Having been granted rulership over the city of Vanhoover, and confessed their feelings for each other, Lex Legis and Sonata Dusk have started a new life together. But the challenges of rulership, and a relationship, are more than they bargained for.
“You have no idea how badly you’ve disappointed me.”
For almost a year, Lex’s sleep had been plagued by relentless nightmares. Ever since the hasty, ill-considered ritual he’d performed during his early days on Everglow – trying to contact Princess Luna in a failed attempt to map the planar distance between that world and Equestria – he hadn’t known a single night’s rest. Instead, sleep now invariably resulted in his not only reliving the worst failures and humiliations from his past, but also vividly envisioning the worst possible outcomes of his hopes for the future. It was abject misery, made all the worse by the knowledge that it was always waiting for him every time he laid down to rest.
Even the recent revelation that the tulpa that tormented him day and night could be theoretically controlled was no comfort. Although he’d initially been hopeful at the prospect of being able to sleep peacefully again, nothing had come of his repeated attempts to master that rebellious aspect of his mind. Instead, his inability to bridge the gap between what he could theoretically do and what he could actually accomplish – as he couldn’t in so many other things, chief of which was social interaction – served to bring Lex only renewed anger and frustration.
But now…now there were no nightmares to be found. No images of his parents mournfully telling him how anguished his disappearance had made their final years. No visions of his ruling over an empty city, its ponies universally having abandoned him because of his incurable unfriendliness. No scene of Sonata laughing at his thinking she could ever have loved someone like him.
Instead there was blue fire in every direction, the flames rising in an unbroken ring around him to an incredible height, blocking out his ability to see anything save the full moon sitting directly overhead. But despite the encircling blaze, the area in which he found himself was shadowy, the fire seeming to absorb light rather than emit it. Even the ground couldn’t be properly seen, utterly black and lacking any sort of definition, as though he was standing on a starless patch of the night sky itself. And across from him…
The pronouncement of disappointment reached his ears then, and a moment later the Night Mare stepped from the shadows, her features twisted in derision as she gazed down at him.
So this is the new nightmare, thought Lex disdainfully. It was a surprisingly banal choice on his tulpa’s part; up until now, all of the torments it had arranged for him had been intensely personal. But this? This had no emotional component for him. A dream wherein he angered the goddess instead of reaching an accord with her would certainly be unpleasant – he knew full well that she had the power to end his life, or worse, in any of a thousand different ways – but he had faced down death too many times for that to be truly frighten-
“On the contrary,” hissed the Night Mare, her eyes narrowing dangerously, “what I do to you will be far worse than anything your tantabus has done up until now.”
There was no signal to accompany her words, but the barbed wire wrapped around his left foreleg suddenly clenched and began to writhe, digging bloody furrows into his skin. Lex gasped at the sensation, taken by surprise both by the sudden pain and the immediate lucidity that it brought. As much as this resembled his last encounter with the dark goddess, Lex knew right then that this was no mere memory.
The Night Mare was really here.
The barbed wire continued its bloody writhing as the goddess spoke next. “Not only will your agonies be unending, but so will your disgrace. You will be among the lowliest slaves in my realm, made to endure whatever humiliations my more accomplished faithful feel like inflicting upon you. You will be stripped of all power, shorn of all pride, forced to live with the memory of everything you’ve lost and the certainty that you will never regain it.” The look on her face was one of contempt then, her lip curling. “Such is the fate of those who fail me as spectacularly as you have.”
“We had a deal!” snarled Lex, forcing himself to keep the pain out of his voice. The wire was digging in deeper now, all but flensing his skin free from the muscle underneath. Lex tried to call upon his dark magic then, trying to turn into a bodiless shadow despite knowing that he had expended it all fighting Xiriel. Sure enough, the power failed to materialize, with the wire continuing to slice his leg to pieces unstoppably.
“You actually have the gall to speak to me of that,” she spat, her voice dripping with scorn. “I gave you power befitting my most faithful, and what have I received in return?” She raised a hoof and brought it down angrily, causing the ground to shudder and almost making Lex lose his balance. “Where are the followers you promised me? The prayers made in my name?”
“Keeping everypony alive comes first!” Lex had to struggle to make the words come out as a rebuke rather than a scream, glaring at the Night Mare defiantly, refusing to let her get the better of him. “I’ll promulgate your religion after I’ve destroyed the monsters infesting my city!”
The Night Mare flared her wings in response. “A poor excuse, considering how feeble your efforts up until now have been!”
