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.
Together, the Night Mare’s Knights frolicked and laughed as they trotted toward the train station.
They would have galloped the entire way there, but Feather Duster had forbidden it, worried about them running around in the dark. Even after Feathercap had conjured a faint light at the end of his horn Feather Duster had sternly told them to stay together and go slowly, hovering above them to make sure they didn’t leave her sight. Even then, the foals were so overjoyed at their animals’ return that the warning had little impact on their mood; the fact that Fiddlesticks couldn’t really run while carrying her baby brother (who had already fallen back asleep) did more to slow their pace than anything else, happily conversing among themselves as they hurried to go meet with the pony who had brought their beloved companions back.
“I think we should all give him a kiss on the cheek,” giggled Cleansweep, spinning around in midair. “That’s the most heartfelt way to say thank you.”
Altaer ruffled his feathers at the suggestion. Perhaps a more dignified gesture is in order, in accordance with the First Convoker’s eminence?
“No kidding,” chuckled Fruit Crunch. “Besides, that’s okay for you and Fiddleface, but us guys don’t do that, Dust Bunny.”
Fiddlesticks rolled her eyes. “You’re right. When boys are happy to see each other, they tackle one another and roll around in the dirt, the same way they would if they were fighting.” Almost as an afterthought she added, “And don’t call me that!”
I’m sure whatever form your gratitude takes, the Exalted Primogenitor will be pleased to receive it. Nemel couldn’t have sounded happier as she trundled alongside Fiddlesticks. The joy of the young is always a delight to those who’re grown, even if they don’t show it.
“I still think we should do something bigger,” added Straightlace. “I mean, bringing all of our spirit animals back deserves something more than just saying ‘thank you,’ don’t you think?”
While I concur with your sentiment, I feel obliged to point out again that your premise is flawed, noted Ulespy. The Grand Vizier is a being of many talents, but he was not the one who brought us back to you. Should our physical forms be destroyed, we will always return when next you dream.
“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t say thank you anyway,” offered Feathercap timidly. “I mean, Lex is the reason we were able to meet you guys in the first place, since he brought Severance here. So it is kind of thanks to him that you’re back now.”
The best way to show your appreciation for the High Alpha is to continue making him proud of you, asserted Lyden confidently. Don’t forget that we’re answering his summons now, which means he likely has a task for us.
“Or maybe he wants to give us our reward!” grinned Fruit Crunch, the mere thought being uplifting enough that he couldn’t help but give a little hop of excitement as they reached the back of the train station, his fantasies from a day ago coming back to him now in full force. “I bet he’s going to want to take us all on as his apprentices!”
Even if he does, you should temper your expectations, chided Venin gently. Your guardian – she looked upward at that, where Cleansweep was coming in to land as they neared the station platform – made it sound as though the Lord Sovereign’s victory left him enervated. Once he states his wishes, you should let him rest.
“Aw, if he’s still hurting after that fight, then I can just use my powers to fix him up again!” grinned Cleansweep. While she normally found Lex’s demeanor rather menacing, getting Venin back had left her feeling exceptionally magnanimous. “In fact, that’d be a great time to put a kiss on his ch-, ERK?!”
Rounding the corner of the train station, Cleansweep came to a dead stop in midair, eyes wide as jaw hanging open at the sight that greeted her. Nor was she the only one, as each of the Knights had a similar reaction as they caught up to her, stunned by what awaited them on the platform. Their animals, by contrast, seemed far less concerned, quieting down as they looked at the spectacle and waited to be addressed. Feather Duster’s reaction was somewhere between both extremes, turning the corner and grimacing at what she saw.
Lex and Aria were kissing.
Far heavier than the chaste kisses that Cleansweep had been proposing, the two of them were locked in a passionate embrace. Eyes closed and forelegs around each other, neither seemed aware of anypony else as they pressed their lips together. Aria’s soft moan was faintly audible as she tilted her head, clearly wanting more.
