Elven Summoner background for RotRL

[HangarFlying]

My wife is playing an elven summoner. I've described how a) elves as a community are a bit standoffish, and b) summoners are extremely rare. I asked her why her character would be in Sandpoint: her character is traveling the world in order to better know her eidolon and determin if the Elven way of life is the way for her or not - sort of like how Amish children, when of a certain age leave their family and experience the world to see if that is the way they want to live. So far, so good, that's pretty easy to work with.

A few weeks later, we discuss her character's background a little more. She feels that her summoning ability would be secret and only known by a few people (parents and elders). She had mentioned something about possibly doing secret work for these elders, which made me think that this would be perfect for Second Darkness, but alas. So I lobbed a question to her: what if, way back when, thousands and thousands of years ago, summoners were servants of some evil king/tyrant/wizard/whatever. She really liked this idea.

So, my wife acknowledges that summoners are rare in the present time because of an association to evil at some point in the past, thus making summoners taboo. I.e. there are tales, rumors, and bedtime stories of these evil transgressions (stories parents tell their kids, etc) that make having a summoner around less than ideal. So, suddenly, one day the character develops these summoning powers and it freaks the parents and elders out. They "allow" her to leave the Elven lands to wander and discover the nature of her powers. This is agreeable to the character's desire to see the world. She ends up in Sandpoint to partake in the festival.

So, with that, I'd like to tie summoners to the runelords somehow. I know the giants were the shock troops, maybe the summoners/eidolons were used for nefarious reasons (or perhaps they were just typewriter operators - no organization can survive without a beaurocracy)! Either way, I don't think those details are important, yet.

To help draw my wife into the story further, I think I'm going to have her glowing rune be the sihedron symbol. I would hope she would start asking questions when it starts popping up elsewhere. I was thinking of making it the symbol of greed, but I don't know if I want to tie her directly to Karzoug, or just have the summoners be a generic runelords thing. That and a specific rune of sin might be too obscure.

It's late, I hope I've kept my thought coherent. Any suggestions or recommendations?

[GeraintElberion]

Keep it general so that Karzoug doesn't directly claim her.

Summoners might be used as secret guardians: the place with a pottering hedge wizard writing poetry doesn't look very exciting and nobody investigates it, thus keeping the secret door of Blah safe.
But, if they do discover it and try to sneak in they get a face full of Eidolon.

Also useful for policing specific environments because eidolons can be adapated: swim in aquatic terrain, be fliers in the mountains, slither through swamps, etc.

[Son of the Veterinarian]

Just have Summoners be originally created by the Runelord of Sloth since Sloth = Conjuration in Thassilonian magic.

After all, Summoners are the ultimate expression of Sloth, since you're calling up a servant to do all of your work for you.

[Old Drake]

As I see it there are two options. First is to go with Sloth, as mentioned above. Summoners were an 'elite' group among the forces of Sloth. Or maybe they are the result of breeding experiments done by that faction, like an attempt to create a conjuration sorcerer bloodline, or something.

Alternatively summoners could have been created by the first rune lord and served the nation as a whole, before they split into sub-groups.

A third option would be that Eidolons' are the remains of runeslaves and that descendants of runeslaves can somehow command the essence of rune slaves and use it for their purpose. Over the centuries the essence has been trained to act in certain ways and the Eidolon was born. The original discovery and training of the essence was probably done by Sloth-mages, but the results endure to modern time.

In any case, I'd completely redo the festering maze in the runeforge and rebuild it around summoners and their magic. Maybe create a few evolutions that the summoner could learn there with enough study, or even Eidolons that do not obey modern rules.