Summoning Stone theories

[sitnam90]

As we all know, the summoning stones are the greatest sources of power in Itharia-verse. But how much do we actually know about them? Where they come from, how they work, how many there are, how they effect their users?

Most of what we know about their origins stems from Selundars background, when he and Malidaila are walking though (atleast what Selundar thought) the city of the gods, even going so far as to theorize that each stone was the embodiment of the gods. Many summoners, notably the first four, were delivered their stones by mysterious strangers or visions, as were the SG/SO/JE stones. Some factions seem to of had the stones before the events of their summoners bio. FK and VG have been confirmed as having them for much longer then most factions. No word on where MV/SE/DD got theirs, but I suspect the isolationist DD and MV could of very well had them for a long time.


As for how they work, we don't seem to have a lot of info. It does seem that you don't need magic knowledge before hand to use a Summoning Stone. I'm basing this on summoners like Sneeks, Grognack, and Krusk. It also doesn't seem to need much training to use: Sneeks summoned a rival onto the cave ceiling with little to no difficulty, and he only had minimal experience at that point. Ret-Talus seems to use his for his whole ranhge of necromatic skills, controlling the Fallen Kingdom with his stone.

I also wonder what correlation events have to the stone. I'm assuming events are related to the stones in some way. Some are obvious, like Burn/Freeze:, although others like Sneeks and Sunderved events don't seem as much magic based. I guess Sneeks' stone has melded with the sneaky and swarmy mentality of Sneeks and his forces, allowing Sneeks to boost the lesser goblins.

And this leads to another subject: how much are the summoners abilities based in their stones, and how much is it based off of their race/personality

[glenn3e]

You also have to take into account the lore from Dungeon Run, where the moment a hero picks up the Summoning Stone, he/she immediately can summon monsters and use their racial special ability. So yeah, not much knowledge required for using a stone. It seems the character immediately knows how to use it to summon something too...

[Ryujin]

I want to confirm something; Summoning stones are incapable of creating minions, correct? They merely teleport the already-existing minions to the summoner.
Also, it appears that Summoners do not rely completely on walls to summon. Ret-Talus, after 2000 years of practice, has outgrown the need to use walls at all, other than for summoning champions and mercenaries.
In regards to events, I imagine that the summoning stone provides raw magic power and the summoner decides how to use it. After a while, summoners start to get really good at a few magic tricks (practice makes perfect.) Then the summoner continues to practice those pretty little tricks until they're battle-ready. By this definition, Ret-Talus should have a thousand events, but maybe after repeating an action so many times, the summoning stone becomes used to those few tricks as well, and only those few tricks.
How the stones enhance their summoner's fighting prowess is a little more complicated. Some seem to acquire Last Airbender-like elemental powers (Elien, Krusk). Others just get beefier muscles and thicker skin. Grognack kinda got got a little of both. It's probably the least clear of the summoning stone's properties.

Also, I just started thinking about vine/ice walls. How does that work? Is there a big icy city of the gods and a big swampy city of the gods?

[chardris77]

I think Ret still can only use walls. He reanimates what he already had.

Maybe the stones already had their god's powers, and the stones sought out summoners like them? Like, a fire, destructive stone found its way to Elien.

[Ryujin]

Alright, you win in regards to Ret-Talus, but he CAN summon with out a wall in-game.

That soul-summoner theory is pretty good. The god inside watches the world around it, until it finds a fitting user. Then it contacts them and draws them in with promises of power...
That makes me even more afraid of Tacullu,if he has an equally calculating god backing him up. Gives me da Heebee Jeebeez!

[Quintaton16]

To some degree it's true that the Stone chooses the Summoner. We know that this is more or less what happened with the Vanguard Stone being passed on over time. However, each Stone gives the bearer a pretty standard suite of abilities. I think the way the Summoner chooses to manifest his or her magic has more to do with personality and existing training than each stone having different abilities.

For example, Abua Shi used his stone to kill Ligwa in a manner that's a lot more reminiscent of a Burn or a Counter Summon than any sort of Chant. And Abua, Sneeks, and Grognack have all demonstrated the most useful ability of a Stone, to teleport themselves and others over pretty much unlimited distances with pretty much unlimited precision.

