I'm not sure if anyone here has much experience with the Fetchling summoner archetype, Shadow Caller. The major feature, Shadow Summoning, alters the summon monster lists to add a bunch of Shadow-Plane-flavored monsters.
Summon Monster IV: A shadow caller cannot summon Medium elementals, hell hounds, hound archons, or mephits, but can summon allips, gloomwings, and shadows.
My question is specifically with regards to shadows, and their Create Spawn ability.
A summoned monster cannot summon or otherwise conjure another creature, nor can it use any teleportation or planar travel abilities.
Create Spawn (Su): A humanoid creature killed by a shadow's Strength damage becomes a shadow under the control of its killer in 1d4 rounds.
Does causing creatures to become other creatures fall under the "no summon or conjure" ban on the spell? It's not a spell-like ability, and there's nothing the Shadow actively does to trigger it, nor can it just decide not to create spawn. Further, would a created shadow be under the control of the summoned shadow, or the summoner holding the strings? Could the summoner tell "his" shadow to tell the newbie to obey the summoner, or would it just wander off once the spell ended?
As far as balance goes, a wizard could do this perfectly legally... at level 15, with Create Greater Undead. That's a hell of a level gap (summoner needing only level 7), but it does take a very specific build to pull off. I can only imagine the ethical issues that would crop up from turning every dead guy into a dementor-lite.
I would think that not allowing sub spawned creatures would be consistent with the no summoning ban. However in all honesty I haven't read the archetype so there may be something I am missing.
For that matter, another summon at the same level, the gloomwing, can lay eggs in corpses as an extraordinary ability. They don't hatch for a full day, and aren't under any sort of control, but I could see a player wanting to leave a bunch of time-delay tenebrous worms as a trap.
This would not be summoning another creature, it's instead a side effect of their power, anything killed becoming another shadow. At best, a summoned shadow could likely not control the newly risen shadow for 1d4 rounds would be my take on it. This keeps the powers consistent, the power still creates a new shadow, but doesn't allow the summoner to bypass the ruling on creating new sub-controlled creature.
This makes it something of a two-edged sword for the summoner.
The only other place I see anything about shadows being summoned is the Shadowdancer class...and it's specifically states that it cannot create spawn...I would say no as your GM, but reading the RAW its a tough call to make because "create spawn" isn't technically summoning or conjuring other monsters
Good question
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IIRC, ongoing spell effects set up by summoned monsters go away when the summons ends. I think it might be best to rule that the same approach is used towards the spawn ability: once the original shadow leaves, so do all the spawn. (Although that leaves the question: is there any problem Raising those killed by the shadows?)
Alternatively, do it like the Shadowdancer PrC; the shadows lose Create Spawn. That's probably neater. Strength damage is still a pretty kickass attack.