Faerie Pact

Fey are often quite pragmatic creatures, willing to pay an appropriate price to get what they want. The special gifts of the fey many times prove a powerful incentive for mortals to do what they ask in the long term. Sometimes, the price may even be as meager as showing the fey proper respect when they offer gifts. However, respect can be more complicated than expected for an inexperienced mortal.

Some fey expect deferential speech; some expect that part of the gift be left behind as thanks; and some are mortified at being given mortal crafts as a reward. When fey act with such good will, mortals would be wise to avoid trying to exploit the situation any further than intended; any more may insult the fey or even hurt it, usually with the result of swift and painfully poetic justice.

More often, a fey pact carries a significant price. But unlike a fiend’s pact, the price of a fey pact is sometimes well worth paying (although it can 
become impractical). Other times, particularly when bartered by a lawful evil fey, a fey deal is in its own way just as devious as any fiendish contract. 
However, like fiendish contracts, there is always the hope that the price can be circumvented – a hope which fey occasionally foster by abandoning 
old contracts in order to lull mortals into a false sense of security or to satisfy the fey’s own compulsive need to follow its own rules to the letter.

Examples:

1. Minor Seelie fey bless a field, preventing poor harvests in exchange for a token share of the harvest as a sign of respect for the Seelie Court.
2. Sprites do the work of a cobbler for as long as he respects their embrace of poverty.
3. A daoine sidhe offers the gift of warlock magic in exchange for the completion of a long and harrowing quest using that gift.
4. A leprechaun offers desperately-needed magical handiwork in exchange for valuable heirlooms or the promise of one’s firstborn child.
5. A Seelie courtier ensures health and plenty for a village in exchange for some of the children every year; mortals are terrified by the slowly accumulating number of disappearances without ever realizing that these children are being raised as faerie knights to protect their realm from aberration invaders who the courtier foresees will arrive in the next few decades.