That struck a nerve. “‘Feeble’?” he growled, rearing up on his hind legs, furious at how she was belittling him. The despair he’d so recently felt was gone now, swept away in the face of his renewed rage. “FEEBLE?! I have struggled and fought and suffered to bring Vanhoover and its ponies back from the brink of destruction! I’ve faced enemy after enemy after enemy and slain them all while doing everything I can to protect those under my care! I have spared nothing in terms of effort and intellect and power for my people, and you dare call what I’ve done ‘feeble’?!”
All of a sudden, he didn’t care that he was face-to-face with a goddess. He didn’t care that he had no chance of hurting her, much less defeating her, in a fight. All he cared about was the sheer indignity of what she’d said about everything he’d done up until now. Reaching out with his undamaged foreleg, he began to gesture at her, a chant spilling from his lips as he recited the strongest attack spell he had left. He knew it was futile – even if the magic affected her, all it would do would be to seal her in a prison of ice, and he was under no illusion that would do anything more than irritate her – but so what? If she was going to drag him down to her realm for an eternity of torment anyway, then he wouldn’t go quietly!
That was the plan, at least. But before he’d gotten through a dozen syllables a shudder ran through him, one powerful enough to throw off his chanting, causing the spell to fizzle. Alarmed, it took him a moment to realize what had happened: the pain in his left foreleg had stopped, the cessation of agony being so profound that it had interrupted his casting. Confused, he looked back at the Night Mare.
Folding her wings back at her sides, the goddess gave him a cool look, her earlier displeasure no longer apparent. “It’s feeble because you still think you can accomplish everything on your own,” she noted calmly. “That’s why you’ve missed or squandered every opportunity you’ve had to expand your power base.”
Uncertain how to react to the sudden change in her disposition, Lex eyed her warily. “I have missed nothing,” he insisted, his ire still roused. “I have utilized every available aspect of my surroundings and circumstances to restore order!”
“And yet you left those aranea in Tall Tale.”
That caught Lex off-guard, not having thought about Fireflower and his siblings in some time. “Of course I did! It would have been immoral to force them to come here with me, especially after what they’d been through!”
The Night Mare continued as though she hadn’t heard his protest. “You ignored your mate’s sister, rather than nurturing her interest in you, and haven’t even realized that she’s abandoned you.”
“What?!” Lex could only blink at that, taken completely by surprise. Aria had left the camp? When?! More importantly, why?! He was the only means for her to regain her voice! For her to have abandoned that prospect of her own free will was inconceivable! He’d need to track her down, before-
The Night Mare spoke again, breaking his train of thought. “And worst of all, you pushed yourself so hard creating food for everyone that you ended up crippled, which led to those others going into the city on your behalf and dying there.” She paused to let that sink in, and when Lex didn’t protest her assessment, she continued, letting some displeasure creep back into her voice. “Including my cleric, your only success at keeping your promise to me.”
“…get to the point,” spoke Lex through gritted teeth, suddenly sick of this entire exchange. “Are you here because I’m such a disappointment, or are you here to criticize my leadership?”
“I’m here,” answered the Night Mare, “because your complete and utter lack of leadership is the reason for my disappointment.” Her lip curled as she spoke. “You know how to govern, and maybe even how to rule, but any leadership that you might have demonstrated has been entirely accidental. As creditable as your accomplishments are, you should have found it easy to make the ponies of this place revere you, and in turn worship me. Instead, you only managed to convert a single pony, and you were so wrapped up in yourself that you let her die.” She leaned forward then, baring her teeth just a little as she lowered her head toward him. “I’m here to give you a warning: improve your efforts, or next time I’ll make good on my threats.”
Lex glared at her in undisguised enmity. “I’ll spread your religion. Until then, don’t appear in front of me again.”
The Night Mare snarled at that, and suddenly Lex felt like a mountain had been dropped on him, a sudden pressure falling onto his back that knocked him to the ground, preventing him from moving. “Don't think that because I wanted to see what remained of your spirit, you have free rein to address me in whatever manner pleases you!" she hissed. Lex didn't retort, unable to so much as draw breath beneath the incredible force weighing him down, and it was several seconds before the Night Mare released him, straightening up as she did so. When she spoke again, her voice was restrained once more. "Now, I'm not unaware of the hardships you've overcome, or of the difficulty you have in motivating others. So in recognition of what you have managed to accomplish, I'll give you two things."