“Okay, that’s enough! Let’s go!” whispered Feather Duster, landing beside the foals and trying to shoo them back around the side of the station.
But none of the Knights responded, eyes locked on the spectacle in front of them. “Wow,” muttered Cleansweep. “No wonder he’s so tired.”
The comment was enough to make Feathercap glance at her. “What do you mean?”
“Kissing that hard is really exhausting,” Cleansweep explained, nodding her head towards her mother without taking her eyes off of the amorous duo. “Whenever Mom and Dad did that, they’d end up going right to bed a few minutes later.”
“Cleansweep!” yelped Feather Duster, mortified.
The sound of her embarrassed shriek was enough to alert Lex and Aria that they weren’t alone, the former pulling away from the latter instantly, red-faced. For her part, Aria looked mildly annoyed before giving a sardonic smirk as she glanced at their audience, her eyes flickering from Cleansweep to Feather Duster. “Well, looks like watching runs in the family, huh?”
The jab earned her a dark look from Lex, his features having already settled back into their usual scowl. “That’s enough, Aria.” He didn’t bother waiting for her to acknowledge his warning before looking at Feather Duster, clearly blaming her for what had just happened. “From now on, announce yourself before entering my presence.”
“Y-yes, Master Legis,” gulped Feather Duster.
Only slightly mollified, Lex turned his attention to the rest of the foals. “As for the rest of you-”
“Is she your girlfriend too?” blurted Feathercap suddenly, earning surprised looks from the rest of the Knights. “Her and Miss Sonata and Miss Nosey?”
You’re being impertinent! snapped Altaer immediately. Show the First Convoker respect!
Lyden moved forward. High Alpha, please forgive these pups. Our return has made them forget themselves.
But Aria couldn’t hear the animals’ telepathic entreaties, and sauntered forward, grinning as she looked at Feathercap. “That’s right, kiddo,” she answered, her voice full of mirth. “We’re all Lex’s girlfriends. And as you can see, he takes really good care of us.”
The foals’ eyes widened at that, and Feather Duster bit her lip, but Lex was the one who spoke next. “All of you, be quiet.”
The words weren’t shouted, nor did his expression change, but the bright green-and-purple light that radiated from his eyes then made it clear that Lex’s patience had run out. Looking at Aria, she made a placating gesture in response and slunk off to the side, leaning against the wall of the station in silence acquiescence. Once he was satisfied that she’d stay silent, Lex turned his eyes back to the group in front of him, looking over each of the animals in turn. “How were those creatures revived?” he demanded.
“It happened on all by itself,” answered Fruit Crunch. Although he’d been remembering the fantasy he’d had the previous evening about becoming Lex’s pupil, he was suddenly reminded of how the actual encounter had gone. Shaking his head, he forced that memory down. This isn’t like that. Just play it cool and it’ll be fine. Lyden had told them to focus on being useful, and Fruit Crunch trusted his spirit animal’s judgment completely. “They said that even if they, um, die, they’ll always come back after we go to sleep and dream for a little while.”
Lex appeared to chew on that for a moment, and Fruit Crunch was pleased to see his eyes change back to normal a few seconds later. “I want you five to tell me everything that Severance taught you with regard to the Night Mare,” he said at last. “Right now.”
The request caught Fruit Crunch by surprise, and he exchanged confused glances with his friends. The same question was written all over their faces: this was what Lex had called them up in the middle of the night for? Tilting her head slightly, Fiddlesticks cleared her throat before giving voice to their confusion “Can’t you just ask Severance about that?”
Lex’s expression darkened at that, but it was Nemel that spoke up. The Exalted Primogenitor is asking all of you. Perhaps rather than question why that is, you should be pleased that he wishes to hear this from all of you, rather than another.
The foals winced a little at that, and it was Straightlace who stepped forward then. “Well,” he started. He glanced over at Feather Duster, who had a look of mingled worry and curiosity on her face, and faltered for a moment. But he rallied quickly, drawing himself up as he looked at Lex. “The first thing we learned were some prayers to the goddess…”
“And in the darkness, when all light is gone, the truth between the strong and the weak is made known, for the strong revel in the darkness, while the weak fear it.” Fruit Crunch finished the last verse, before giving Lex a tentative smile. “And that’s it. That’s as far as we’ve gotten.”
