I've got a bunch, Hekate and Lucasta are making what look like the strongest cases?

Ooh, Hekate is a real classic, and Lucasta is new and interesting. Hekate tends to assign missions like 'go here and learn this obscure potion or rune' or 'teach someone this obscure potion or rune' or 'go prevent someone from wiping out a rare branch of magic' or 'awaken this potential witch' or 'find this ancient grimoire and scan it to the internet.' Lucasta has less of a track record to go off of but some examples I've heard of include 'obtain a big chunk of mortal currency and donate it to this specific mortal charity' 'go to this one location right now and prevent someone from committing suicide' 'help this person defeat an evil hespatian sorceress who's trying to kill a lot of people.'

Huh. Ballpark how much time will going warlock over sorceress save me?

...Depends on your risk tolerance. A single high-stakes quest will net you a lot more power a lot faster than a lot of smaller ones. But over time--well, it depends on how high your power cap ends up being. But on the very high end, centuries.

Hmmmm. So it looks like - steady predictable work with Hekate and choppier more dramatic work with Lucasta and the latter will be... faster?

That's more or less right. Also, you may or may not care, but some people do, that Lucasta is loosely Watcher-aligned for historical reasons, and Hekate has been known to patronize Hespatian cells doing interesting research.

Historical reasons?

There was an event where the extremely powerful deity the Watchers identify as the Abrahamic God orchestrated the purification from Outsider corruption of several powerful Outsider-corrupted beings, of whom the goddess Lucasta was one such. 

Huh, I guess that makes sense as a reason to be chummy... Is there any more detail she can see from here on these gods and their deals?

There is somewhat more detail on the personalities of the beings in question. 

Hekate is such a magic nerd. Magic research and education are terminal goals for her. She does also have other goals and priorities, but those are definitely the most legible ones at the moment. 

Lucasta is an ascended former-human, and really dedicated to the whole altruism bit. Reading between the lines, the lever that most people have in their brain that divides the world into "us" and "them" where suffering experienced by "them" doesn't really count? She doesn't have it. 

I don't suppose there's any chance these folks can be talked into sharing?

You know, I have no idea how that would work? I suspect at least some of them would be willing in principle, but actually implementing it would be a whole different issue. 

Well, if you don't know how to do it I don't...

Not everyone's idea of altruism jives with May's, but it's not like she won't be able to use her oodles of saved time to also do whatever she thinks is important on top of saving the whales if the situation turns out to be saving the whales kind of situation, it's not like she has anything against whales. Neither the Hespatians nor the Watchers sound like her cup of tea, but getting cleared of Lovecraftian gunk by some nice religious folks is a very good reason to be sympathetic and none of the example errands were "build a church". Also... choppier and less steady work, but faster. Faster might not matter much, maybe May is about to have a fun-filled apprenticeship on the moon punctuated by taking in theater and learning the glockenspiel or something and not be in a hurry at all, but maybe she is also going to find something to be in a hurry about next week, who knows.

There isn't going to be any sacrificing any Isaacs here, right? she metaphorically asks the Lucasta-proxy-thing in the awakeningscape.

The Lucasta-proxy-thing is not strictly capable of responding intelligently to conversation. 

But it is capable of shifting to display different aspects of Lucasta's identity in response to potential-witch-mindset, and the impression May can pick up here is that Lucasta is maybe wedged a little bit farther into association with Abrahamic models of the world than she would like to be, on account of circumstances such as "Outsider contamination is SO MUCH WORSE" and "well, nobody else figured out how to get rid of it," but the extent to which she is wedged in is NOT infinite and human sacrifice is NOT something she has to put up with. 

Oh, good.

...How else can these things informatively Rubiks-cube around?

With a bit of examination, it becomes apparent that each patron-spark also displays the magical treasures the patron is willing to offer for the warlock's soulbonding ability. 

Ooh! Swag! What kind of swag sweetens these deals?

May has twenty quantized units of potential with which to bond to potential artifacts. 

Hekate offers:

Yaga Root (0 units) - a little wooden artifact that turns any small building into a less chicken-themed Baba Yaga's hut, basically; it can also synergize with high-ranked Witchery to pull the building into one's pocketspace. 

Nightlight (4 units) - a candle which, if carelessly handled, can accidentally strand you in a shadow dimension, but properly handled makes potion-making much less expensive. 

Pewter Crown (2 units) - a spiked, dark grey crown which empowers curses and allows for greater finesse in impacting the subject of a curse. 

Hydron (2 units) - a special cauldron which allows for several potions to be crafted at once, as well as being able to combine potions into compound elixirs in ways that would ordinarily be difficult at best. 