Lex had barely managed to pick himself up off the ground when she waved a hoof at him, and he felt his saddlebag shift. Giving the Night Mare a dark look, Lex nevertheless telekinetically reached into the bag on his right side, his eyebrows rising as he withdrew a ruby the size of his head. He had learned enough about gemstones from his mother to know that this wasn't like the ordinary gems that could be found throughout Equestria; its size alone made it significantly rare. But that wasn't what made his eyes linger on the gem's blood-red facets: there was a spell inside. A powerful one.
"Use it to bring Cloudbank back to life," instructed the Night Mare casually.
That was enough to make Lex's head whip around, looking at her with wide eyes. "What?!"
"Secondly, information," continued the Night Mare blithely. "The entirety of that city's ghouls will overrun your camp in a little over an hour."
The Night Mare castigates Lex for his failings, before rewarding him for his successes.
But her second reward lets him know that another disaster is about to strike! What will he do now?
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Oh snap! First off, I am totally unsurprised the Night Mare blames everything on Lex rather than admit her minion and his stupid rule about over-dependence shares the blame, LE beings believe rather firmly that blame rolls downhill. (To be fair, I have no idea if Severance also got a lecture. But if his actions lead the planes and deities of good to start gaining hearts and minds in Equestria, Night Mare will be even more furious with him).
But good to see Night Mare is being pragmatic. Man, it's really for the best the cleric of Lashtada has left camp; if she knew Lex was in possesion of a raise dead spell-gem...
On the other hand, the only being in the camp who could channel positive energy left, and it turns out she would be really useful about now.
Night Mare is being awfully lenient and generous to Lex here though I suppose after investing in Lex so much so it would be a waste to dispose of him like she had threatened to do. Still, I wonder if he'll actually use the gem to bring Cloubank back to life like the Night Mare expressively ordered him to do. Or will he attempt to amplify the spell's effects like he did with conjure food to bring back everyone back or maybe attempt to learn how it works so as to add it to his existing spell list.
Cozy would kick herself real hard if she ever finds out about this...though it would be amusing if Lex goes with the amplification option and the range somehow extends all the way to where Pillow is and Cozy attributes it to Lashtada instead of Lex. Extremely unlikely but still funny to imagine.
Of course, Lex will have to find a way to protect the ponies in the camp first before he can do anything else though fortifying the camp in such a short time is impossible(especially with the camp's current disposition towards him) as is evacuating given the chaos as you pointed out many chapters ago so Lex will have to figure something out a different plan if he wants to save everyone.
One idea is to move everyone to a smaller area such as the train station and its immediate surrounding and fortify it instead of the whole camp. Of course, this runs the risk of turning the place into an all you can eat buffet for the ghouls should they break through.
well that shit just happened and now we have more shit heading towards Lex.
i will admitted i was wrong on a few things and i never saw this cumming.
Well, its too late to run and even trying to fortify will create so much chaos there will be little to nothing. theres enough ghouls in that city to physically tear apart anything they build given theres no mega area effect destrction available?
So now even the Night Mare is throwing Lex's lack of real leadership in his face, but in true Lex fashion he still doesn't seem to really listen to her. At least until she shoves a resurrection gem and an imminent ghoul attack in his face. And speaking of the former, I agree with others' sentiments that it's a good thing Cozy is gone, because if she were still there she'd probably do whatever she could to steal it for herself.
8872070 I'll admit, I drew on part of our conversations for how the Night Mare acted here.
That said, I'm still not quite as sold on the deterministic aspect of alignment on behavior, even among a deity with a focus on tyranny. The same way we can have True Neutral and Neutral Evil goddesses of love, we can have a LE goddess of tyranny who doesn't demand that everyone bow down to her in some sort of pyramid of oppression. But having said that, the Night Mare does have expectations of Lex, and is going to be ticked if she thinks that he's not going to be able to deliver. As you alluded to, the issue of Severance didn't come up because, well, it wasn't relevant to the conversation; quite the contrary, I suspect that the Night Mare would have gotten ticked if she thought Lex was trying to shift the blame; rightly or wrongly, her lionization of self-actualization tends to lead to those who follow her doctrine developing tendencies toward self-aggrandizement. She's a goddess of control, after all, and the downside of conducting yourself like you're controlling everything means that ultimately you have to answer for virtually everything that conceivably involves you somehow. Respondeat superior, if you will.
