Summoner

The Summoner is a Creature in Genesis: Part 2.

Discovery/Quotation
"Okay, that thing's not creepy at all... It's like some kind of awful squid-jellyfish mashup. How can it be flying around? And why does it have a bright spotlight in the middle there? Ew, zero stars -- no thanks!"

Behavior
The Summoner patrols the Rockwell's Innards Biome. They are extremely aggressive when its attention is roused, first teleporting in front of the aggravated survivor with a large scream.

Macro-Summoner (Choose Your Own Adventure boss)
The Macro-Summoner is a boss in the mission, physically towering other Summoners in size, shielded from all damage.

It is accompanied by two other Summoners that can be either green, pink, blue, or yellow. Stepping on a panel of a matching color drops the shields of the respective Summoner. Killing both guards drop the shields of the Macro-Summoner allowing you to kill it for a short time frame, restarting the mini-game once they're back up.

Appearance
When passive, the Summoner strongly resembles a closed flower in shape, possessing two layers of petal-like plates that rotate constantly, and five two-pronged tentacles sprouting from their base. When aggressive, the outer layers open to reveal two more, each containing six fleshy appendages. The middle layer's 'petals' are narrow, with several slightly wider protrusions on either side of each, all of which contain pointed teeth. At their base there is a much wider section that contains multiple rows of teeth, some of which are slightly larger than those toward the edges and curve outwards. The frontmost layer prominently features an eye on each. At the very center of the summoner, surrounded by two layers of six more miniature versions of the outer 'petals', is a glowing, veined orb. In both states they project a pale white spotlight from their center, and when aggressive they occasionally will be surrounded by a semi-transparent, iridescent, spherical shield. The summoners in the Gamma, Beta, and Alpha versions of the Rockwell Prime fight have a green, blue and red glow, respectively.

Combat
This section describes how to fight against the Summoner.

General
Summoners float around, patrolling the inhospitable Rockwell’s innards biome, they fly half-open so that they produce a spotlight. Whenever a survivor is daring enough to go into the searchlight the summoner will enter attack mode. When in ‘attack mode’ the summoner will fire projectiles at the target BUT while doing so it will be completely invulnerable. Sometimes the summoner fires a globular projectile onto the ground. This projectile summons a set of fleshy creatures that fight alongside the summoner. The summoned creatures vary from to.

Commonly after using an attack or after a set period of time, the Summoner drops its shield and becomes vulnerable. The shield will either reactivate over time or once a damage threshold of 25% is met. This means it will always activate its shield at 75%, 50%, and 25% health. These damage thresholds can't be bypassed, meaning that a low-level Summoner can take as long to kill as a high-level Summoner.

Whenever is picked up in the biome, 2 max-level summoners are spawned to attack the culprit.

"This is yet again another situation where you bola your tribe mate and RUN" - ~ Dododex's most upvoted Player Tip

Strategy
It's highly advised to avoid them at all costs. If you are caught in a Summoner's spotlight the best thing you can do is run but be prepared to take on the summoner’s creatures. Shooting their summoning projectile before it lands can prevent their summons from spawning. If you have long-range weapons available, you can fight it off, but since it takes a while due to its shielding mechanics, it's ill-advised unless you're miraculously able to handle all of the other hostiles in the area.

Weaponry
It’s advised to take a high end fire arm like a Pump-action shotgun or Tek rifle to deal with the summoned creatures

Dangers
While the Summoner's attack projectile can be dodged (but still hurt if it hits), the biggest danger lies with the creatures it summons with. The projectile cannot be intercepted (it seems it can be shot down with certain weapons though?), and spawns several creature upon impact after a few second, ranging from almost every creature, and including dangerous creatures such as Basilisk. All summoned creatures retain their abilities (like 's grappling hook at hostile targets), making it more difficult to deal with.

Adding, the random aggressive Tentacles that appears at ground, and to the list of roaming creatures makes fighting Summoner even more dangerous due to their debilitating effect (Macrophage deny all run and Tek super speed from  if they get too close).

Weakness
Summoner's shield drops every now and then, making it vulnerable to being attacked. Killing the Summoner also kills off every creature that was summoned by that specific Summoner. Outside of its summons, the Summoner's damage output is not that high.

They also do not have the shield when patrolling. Striking the Summoner before it spots you will reduce shield drop phases by one.

Notes/Trivia

 * It has a similar design to the Sentinels of the Matrix film series, gigantic robots tasked to search and destroy humans.
 * In the Genesis: Part 2 Teaser Trailer, the Summoners are teased alongside a similar yet smaller Creature called the, that can be seen within the Genesis: Part 2 key-art.
 * The Summoner has two "modes":
 * Attack: when the Summoner is completely open
 * Search: when the Summoner is partly opened and projecting a spotlight
 * The Summoner's shields periodically lower, allowing the player to attack them.
 * The eyeball projectiles of mission summoners work differently:
 * In the STA gauntlet it will explode
 * In The maze normal summoner projectile will spawn tentacles
 * In the maze macro-summoner projectile will spawn summoners
 * In the Rockwell battle it will explode healing tentacles and damaging creatures around. It will also spawn corrupted avatars.
 * Summoners can spot survivors with  console command set to true, but cannot enter Attack mode though.
 * While most of the abilities of the Summoned Creatures are the same as Corrupted Creatures from Extinction the Enforcer doesn't do more damage to them making those creatures stronger than Corrupteds.
 * The Argentavis, Pteranodon, Tapejara and Quetzal can kick you off the saddle and pick you up and the Reaper King is much faster than a Corrupted varriant and even faster than the Reaper Queen
 * Choose Your Own Adventure can sometimes be rendered incompletable, as occasionally the Summoner minions spawn inside walls.
 * In Terminus killing one of the Summoners will instantly recharge the Mek

Lore

 * The Summoner is another Creature designed by Rockwell to exist on the Genesis Ship.
 * HLN-A speculates that they are part of Rockwell’s immune system, some sort of over grown Lymphocyte.