Ritual Inks (0 units) - a set of tattooing equipment which makes runecrafting much cheaper when the runes are inscribed on living flesh. 

Storm Brew (2 units) - a glass jar which can be used like a potioneering cauldron, but you brew weather instead of potions. 

Hellrider (4 units) - an incredibly cool magic motorcycle. 

Cosmic Pearl (10 units) - Soulbonding to one of these gives you one affinity of your choice on top of your racial affinities, plus you can soak it in water to turn the water into an R4 potions ingredient. 

Magic Talisman (18 units) - a rare and powerful artifact which allows the bearer to use the rank 5 magic imbued within while the talisman is on their person (which is trivial to achieve for soulbonded warlocks). This one is a spider pendant that grants Arachnescence, a rare form of magic usually limited to magical spider-people which allows one to, among other things, customize one's body in various interesting spider-themed ways. 

Lucasta offers: 

Violet Lenses (0 units) - magic glasses with several different modes, including thermal, "x-ray" vision, and aura-sight. Modes can be stacked. 

Gem of Renewal (6 units) - a gemstone containing a tiny replica of the user's body, which absorbs harm dealt to the user. Healing magic works on it as on a person. 

Nymph Vessel (2 units) - hot and cold running Decanter of Endless Water. 

Hydron - as above

Ritual Inks - as above

Magic Talisman - as above in the broad strokes. This one is an intricate tiara with a centerpiece of nine-petal lotus design, which grants Lifeweaving, the elemental magic of life. R5 Lifeweaving lets you resurrect someone in thirty minutes if you have a corpse with some flesh on its bones. 

Wow, Hekate is kind of a - hoarder? That's not the right word but it's the one that pops into May's head, looking at this random smattering. Spiders? Storm brew? Okay the storm brew is adorable but she doesn't expect to want to brew weather frequently...

What is Lifewea- holy SHIT May wants that one. And a hydron and the lenses, she guesses.

She scoops up the relics and also Lucasta into her tentative "build".

What's next?

Next is race! 

May's sixteen "stars" of race options are: 

Neutral - basically just humans, although with a handful of biological refinements as a result of witching; they recharge from sleep

Wulong - eastern dragon things that fly and recharge from proximity to art. 

Siren - feathered humanoid bird shapeshifters who recharge by causing people to skip breaths one way or another

Jotun - giant size shifters who recharge from eating meat

Daeva - upgraded humans who don't age and recharge using other people's strong emotions

Mimi - animal people (think catgirls, not furries) who can gain powers based on animal traits and recharge through physical contact

Fairy - inch-high winged beings who can draw other beings into a sort of temporarily mind-altering dynamic suspended animation and draw mana from the beings they have trapped in this "revelry"

Wither - rotting unfortunates who can reverse their own personal decay through cannibalism and charge from ambient decomposition

Spider - enormous sapient spiders who recharge through bondage

Aurai - fey beings with life-draining voices with screams that send people back in time which draw mana from counterfactual paradox

Lamia - naga-esque snake people who recharge through vore

Kekubi - humanoid versions of the Totoro soot sprites, setting them on fire doesn't harm them and does recharge their mana

Changeling - permanent (physical) children who recharge from impersonating people

Orc - colorful buff people who recharge by having children

Elf - graceful pretty people who recharge from meditation

Hannya - oni-like beings who recharge from booze and experience a variety of exotic effects while drunken

Welp! Let's first of all rule out fairies and lamias and withers and hannya and probably also orcs!

Neutrals don't seem to have substantial advantages beyond "you have to sleep anyway" - actually, do you have to sleep anyway? Penelope?

By default, yes, but there's wild magic you can take to avoid it--ah, and it seems you do have that potential... one of the more distant "stars" lights up. 

Okay, so she doesn't have to sleep anyway, there goes the main perk of being 'neutral', or -

Is it going to be hard to pass in normal situations as these?

No--first of all, the Veil--that's the part of the Masquerade that prevents mortals from observing magic--covers most witches, so nobody would perceive you as other than human anyway--and even those who have the magical Complication that prevents the veil from covering them, well--Fairy would be difficult to pass, that's true, and an orc would have to cover a lot of skin, and--oh, you have Wither, I see--you won't pick that, I assume, given that you have other choices, but you could, uh, pretend to have Hansen's disease, if you did--and as a Lamia you'd have to go around in a wheelchair with your tail covered, I suppose--but most of the rest, their inhuman features would be relatively easy to hide and/or explain away.

Not picking lamia either, but I'm considering options with antlers and feathers and - cat ears, or possibly some other kind of nonstandard ears.