Effect: Mantle is a skill that represents a mystical connection with the elements and emotions that a particular Court embodies. The higher a changeling’s Mantle rating, the more he has come to embody that Court’s ideal. It adds to dice pools for social interaction with members of the Court in question. Each dot adds a +1 die bonus to relevant rolls with members of that particular Court. This Merit does not add to dice pools predicated on supernatural powers. Characters with no Court cannot purchase Mantle.
Mantle also serves as a prerequisite for learning certain Court-related Contracts. Each Court has certain mechanical and descriptive benefits for all its members developing a Mantle rating. In addition to those benefits, each Court has a benefit reserved for its leader, an advantage most commonly referred to as its “crown.” A crown can only manifest in a freehold where there are at least a handful of members of a particular Court and they are able to choose a common leader, and generally manifests only during the appropriate physical season. The Storyteller is the final arbiter of when and how a crown appears, but as a rule, only one crown may manifest in a given freehold at a time.