Questionable Questing

You would be wrong
Contracts are made with Gods. Often the Contract is designed in a way to feed a God. Fortuna is the goddess of Tristan and she will make it so when he takes extra good luck, he gains in return bad luck.

The stronger the Contract, the more often the price will be harsher. However, evidence in the story suggests for people loved by their gods like Tristan they'll get a fair or reduced price. One girl who could sense the most likely cause of her death for the next three hours only had to make tiny shrines every year or so. Contractors are not priests. Those are different. We don't know a lot about High Priests yet.

We have seen two examples of their power and it is greater then a normal Contract. Contracts in general are limited magic. Once in a while you get a flaming sword that at the price of eating away at who holds it will burn and cut everything, but more often than not its a minor gift like superhuman thunder claps. Or knocking someone asleep with a touch. Greater magic is for Gloam signs and witchcraft.

Well don't leave me in suspense. What's witchcraft? lol

Signs and witchcraft are the same but different. Both use Gloam, both draw symbols in the air with it. However, Signs tend for what I would call greek style logical metaphysics. It aims for a science. To understand principles. Gloam is shaped with its properties in mind.

Witchcraft is sympathetic, drawing connections between ideas and thoughts of symbols. We see Craft summmons a Gloam lizard to enter and erupt from inside a corpose to explode it. That Witchcraft can conjure shadowy thorned roots or exploding ravens. Craft tends to make constructs while Signs generate effects like a spear or a burst of fire. Craft evokes gods, Signs don't.

Craft fucks around with rituals, Signs of the Navigator guild of the Watch don't.

So witches connect with concepts at the risk of being consumed by them. While contract, make deals with representatives of the concepts, otherwise known as gods, for less power but for more clearly defined boundaries.

Yes to the Contracts. Witches are using Signs same as Navigators but the Craft is different from Watch Signs in doing things in ways the principled ways of the Watch don't. The Craft and Signs both use Gloam. The dark magic mist destructive to life that covers most of the world and makes Navigators important to fight against Gloam storms at sea.

Gloam we are told in book 2 may work because by being in infinite dark it suspends all other states and rules, meaning that in Gloam there is nothing and the infinite nothing allows the manipulation of reality. I think.
Dude it is really good when you read it but fuck is it deep think. Actual good philosophy on the nature of reality tied to this magic.

Have a sample
"
Captain Totec had explained it as an effect of observational solipsism, a reduction of the metaphysical impurities that came from the Material being observed by a lucent mind. It was a provable conclusion, measured and recorded and stripped clean of anything the Navigators deemed to smell of mysticism. The Akelarre wanted no uncertainty in their Signs or the principles guiding them.

Practitioners of the Craft spoke instead of sympathy, about the thinning of thresholds between world and Nav and how the soul-effigy became eminent by straddling is and could-be. It was an intuitive answer, meant to guide the mind along thought-paths that reinforced themselves. A craft of words to make craftsmen of those who heard it.

To wield the Gloam was an act of will, whether that will was used to trace the resonant solidity of the Signs or to sculpt intention into act as the Craft did, but 'will' was not an absolute. It was a finite resource. Humans were animals, embers of divinity trapped inside beasts, and the beast weighed it all down. Will could not be made greater save by time and training, but the beast could be lulled into sleep

"Drowned in the dark, where its savage instincts could not drag down the practitioner.

Darkness and silence let you empty yourself of everything but you, until there was nothing but yourself and the Gloam. And so Maryam Khaimov sat alone in the dark, eyes closed, at the heart of the private archives."

Sorry it took me awhile to respond, had a nose bleed I had to take care of real quick. Hopefully it finishes clearing out soon. It happens sometimes when my nose gets too dry or whatever.

But magical darkness leaking into reality, changing it and ultimately if too much of it builds in one area reduces it to chaos filled nothingness. But those with strong will power and specific training can master and even control this power and use it for theoretically anything, but in practice you have to focus on one element. You know it sounds a lot like the warp, especially the part with the Navigators.

The nose bleed came from trying to read of the Gloam And sleep now. Talk more later if not doing research for school

Less Gloam Daemons than the warp.

Sleep well. lol. I better stay away from the Gloam.