Curate, connect, and discover
ok ive been thinking about this since like chapter 12 and chapter 16 is just around the corner so:
here’s my theory about how clan member contracts work + the contract powerscale 📝
so huey signs a contract with someone and they each have to fulfill it. simple enough. in return for fulfilling the contract, huey gives them a fraction of his essence (which culminates in a gemstone on their body) and they go on a roadtrip to fix the altars every once in a while
each original clan member signed their contract for a reason. we have pretty good guesses for some of them quincy: to protect the tribe/tribe’s land (pretty much confirmed as of razor’s edge) olivine’s ancestor: to assist(?) the church dante’s ancestor: to protect the solaria yakumo’s ancestor: to protect his loved ones (see: misty vale) what happens when someone doesn’t fulfill their contract? based on rei’s flashback in ch. 12, i’m guessing that the body part their gemstone is connected to + their essence begins to go haywire. rei mentions he ‘never chose to enter any damn contract’ while his gem huey also mentions that rei must learn to ‘harness the power’ he was given. it seems like part of that ‘harnessing’ is using huey’s power in service to the original contract.
rei, it seems, was not doing that. this is in contrast to someone like quincy who spends a great deal of time protecting and aiding the forest tribe and, likewise, possesses an incredible amount of power.
i think olivine is in a similar position (though he doesn’t know it). he’s got a lot of control and power and, unlike yakumo and edmond, his gem wasn’t cloudy when eiden met him (although, his sr also covers his gem with a decorative gem so?) (at any rate, iirc, eiden doesn't notice anything wrong with his gem). (EDIT: i have been informed that eiden does comment on olivine's gem in his h-story room when he sees his real gem and he says it’s clear (healthy gem = good essence health). OLIVINE WIN.) olivine's ancestor (likely) asked for power to care for/protect the church and olivine has been doing that (monster semen not withstanding. we’ll get to that.📌) + regulating with the altar. the more a clan member ‘fulfills the purpose of their contract’, the more power they reap from it. it’s hard to say this definitively because some of the original contracts are very ambiguous.
this puts quincy + olivine + kuya(?) in the upper tiers edmond + yakumo + g/karu(?) are in mid tier
the familiars + blade are N/A (never signed a contract)
and then bottom tier are rei and dante. who also happen to be the only main clan members who have been conspicuously sick as part of their character rei, we know spent an ample amount of time doing something outside of klein (i.e. not fulfilling his ancestor’s contract). so, we know where his dysregulation came from and it likely didn’t occur while he was a kid based on the few childhood flashbacks we get from him. his problem was mostly getting megabullied 😔✊ but what about dante? how did he fail his contract as infant, straight from the womb??? (assuming that was the cause of his sickness)
well. when he was born, solaria wasn’t doing very well. and, honestly, his parents weren’t doing a great job running the show. it also probably didn’t help that he was stopped from doing anything that could help solaria since he was isolated to palace grounds.
that is until the night of the riot when he ran and sought out the elemental spirit of fire's trial.
we don’t know exactly when dante ‘stopped being sick’ but i’d hazard a guess that it was after his trial with the elemental spirit of fire. the essence + power he gained from the contract with the elemental spirit of fire (i.e. his agreement to protect the fire territory) stabilized his essence and thus, his health. his newfound health (plus a lot of training) gave him the strength to improve solaria and become what he is today. (as an aside, similar to how kuya provides a lot of insight on huey, dante provides a lot of insight on contracts and communication with the elemental spirits. his contract is directly compared to the contract scrolls used by huey (by blade in chapter 10 part 1). in that chapter we learn that failure to fulfill his contract will result in his death. otherwise, we see that he gains power and favor from the spirits.)
even though solaria has improved a lot, i think dante's essence from huey might be permanently effected given that in sunburst fever, he can’t use magic w/o the elemental spirits. in general, he seems to struggle with outputting essence compared to other clan members.
tl;dr: huey’s contracts make you more powerful if you do what you said you’d do (or your ancestor said that they’d do) and, if you don’t, wuh oh… 📌 so olivine and the monster semen. yes, he did try to sabotage the church, so why didn’t he face some kind of huge consequence for breaking the contract? well… he also protected the church and, despite trying to harm it, he did his best to maintain it. so, what might seem like a huge breach of contract, is actually alright. the church didn’t face any major harm and it was protected. bada-bing-badaboom also, a possible question might be ‘so what about the mid-tier guys?’. so, yakumo and edmond don’t appear(?) to be actively fulfilling their contracts (though yakumo is well on his way).
what’s important is that they aren’t violating their contract. from when we meet them, it seems like ‘neglect of a contract’ does lead to degradation of one’s gem (cloudiness of the gem, poor condition in general) and would eventually lead to illness (like rei), but it’s a much slower process. it’s a good thing eiden regulated with them when he did.