Summoner and the people?

[Anonymoose]

In terms of how The People would see you, you kind of have to put yourself in their heads; they only have you as an example. Are there people secretly trying to learn the art through nefarious means? Probably. (Hells, there are people learning white magic illegitimately. Egi are way more attractive to the less-than-law-abiding.)

As Enkidoh said, an egi is your own aether, split from your soul and fashioned into a biddable avatar. Carbuncle's form and behavior would be governed by mathematics and gemstones; an egi is governed by your memory of a primal and its aetherial waveform signature imprinted on your own aether from having been there when it died. (Think of it like magnetic tape.) In that sense, an egi is little more than a tool - the wielder becomes the inspiration for how that tool is seen.

To the people, it can be a symbol of hope. The aetheric demigods of the beast tribes, the stuff of nightmares - demons who take away your will and claim your soul - can be stood against, and defeated, and their essences can be turned against them. The summoner has tamed an untame-able force and now wields it in their defense.

That's how the Allagans saw summoners, too ... at first. But eventually those summoners became corrupt. They wielded the power for their own ends and became secondary manifestations of primals = bad in the eyes of the populace. Indeed, it was easy for them to make the mistaken assumption that the SUMMONER became bad BECAUSE the primal was bad, that wielding such powers corrupt and influence the user.

Thus the witch hunts of the Third Astral Era led to the summoners' extinction ... until now.

It's up to you do to better.