarecrow may have been far more concerned with learning how to protect itself from fire than anything else.

So there's actually a lot more variety available than it first appears.