When a challenge is issued against a holding, any clan can issue a mercenary contract for the defending clan’s consideration.
Such contracts are issued through the sieged holdings overview window, the same window that is used to declare a challenge against a holding.
Issued contracts are listed in the Clan Overview window and can be withdrawn.
A defender can examine contracts issued towards them in the Challenge Details window. Defenders can also issue and withdraw contracts from their Challenge Details window which will be visible by the mercenary clan in their Clan Overview window.
Only 1 contract, be it pending or accepted can exist between 2 clans at any one time. A pending contract must be rejected before another can be issued towards the same clan. Issuing a contract costs dominion points and any contract can be counter offered.
Contracts have 2 possible terms. They can be a fixed payment contract where a set amount of gold is agreed upon and they can also have a wager percentage requirement meaning that a percentage of the wager pot will be automatically paid to the mercenaries if the defenders win.
Mercenaries will always be required to pay a bond to issue a contract. This is to ensure that they will actually show up and try their best to aid the defender.
Defenders are only needed to pay a bond in the case of a fixed payment contract to ensure that the payment is made towards the mercenaries. Bonds are returned at the end of the contract but defender bonds are not returned if they are victorious as the bond is the mercenary reward.
The moment that a contract is accepted by the defending clan, the mercenary becomes part of the challenge, as if they were the defender and their political stances are automatically set to ally towards the defenders and war towards all attackers.
Contracts are only considered “successfully completed” if the defender wins the challenge and retains ownership of the holding, at this point the mercenaries are automatically paid their rewards.