Summoner

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The Summoner (召喚士, Shōkanshi), sometimes known as Caller in English localizations, is a magical class featured in the Final Fantasy franchise. Unlike their cousins the White Mages, Black Mages and Red Mages, Summoners do not use conventional spells. Instead they call upon entities of great power (whose name and source varies from game to game) to attack their enemies, protect their party or render other forms of aid. This type of magic is known within the series as summon magic.

Summoners first appear in Final Fantasy III, which has two summoner jobs: Evoker (幻術師, Genjutsushi), and Summoner (魔界幻士, Makaigenshi). Evokers utilize the same magical spells as Summoners, but to different effect: they were random. Either they did an attack to a single monster, or more commonly inflicted a status effect to all monsters or one's entire party depending on whether it was good or bad (e.g. haste one's entire party, paralyze all the monsters). Summons invoked by the Summoner class, on the other hand, were generally offensive in nature, similar to traditional Black Magic. It was this latter type of summoning that would be dominant in later appearances of the summoner class.

In the mythology of Final Fantasy X, summoning plays a greater part in the story. Summoners perform an important role, both in guiding the spirits of the dead and in defending the world from the creature, Sin. Yuna, a summoner, is one of the lead protagonists.

Throughout the series, links have often been made between summoners and forehead horns, often with little or no explanation. The relatively simple graphics of Final Fantasy III depicted summoners with a clear horn on their head, and in Final Fantasy Tactics, summoners are seen to wear a type of headband that has a horn attached to it. In Final Fantasy IX, Eiko Carol and Dagger, who hail from the summoner's village Madain Sari, both have horns, though the latter's was removed for aesthetic reasons. Even Yuna, who is otherwise hornless, is honored with a statue that displays one; however in this case the statue is fashioned by the Ronso, non-summoners who themselves have horns and see them as symbols of power and honor.

In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, where the Summoner class is limited to the Viera race, the explanation given is that the horn supposedly acts as an antenna of sorts to the gods (summoned creatures), allowing Summoners to interpret divine signals. It is also explained in Final Fantasy XI that the horn gets them "higher" than normal people and allows them to translate divine beings.

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