That said, I reconsidered my position on how pragmatic the Night Mare would be with regards to what's happening based partially (though not completely) on what you said. My reluctance to go with that position was because once you have gods stepping in as agents of support, you've essentially opened the floodgates to "well if the situation was so important that they took a direct hand then, why won't they now?" That's an issue of internal consistency that can strain the narrative, whether story or RPG session, and is something I much prefer to avoid. That said, it is possible to go too far in the other direction, so I felt that some easing of the issue was warranted here.
As for what the Night Mare will do if Severance ends up leading angels to Equestria...well, that's largely a question of how much she's willing to punish her servants for things that aren't their fault. I suspect you'd say that's a definitional characteristic of Lawful Evil (or just Evil of any stripe) characters, but that's an area where I don't believe that alignment is that much of a determiner, as I noted before. While I suppose you could say that Severance should have plane-hopped before going back to Equestria, that's a thin way of papering over the fact that it really couldn't help the situation it found itself in. That, and the entire premise here is that Equestria is now a part of the wider multiverse anyway; it's less a question of "if" the planar powers will notice the world than "when."
But yeah, what would Cozy do if she knew that Lex had a life-restoring magic item right now?
8872342 The idea of the Night Mare actually rewarding Lex during this visit, despite how she acted at first, was borne of two ideas. Part of it was the long conversation I'd had with howard035 before, as I noted in my previous post. But the other part of it comes straight from her entry in the Ponyfinder Campaign Setting, and again in Princess Luminace's Guide to the Pony Pantheon: "The Night Mare only descends to the mortal realm when a worshipper, or someone she wishes to convert to one, has accomplished a great deed through their own power. Fire erupts, cold as the night itself, and she will appear in the largest of them and speak congratulations, all the while urging them towards greater deeds and larger prizes. Should such a soul continue to best her challenges, she will reward them first with trinkets, but then little gifts both terrible and wonderful."
When she "first" met Lex (in this story, I mean, rather than in the previous stories) she gave him back the magic items he'd previously sacrificed to her, and resurrected a minor NPC, after he'd single-hoofedly slain a dragon. This time, he'd accomplished quite a bit more, and so she's given him correspondingly more: information on what's about to happen and a gem (scroll) of true resurrection. So in other words, her recognizing what he's accomplished and giving him a reward nicely dovetailed not only with what the books said about her nature, but also with what she's invested into Lex's success in this story. Which all worked out rather nicely!
Of course, now Lex has to figure out the tricky ethical dilemma of bringing one pony back while the rest remain dead. True, the Night Mare told Lex who to use it on, but that's a directive rather than any sort of notation that it wouldn't work for anyone else; if Lex wants to use it on someone who isn't Cloudbank, he certainly can. Of course, as you noted, Lex might very well try to expand on what it can do, but that level of magical power, or even research, is by no means easy. Remember what happened the last time Lex tried something like that, where he invented a spell that boosted his vitality and used it to increase how much food he could summon? Now apply that to something much more miraculous than simply conjuring food... In other words, if Lex decides to go that route, he's got his work cut out for him. (I ran the numbers on what you suggested, and quite honestly they're severely stacked against Lex if he really wants to try that.)
That said, he's got something much more immediate to deal with. The question is what he's going to do about it, given that he's still depleted after his fight with Xiriel. (I suspect that it won't be lost on him that this is the second time, since he came to Vanhoover, that he's found himself facing a crisis after he's just finished with another fight, leaving him unprepared to rise to the new challenge.) That time, he enlisted everypony's help to face down the imminent threat, but this time, with what happened to Cloudbank and company, he doesn't seem like he's in the proper head-space to go that far. Then again, the Night Mare did tell him "stop trying to do everything yourself," so maybe he'll listen...?
8872407 I love it when I can (pleasantly) surprise my readers!
8872473 Lex, back when he was a colt teaching himself the new magic he invented, specifically opted to avoid creating area-effect destruction attacks, since growing up in Equestria meant that needing that level of indiscriminate violence was unimaginable. He found out later, of course, that there were situations where you needed to scorch/blast/liquefy as many creatures in one shot as you could...but now, it's too late to change how he's structured his spellcasting.
8872662 The thing about the Night Mare is that she's a goddess of dominance and control, not killing. While I doubt she objects to slaying creatures that won't obey her, I suspect that she sees it as a last resort, to be used only if something absolutely cannot be forced to submit. After all, Blaze is Everglow's pony goddess of war, not the Night Mare.
