Man, am I so dopey...
I always thought you had to get followers by "encountering" them. Lo and behold, I'm traveling around today, having just found Walmork, and I rest up at an Inn. Turns out what was previously misspelled as "requte" is actually "recruit" (it may have been there for a couple of days now but this is the first time I needed to rest this week). So now I can just buy followers like in days of yore... woo-hoo!