Outwardly, Lex was perfectly calm, giving a curt nod in response to the colt’s statement. Inwardly, however, he was seething, and not just because of the paucity of useful information that he’d gained from them relaying Severance’s lessons to him. Rather, it was the content of those lessons that had him gritting his teeth in anger.
The foals had learned little more than several basic prayers and a few aphorisms, which collectively comprised only the most basic teachings about the Night Mare’s religion. That wasn’t unexpected, of course; those children had only spent a small amount of time with Severance over the course of a few days. And while Lex had gleaned a few new insights into the Night Mare’s dogma from what they’d told him, none of it was useful with regards to figuring out how to outmaneuver the ultimatum she’d given him.
But what bothered him far more was how those foals had blindly accepted what they’d been told, with no deeper examination of the underlying philosophy of what they’d been taught nor any attempt to integrate it into an existing moral framework. By itself that wasn’t surprising; Lex was fully aware that – save for exceptional individuals like himself, who had been autodidactic his entire life – the nature of children was to require adult guidance and supervision. But now that those foals had magical abilities of their own, granted to them via those “spirit animals,” which were effectively immortal thanks to their ability to be endlessly restored whenever the children slept, the lack of such supervision was a state of affairs that could not be left unattended. Simple lessons about how “the weak suffer what they must” and “mercy is a sin” had led to them, thanks to their newfound abilities, not being afraid to take a pony hostage on the battlefield, casually threatening him with death in order to make his companions surrender. And while they’d been bluffing this time, it was all too easy to imagine that the day would come when they wouldn’t be insincere in their threat. Which meant that corrective action needed to be taken…
“So, um, is that helpful at all?” asked Fruit Crunch, the colt’s voice pulling Lex out of his thoughts.
Apparently his voice roused Feather Duster as well, because she suddenly shivered. “I can’t believe that scythe taught you such horrible things!” she huffed, giving Cleansweep an angry look. “There are more important things about someone than whether or not they’re strong or weak! Things like kindness! Or generosity! Or loyalty! Or-”
“Actually, loyalty was in there,” noted Straightlace. “The part that says ‘and the strong shall keep the weak as their own,’ implies-”
“No no no!” yelled Feather Duster. “That’s not how good ponies should think of each other!” She looked at Lex then, desperate. “Master Legis, please! Tell them!”
“Yeah Lex,” chuckled Aria from where she was still leaning against the station, apparently amused by the entire exchange. “Tell them.”
Lex didn’t reply immediately. Instead, he let his eyes glance over each of the children and their animals in turn, his gaze coming to rest on Fruit Crunch. As much as he didn’t like it, there was only one acceptable choice. “All of you go back to River’s mansion and rest,” he ordered, turning around.
The foals sagged in place at the dismissal, disappointment written all over their faces. But they perked up a moment later as Lex spoke again.
“Starting the day after tomorrow, I’ll be personally instructing each of you from now on.”
In light of what Severance taught them, Lex decides to take on the Night Mare's Knights as his students!
But without having gained any new insights into the sacrifice that the Night Mare wants from him, what will Lex do in the meantime?
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Lex aquired students.
Lex gained the title: Mentor.
Lex gained a new headache.
9825862
I wonder how many headaches lex has?
1
10
100 perhaps?
I guess it all depends on whether he gets headaches when aroused
How to punish Aria. Tell her that only if she trains the Knights to Lexs satisfaction, will that satisfaction be returned.
At least Lex discovered the line of thinking before it really got embedded.
9825862 Just wait until he needs to start working on lesson plans.
9825867 I suspect that at this point, Lex has ALL the headaches.
9826097 I don't think anypony would trust Aria to be someone to teach children. Assuming she'd even agree to it, I'm a bit nervous to think about what she'd have them learn.