To that end, Lex's actions have been, from the Night Mare's point of view, a mixed bag. What he should be doing is dominating the monstrous creatures he's located, but instead he's either let them go (the araneas), slew them (T'lerekithres), or ignored them to the point of them abandoning him (Aria). Beyond that, he's taken control of a large number of ponies, but he hasn't truly solidified his rule over them, and while there are legitimate issues he needs to deal with, he's still ignoring the issue of attaining everyone's submission and obedience rather than working on it while dealing with everything else. So in that regard she's starting to grow frustrated with him.
At the same time, he is still championing her values...albeit not all of them. He is still seizing temporal power, even if he can't win over hearts and minds. He's fought with everything he has against impossible odds, never backing down nor giving up, and managed to win where by all rights he should have lost. He's also shown himself to be extremely loyal to those who serve under him, which is also one of her core tenets. So he's managed to advance some of what she wants to see. The purpose of her visit was to reward him for that while simultaneously castigating him for his failures. She didn't like that he was so depressed when she first came upon him here, because depression leads to surrender, and that's weakness, which is inexcusable to her. Hence why she pushed him to lash out at her, since anger is a demonstration that he's not beaten yet. That whole exchange was, in a very real sense, her way of saying "cheer up!"
And yeah, I can't see Cozy letting it go if she knew that Lex had something that could bring a pony back to life. But will she find out?
8873724
Yup.
This is true, Severance could not have realistically made it back to Equestria in reasonable time while shaking angels in hot pursuit, he only has a limited set of powers. Just like I think even if he had somehow ID'd Xiriel and went all out to stop it, I wager he still would have failed and Cloudy and the group would be dead.
If Severance was a normal character I would say I'm excited to see how these experiences would affect his character, and how his "weakness" is in a sense being overlooked by the Nightmare, but can sapient artifacts actually develop as characters? It could be that Severance isn't really capable of learning lessons or changing its thought patterns to a significant degree. But it would be interesting to see if Severance becomes, for example, protective of Cloudy once she's raised.
8873752 Lex can do a lot of things that bend the boundaries of the arcane and divine, but I strongly doubt he would be able to come up with an arcane method of raising the dead (I mean, if he wanted to put in a decade or two and become a 20th level alchemist, maybe)... besides, I suspect he'll realize he should use that spell gem right away, to have one of his strongest followers alive within say, the next hour.
8873825 With regards to whether or not sapient magic items (including artifacts) can develop as characters...this is (yet again) an area where there's no hard-and-fast answer within the rules. Insofar as D&D Third Edition goes, I don't recall much in the way of improving sentient magic items besides item familiars and a few of the eponymous items in Weapons of Legacy. Pathfinder isn't much better in this regard; notwithstanding the idol rules you pointed out before, the only time this has come up (again, that I know of) is the with regard to the item cohort rules (scroll to the bottom).
What we can infer from each of these examples is that sentient magic items don't grow in power unless someone actively imbues them with it. Item familiars and legacy weapons do this directly, with the former receiving a portion of their master's life force and the latter being awakened via a special ritual that bonds them to their wielder (which is essentially a concentrated variant of the familiar-bonding ritual). Idols draw power from mass worship in a way that effectively makes them "small gods," and even item cohorts are receiving some sort of imbuement from their wielder, hence why they can gain an empathic link as one of their listed advancement abilities and lose what any cohort improvements if they're discarded in favor of another cohort (that the listed cohort benefits for intelligent items are so anemic actually fits the pattern; there's not much of a bond between them and their owner, so they gain correspondingly little).
The problem here is that this runs counter to what the rules otherwise assume about intelligent creatures in general, and we know that intelligent items are treated as creatures, since the rules flat-out say so ("Intelligent items can actually be considered creatures because they have Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores."), and it's presented as a given that intelligent beings can self-improve over time in the form of gaining levels. Intelligent items might not have much in the way of movement, but they could still pursue certain types of magical or social progressions, so by that line of logic they should be able to improve.
Once again, this is an area where the "gamist" approach of the rules doesn't help us to understand the underlying nature of what it's trying to represent about the setting. Hence, different portions of the same rules end up giving us different messages.
To be fair, both options work. Thoth, co-author of Eclipse: The Codex Persona spoke to this on his blog, and later expanded on it slightly in his entry for Uaithne, Harp of the Dagda (the "lesser powers" and "greater powers" entries in the sidebar...though the notes about always buying an adamantine inlay, and the "sentient item survival package" of powers for 24 CP, are also noteworthy for being "common sense" augmentations). So it's certainly not implausible that Severance could have been written up that way.
