I can't help I'm afraid, but I noticed that with fedora 22 on
my system, the keyboard always starts with the numlock LED
turned on, but the actual numlock keyboard state turned off.
Something is definitely "helpfully" screwing around with
this stuff, but I have no idea what is doing it.
Since I use kdm as a login manager, I found I could
add a command to /etc/kde/kdm/Xsetup to get it to run
as soon as the login screen starts:
xset led off
How to get it to actually turn numlock on, I don't
know (I prefer it off). Maybe something that uses
the XTEST extension could be used to simulate
pressing the numlock key.