How to Write Magic Types: Summoning (Creative Writing)
I love summoning magic, it gives a unique and powerful side to magic and world.
Summoning can range from vast cosmic beings to little natural creatures.
I personally like the latter because it has more personal story options. But the other one can still be used effectively like in Final Fantasy X.
Without further ado, let’s dip our toes into this amazing magic type.
Where do the Summons come from
Summoning is a broad term and so there are many things that can be summoned and many places that they can come from.
They include:
- The Soul/Heart (The best when it comes partner summon)
- Spirit Realm (Think of Final Fantasy 4)
- The Dead (Necromancy)
- Simply Teleported Beings
- Sealed Objects (Materia from FF7)
- Weapons (Possessed Weapons and Bonded Weapons.)
- Natural World (Think Pokemon)
- Demon Realms (Demonic Summons)
- Any Supernatural Realm Really (Angels to Eldritch Horrors)
That’s pretty much covers most cases of summoning.
They all have the capacity of filling all the classic summoning roles, it really depends on your story needs.
Familiar, Partner and Pure Battle Spirits
There are generally 3 roles a summon can fall under; Familiar, Partner and Pure Battle.
They have their strengths and weakness depending on what story they’re in and what character summons them.
- Familiar:
A familiar can have an abundance of personality like the Partner or can just be a small helper. Familiar are typically small and not that strong in comparison to the human fighters.
They are used for scouting and general support in all things, battle or otherwise.
There can be more than one Familiar.
- Partner:
A Partner summon has an abundance of personality and a strong connection to the human partner.
Their battle power range is broad but it’s typical for them to grow stronger alongside the human partner.
As an extra they can even have a life link with their human partner. If one dies, then they both die.
There’s sub version of this type that doesn’t need to have a great personality and that’s Soul Reflection.
The summon would reflect your soul, inner personality, etc. These would act like a hybrid between Pure Battle Spirits and Partners.
Unlike Familiar and Battle Spirits, it’s better to have just one Partner summon.
- Pure Battle:
This is the usual summon seen in fantasy. Named and powerful but with little personality.
Their main purpose is to fight and protect the summoner.
There are lower level Battle Types, they don’t have to be super strong. The main thing is that they are just summoned for combat most of the time.
In the end this is more of an X and Y graph with Pure Battle on the left and Familiars on the right. Personality would be the Y axis.
Depending on the combination, your summon can be a Partner type.
Which one would yours be?
Fusion
There’s another way to fight with your summon and it’s the rare spell called Fusion.
This is when you fuse with your summon to gain most of their power.
This would usually be done with Pure Battle and Familiar summons. It can work with the Partner type but you’ll have to choose between these three options:
- The summon loses their ability to talk and just becomes equipment for the mage.
- The summon can talk to them through telepathy but won’t be able to interfere with the battle.
- A Perfect fusion, both of them fuse personality and power. Think of “Dragon Ball” of “Steven Universe”.
An example of a fusion can be seen in “Shaman King”. Those may not count as summons but the concept is similar.
This spell allows the mage to cover every combat role depending on the summon. They can even learn new spells if the summon knows them.
The reason why it’s rare is because it requires deep understanding of the summon to pull off.
At least, that’s what I think from the few times I’ve seen it. Let’s move on to the last part before world-building.
Horrors, Demons and Necromancy
Of course, I have to cover the darker side of summoning that almost always requires sacrifice and rituals.
Necromancy can fit under summoning.
Summoning demons and horrors from beyond reality is also under summoning.
Usually, summoning can be done through having a bond or just using a spell to teleport the desired summon.
However, with these summons it almost always requires an elaborate ritual and/or sacrifice for the deal to be struck.
Lets not forget that these summons are bad for the user. A real high risk and high reward summon.
That’s all I wanted to say about the dark side of summoning without touching on the world-building section.
Summoning Magic’s role in World-Building
Summoning is usually an easy addition into a world, it’s power varies greatly depending on the summon.
There are so many things that summoning can be used for in a story, character and world-building.
It’s really staggering to be honest, so forgive me if I don’t mention every possibility.
Once you decide where the summons come from, that’s an entire new place that exists in your story that has great significance.
Then you can decide which type is the norm in your world.
This can have a great effect on the world.
It would be the difference between a world like “Pokemon” and a world that treats their summons the same as any spell.
There are so many possibilities, I’m just going to ask some questions to get you mind going.
- Where do the summons come from (Souls, Weapons, Artifacts, The natural realm, spirit realm, etc)? Can anyone go there?
- Is Summoning magic rare?
- Are majority of summons Partners, Familiars or Battle Spirits?
- Does the MC have a bond with there summon?
- Is summoning integrated with society? How?
- Are summoned beings used for war?
- Do summoned beings have a personality? How does the public view summons?
- Any discrimination against summoners or their summons?
- Is it possible to create an army using summons?
- Is Fusion possible? What are the requirements and does everyone know how? What are the effects?
Those are just some of the things to consider, be sure to remind me if I missed something.
Now for the dark side of summoning, I point you to the Necromancy post for that part.
As for the Demons and Horrors, yeah….those are almost always used by the bad guys. Some for good reasons, others for evil reasons.
The Demons part of it can be bent a bit, like if someone mistakenly does it or makes a deal to save someone.
It can even be a side-effect of other magic types like blood magic, all “Dragon Age” like.
That’s all I wanted to say about summoning magic. Comment below your thoughts and questions.
With that, I’m done.