Of course, if that's the case, then Severance would be wildly more powerful than we've seen up until now. The flexibility allowed under point-buy rules, along with the fact that sentient items can afford to specialize heavily at what they do (not needing a focus on a wider suite of abilities the way living creatures typically need to), means that even a few levels could allow it to possess incredible power far beyond what's been shown to date. Whether or not that's the case remains to be seen.
With regards to Lex possibly finding an arcane spellcasting method of bringing the dead back to life...well, we end up back in the same place as we did with sentient magic items, in that the rules maintain a mostly clear division without telling us what it's supposed to be representative of; in this case, that's the difference between arcane and divine magic; more specifically, why the latter has healing and resurrection spells and the former doesn't (notwithstanding that an arcane spellcaster could use limited wish to create a raise dead effect, or a full wish to utilize a resurrection, since those spells are supposed to be direct alterations to reality itself).
The problem is compounded by the fact that there are areas of overlap between arcane and divine spells. Not only do they react identically to virtually all magical phenomena (e.g. they can both be dispelled with equal effectiveness, can both be studied with detect magic, etc.), but the number of spells that appear on both divine and arcane spell lists is massive, to the point where it can seem easier to name which spells don't appear on both types of lists.
Rather ironically, this goes for spells of the healing subschool also, which includes the various cure wounds and life-restoring spells. That is to say, the various cure wounds spells are all on the bard spell list, which is arcane. Why are they there? Well, I'm sure that wanting to democratize magical healing was a factor in the game designers' decisions, plus there's a bit of a legacy issue there, since bardic spellcasting was druidic - and so included healing spells - back in AD&D First Edition (even if it became arcane, with no healing, back in AD&D Second Edition). But none of that tells us why they're there now, and that's a bit of a problem (one that's gotten a bit worse since other classes, such as the witch, also have arcane healing...though the mysterious nature of the witch's patron helps to tone that down some). Ultimately, it's one of those things that needs to be either reconciled or ignored if you're looking to try and justify the difference within the context of the narrative.
(What follows is a minor spoiler for some of the underlying reasoning as to how magic works in this story. It's not a huge deal, but it does deal with aspects of magic that I haven't gotten into yet, and it probably will come up later, so I'll cover it up here just in case).
Personally, I like to go with this explanation from editorial0, the other co-author for Eclipse (and The Practical Enchanter, too). Specifically, the part where he says (edited slightly by me for clarity):
That pretty much sums up my approach, even if it doesn't answer the bard problem (which editorial0, and Thoth in an editor's note, both noted in that article was an aberration in that regard). This, incidentally, is also why Lex is continually stumped with regard to why he can't utilize healing magic; he hasn't yet figured out that divine servants are doing a lot of "back-end" work on those spells.
Just re-reading this section, and I noticed
The Night Mare thought Lex should have seduced Aria? I'm trying to imagine him attempting that and drawing a blank. I'm sure it would have been funny though. Well, funny until Sonata found out, and then the Night Mare would have been "you alienated your most powerful servant, severely weakening your power base!"
8883251 As amusing as the thought of Lex trying to seduce anyone is, that's not what the Night Mare meant by "nurturing her interest in you." Rather, she was using "interest" as a shorthand (shorthoof?) for "she was coming around to the idea of serving you," and was ticked that Lex didn't recognize and encourage that. While the Night Mare isn't a goddess of sex or seduction, she's very interested in power dynamics, and those can manifest in virtually any relationship, so long as there's a clear recognition that the parties involved are unequal.
I should mention that there's a game application of this as well: Lex has (thanks to the template the Night Mare gave him) Leadership, albeit only for creatures of the Magical Beast type. This uses the Eclipse rules, and so isn't strictly limited to a single useful cohort and a bunch of near-totally useless followers, but he's limited to only recruiting magical beasts that he's personally subdued with the Night Mare's power (i.e. taken control of via his channeling). But to date, he hasn't recruited a single such creature: he let the araneas go, slew Tlerekithres (though he was too powerful to be recruited with Leadership anyway, so that's not exactly fair of her), and is all but ignoring Aria even though she is (as the Night Mare interprets it) all but holding up a sign saying "I'm yours if you want me." As such, his goddess was ticked to see him squandering a large portion of the power she gave him, and was letting him know that.
The hand giveth, the hand taketh away.
9219269 Or hoof, in this case.