And thus, Lex Legis has put more tasks on his plate. As a former teacher, I'm worried at how this will go but as a student of life, I'm eager to see what lessons Lex has for the Knights who are undoubtedly eager to learn from Lex. Wonder how long it will be before the NMK decide to experiment their powers without Lex's supervision.
At least he left himself a day to work out how to outmaneuver the Night Mare but given how little he learned from the Knights, he's still hardpressed to figure out a solution.
9826231 At the moment I doubt even Lex knows what he's going to do with those kids, save for the fact that he has to do something. Unfortunately, teaching plays directly into his greatest weakness, so he might try to have the girls help (less so Aria, I imagine). Even then it's going to be rough, since he's lacking in the means of recharging his strongest magic, meaning that a lot of practical demonstrations are likely out the window for the foreseeable future...unless he wants to teach them to use his dark magic (which is theoretically possible), or has them pray to the Night Mare for divine magic.
Of course, all of that's after he figures out something to get the Night Mare off his back, since right now he has little more than what he started with insofar as a plan goes. If he can't come up with something, that make-out session with Aria might be his last one for a long time...which is probably why he had it, come to think of it.
Ok, first and foremost Cleansweep is now the best Nightmare Knight. I strongly urge all Nightmare Knights to listen to her ideas on how to thank Lex. Clearly he does not object to being kissed!
Glad to see Lex is focusing in on the damage of having an evil artifact teach kids religion. On the other hand, given his experience of charging forward to do the right thing only to piss off the Night Mare and be punished for it, I doubt he's going to just tell them "forget everything that crazy scythe said to you, the Night Mare is terrible."
My guess is he will try and temper their teachings to his own LN outlook, maybe even give them the Equestrian version of the Pact Servant trait, so they can be truly good ponies and still worship the Night Mare. (Though, if you wanted to really stick with the source material for that trait, this might result in the Nightmare Knights thinking of the Night Mare as a stallion!)
9826651
Well, better not let Sonata hear about that. Somehow I don't think that she'd be happy with the thought of even more people who aren't her kissing her boyfriend!
Insofar as what he teaches the children goes, I suspect you're right about his trying to temper the Night Mare's religious dogma with his own personal philosophy. What fusion this creates, if it works, will be interesting to see. Certainly a more Lawful Neutral take on her religion seems likely (as per Lex's alignment), but as for whether or not he could actually take things further than that...well, it's not impossible. (And honestly, I can understand why they limited it to Asmodeus, but there should be similar options like Pact Servant out there for other particular deities; honestly, I'd say that the "Heretic of the Faith" feat from Power of Faerun did it better.)
9826714 There's got to be a marginal number of kissers beyond which Sonata is just going to shrug.
I dunno, the feat you listed is better of course, but that's because it's a feat, this is a trait. I think a trait works well specifically because not only is it mechanically lower cost and weaker, but traits are supposed to be more things that people pick up from their background/childhood. Sure, every one of these kids could take the same 1st level feat, but I think a trait works in the way they are still kids learning (their class) and Lex is teaching them.
Also agree that this trait would be interesting with more evil deities. Not a lot though. Asmodeus and his church put a lot of work into saying he's not really evil (Prince of Law). Another god that it would probably be a good fit for is Norgorber. Dude has 4 weirdly different aspects, and I could see a good-aligned cleric worshipping the Reaper of Reputation for some kind of greater good reason. Maybe certain great old ones would work for a good-aligned member of the Palatine Eye.
In 2E now that goblins are the good guys, I could see a Pact Servant CG of Lamashtu (I would hate it, but I predict this will happen).
Do you have any idea for evil gods in Golarion or the Realms that would be a good fit for this?
9826778
I dunno. I wonder if Sonata would think of it as "every kiss with someone else means one less for me." That's not completely logical, of course, but then again neither is Sonata.