The difference in style seems to come mostly in conflicts between one Summoner and another. It's been clearly established that a Summoner can defeat a nearly infinite number of troops not backed up by another Summoner, because Ret-Talus was completely invincible, even against entire armies, until someone found another Stone. A Summoning Stone is essentially the perfect weapon. A Summoner can blink enemies out of existence, or shove them into ceilings, or incinerate them, or just teleport behind them and stab them a few times. There's no reason to suggest that Ret-Talus couldn't take on a whole mundane army all by himself. He probably only started using his Stone to Summon in the first place because he was a Necromancer before he was a Summoner and making minions was what he did.

So the only reason one Summoner can't wipe entire armies off the face of the earth with a thought is because that army has another Summoner who is actively trying to stop him. At least 90% of what we see as a Summoner's duel is just the two Summoners countering each other's magic. Elien can actually cast thousands of Greater Burns whenever he wants, it's just that only one an encounter actually gets past the other Summoner's defenses. And why doesn't Grognack just use the teleportation ability we've already seen him use to jump next to Elien and punch his face in? Because Elien is using his own Stone to stop him.

This theory gives us a very good idea of how Summoner combat works in Itharia. Protecting one's allies is very difficult to do, which is why Summoners Summon so few of them. The more they have to keep track of, the more likely the opponent is to find a weakness somewhere in that defense and pull off a Magic Drain or something.

This is also why each Summoner manifests abilities which are so idiomatic. The ones he can get past his opponent's wards are the ones that he can do better than anyone else. All Summoners can Counter Summon, but only Tacullu has practiced it so much that he can do it even when another Summoner is trying to stop him, and even then only by investing lots of magic in breaking down the other Summoner's wards.

[Ryujin]

That was incredibly well-said. I'm a little speechless.

[sitnam90]

I don't buy the idea that all summoners have the same abilities available. Abua' s an interesting example, but it very well could of just been a generic blast of magic. Abua was a mage beforehand iirc, and those sorts of generic magical blasts seem to be common in Itharia (hence all the ranged mages). Abua has a ranged attack in game as well, and I don't see a bow in his hands. , I'm positive, based on the prevalence of pyromatic magic among the rest of the PE, Prince Elien had fire abilities before the stone. He just used the stone to amp up the power of his fire. This is why stones seem so personalized to their summoners, because it becomes attuned to the summoners race. If Summoners could use any abilities then it wouldn't make sense to be limited to so many specific abilities. We do have some non-faction specific events, but those are almost all related to the stone mechanics itself. Reinforcements, Magic Drain, Summoning Surge all seem to rely on the presence of hostile combatants to activate. It seems more likely that the stone's only unique abilities are in summoning ability and magic expenditure (which the above CUE's deal with). Other then that, the stones act as power multipliers. Sneeks isn't goiing to start casting fireballs because that isn't in his skill set. But he'll surely use it for dirty stealth tricks that are true to his name.

It does make sense that the stones will cancel out the insta-teleportation of each other to keep the summoner protected. But it just doesn't seem to have much evidence behind it that the summoners can use all sorts of non-thematic abilities. Nor do we have evidence that a single summoner can destroy thousands of competant combatants. This is evident from dungeon run because getting the stone doesn't allow you to just instantly destroy the other players.

[thenightsshadow]

The storyline infused in the Plaid Hat, Rios Clan, and Forsaken Gods custom factions I made is my take on the Summoning Stone Theory.

For those that haven't read those yet:
- I believe Godshome used to be inhabited with Gods, and the Stones were embodiments of each God's power. However, one day, the entity known as the Devourer came and corrupted the Gods, leaving just the Summoning Stones in Godshome. Over time, orderly spirits called essences took over Godshome, and became entities thanks to the essence of Truth. As each of them linked to a Summoning Stone, they began to manifest.

- Because of disorder, a few essences were culled, and their respective Summoning Stones fell to Itharia. Vengeance's went to Elien, Aggression's went to Grognack, and so on. Truth wanted to keep the majority of them in Godshome, so he began to reform the essences until there were no more rogue stones. In total, 15 fell down to Itharia.

[PePe QuiCoSE]

heh, it does have a nice ring your lore tns, specially with Colby's username. IIRC in one of the podcast it was mentioned that magic existed in Itharia besides summoning stones.
When Ret's bio came out it was thought that he was the one giving the stones (with the ghost) to all those that got them just to made sure there were enough people fighting among themselves (it's kinda a thing that every stone bearer is the wrong one for the job). With Selundar's bio you can think that it's the Avatar itself doing it.