What we're talking about here is the mechanical representation of a character's background prior to them actually taking their first class level, which has long been a sticky wicket for d20 System characters. (It's also a topic that's come up here before, but at this point we can probably say that about most of the notable RPG topics.) The problem, of course, is that for creatures who only advance via class levels and don't have natural Hit Dice (or technically have 1 but trade it out for their first class level), there's no clear distinction of when in life they gain that first level. Even an eight year-old human would have a level in an NPC character class and otherwise adjust their stat block as per the young character rules, meaning that they'd just retrain that level as they got older.
Now, that also covers traits, and overall traits aren't a particularly bad idea; they just give you an extra feat - split in two - to summarize your background. That's nice, but it's ultimately not any different than using the 1st-level feat that every character receives. The difference is that it's supposed to be put towards background-specific material that isn't totally useless in your adventuring career. Of course, most character builds that I've seen essentially treat it like any other mechanical option and put it towards their current build, rather than making it background-specific. (Personally, that's why I think that background aspects of characters are best generated randomly; traits would be much cooler if you rolled on a table for them rather than picked them yourself.)
Insofar as Eclipse goes, that's just giving out an extra 6 Character Points at character creation, over and above what you normally receive. Of course, that's somewhat redundant; Eclipse builds in multiple levels for younger characters, though only level 0 actually gives you Character Points to spend (levels -1 and -2 are simply subject to restrictions), but an extra feat's worth of CPs is always useful to have. In this case, if you wanted an ability that let you move one extra step on the alignment grid away from your patron deity, that's pretty simple. Just take Wayfarer (p. 48) - as a mild variant that explicitly applies to a particular deity rather than a non-divine source of divine spells - and specialize it for one-half cost/only to free up the alignment restrictions, corrupted for two-thirds cost/only to move one extra step away.
That actually reduces the cost to 2 CP, which is slightly cheaper than a feat (6 CP) or a trait (3 CP). But that's not surprising either. Pact Servant is actually less effective than most other feats, because it offers no real mechanical benefit at all; it just lets you say that Asmodeus is your patron deity while you run a Lawful Good divine spellcaster, which is purely a flavor decision (unless the GM enforces those extremely few faith-specific spells in the various sourcebooks, or you're very concerned about taking Asmodeus' Divine Obedience). That's not quite the same as taking a trait that grants a +1 bonus to a skill and makes it a class skill.
Of course, none of the Night Mare's Knights have shown themselves to be a divine spellcaster anyway, so for now it's kind of a moot point.
It's possible to rationalize virtually any evil deity, since they all contain multiple aspects to their portfolio that could, if emphasized and taken in isolation, be presented in a more positive light. Zon-Kuthon? God of endurance in the face of suffering (like the Forgotten Realms' Ilmater). Lamashtu? Motherhood and birth, downplaying the mutation and savagery angle. Cyric is the god of lies and deception, which everyone uses quite frequently, though the scope will no doubt vary wildly; telling your spouse that you have a headache when you simply don't want to put out is a far cry from lying to smuggle refugees over a border. (Notice that although the "Veil of Cyric" feat from the City of Splendors: Waterdeep sourcebook name-drops Cyric, it has nothing to do with him. It just lets you avoid detecting as evil (but otherwise still being subject to alignment-based effects) because you're convinced that you're not.) Auril is the goddess of winter, which is a natural part of the cycle of seasons, etc.
9826851 Yeah, I just figured a trait works really well in the context of these events, where these kids are being tutored first by Severance and then by Lex. It feels like the sort of thing that really fits with what a trait should be. Like, if someone was playing as one of the Nightmare Knights in a Ponyfinder game and they were telling me about the events of this chapter as part of their backstory, I would be surprised if it didn't form the basis of one of their traits one way or another.
Maybe its just my experience, but I play with stickler GMs on things like deity-specific powers and spells, so if I was playing in a campaign where the characters were expected to be good, not just neutral, it could be very mechanically advantageous to gain access to Asmodeus's impressive selection of domains and subdomains, especially if I wanted to variant channel as well (Rulership Variant Channeling is awesome).