The Common Perception Towards Those Who Wield (Dark) Magic

[KageTokage]

Dark knights are rare to the point of being considered a myth by most of Ishgard's populace and are one of the rarest jobs overall lore-wise (As far as we're aware, Sidurgu is the only living dark knight aside from ourselves), between their arts being passed down from master to a select few pupils and their profession being dangerous due to frequently getting them on the bad side of the highborne of Ishgard. The only ones who seem to hold any particular disdain for them are their targets, though, as most people are too grateful for what you do for them to care much about you wielding mysterious dark powers (Which is really stressed at the end of the 1-50 questline and also to a degree throughout the 60-70 one).

As far as summoners go, they're also largely an unknown, though the SB questline has the summoning arts readily undergoing a revival at the hands of the Immortal Flames once they learn that anyone who's survived an encounter with a primal can use them, so I'd assume they don't think too negatively of the practice.

Black mages probably have the most negativity attached to them, due to the inherently dangerous/destructive nature of their abilities coupled with the fact that they were in part responsible for one of the calamities and faded into obscurity, unlike the white mages who maintain a mostly positive reputation thanks to the Padjal.

[SynthielLyrin]

I love this topic. But forgive lack of proper quotes, for I am a bit forum-coding-illiterate and I don't have all the links on hand.

Okay first things first: thaumaturges! And arcanists I suppose though the latter aren't as dark and ominous. Thaumaturges in Ul'dah are part of a recognized institution, namely the Thaumaturges' Guild, and also of the Order of Nald'thal, god of the dead and commerce. It used to be that there was a sister 'guild' at the Milvaneth Sacrarium, but they went out of focus after ARR so we're gonna just look at the Ossuary and some tidbits. The guild seems to be in charge of several things, as befits something that is not only for practical use (as morticians mainly, but also as essentially magical siege weaponry courtesy of one very good Stormblood cutscene and also as a tax-collecting, lawmaking and accounting entity that I'll have to find quotes for later) but also as an actual religious organization. For the god of death and commerce. You can buy yourself premium tickets for the afterlife, you can go there to ask for guidance in the realm of the living, and you can go become a thaumaturge (and therefore a particularly banging kind of priest). The Thaumaturge's Guild also seems to have a fucking repository/library of the more forbidden kinds of knowledge, or at least of historical records and the sciences. And yes, various forms of summoning the fire, brimstone, or chill of death to use on anything. They do their own research on the intricacies of astral fire, umbral ice, levin and FLARE.

So, in that sense, as far as being a thaumaturge goes it is likely not regarded badly. It is essentially a career choice, one that just also happens to feature "and you wield flame/ice" at some levels. It might get you weird looks, but in the same sense as "I want to become a mortician" or "I want to become a tax collector" would get you weird looks. And then there's the lalafells mwa-ha-ha'ing in the back, who are clearly getting into this image as a scion of the god of death.

Arcanists, who are not exactly dark magic but I'm gonna mention anyways because they branch into Summoner, are also well-regarded. They are also tax and customs people, just ones that sometimes summon their personal shiny drug-sniffing familiars or lung rot. They also have a role as tacticians, as befits a discipline based very much on book learning and logistics, and also as scholars who plumb the depths of their own magic to generate new and improved ways of summoning fluffy familiars/various nonelemental spells (which are sort of a rarity in Eorzea, so you go arcanists with your strange magics). As with thaumaturges, arcanists likely enjoy some reasonably good reputation as a career choice, with some quirky people that move away from normally handling the imports and exports of Limsa Lominsa to "I will hunt down the privateers that shortchanged us armed with a carbuncle and a book."

Around the world, and outside of our main city-states, plenty thaumaturges can be seen (or people using fire/ice/lightning) and they tend to not be away from their own groups, or even hold some rank. Sadu is essentially a dark magic user, and khagan of the Dotharl, so it can get pretty powerful even outside of their magic. Therefore, it is basically "another job", and perhaps associated more with being in tune with the spiritual aspects of stuff (and then using it for offense).

That... covers our classes. Which is basically where the 'good rep, good times' end. 'cause both Summoner and Black Mage got their disciplines outlawed at least once in their own damn history.

Black Mage is still... if not illegal outright, then certainly something that could land a person straight into the bad side of jurisdiction: the Black Mage quests actually have a Gridanian Hearer haul all the way to Ul'dah to try and take you in as a criminal. However, it wasn't your coven, but another one, and one lacking in as many soulstones or morals; this bites them in the rear, since it turns out that two groups of dark practitioners duking it out over "you guys nearly got us arrested" attracts very little attention, or sympathy. Similarly, the first black mage quests feature your mentor's mentor coordinating your actions from an oubliette so he can atone for his crimes against his friends (that gave him a ridiculous amount of power, but that's not the point). Your own guild (Thaumaturges') tries to stop you from going along with it at the start, but turns out that a dude pretending to speak with the voice of Nald'thal is... convincing enough. Still, it's not the most legal of businesses, and some dark-magic-using covens were essentially all outlaws and free for anyone to go ham on (the red mage quests, and the Lambs of Dalamud are the ones I can think of right now; both feature a group of dark magic users justifiably being stopped with force, and not exactly using institutional authority for it). To top it off, Black Magic is also rather dangerous to the caster, since without a soulstone the caster may well kill themselves with the side-effects of draining ambient aether through themselves (like you would blow a fuse) or summon something way above their skill level from the void. So black magic, or at least playing chicken with the void and the land's aether, is regarded as a dangerous art and as something that tends to fall out of the protection of laws.

This... doesn't even include that after Mhach vs Amdapor got stopped cold by the elementals, both black and white magic were made illegal. Sort of. The elementals veto learning white magic, and black magic was blanket outlawed because Mhach. Red magic would be born from practitioners banding together under duress to keep their arts alive somehow, if on a leash. No draining ambient aether, basically, but some of the more mhachi persuasion found loopholes around it (thanks, voidsent, for nothing). Us learning black magic later unlocks the backstory of "I created it to be strong enough to protect", by way of chucking flares at shit (a comet) like no tomorrow, but the end result is at least our coven (ft. beastmen) gets treated as "creepy, but with good intentions, and will not actually pose a danger to us".

Summoner... is not illegal! But it's also exceedingly rare, and its own history has a "rise and fall" to it. At first, summoners were held up as heroes, conquerors of eikons who brought them to heel and then used their power as harnessed egi or trances; then they were villains who abused their power, who were no longer protectors and now terrorized their own, so the art fell in decline. That's back in Allagan times though; currently, the main problem is "you need to survive an attack on a Primal, go untempered, and then be able to learn the damn thing". This... poses several problems, mainly on the 'survive a Primal without getting tempered'. Our first foe as summoners is another summoner, who lost a brother to tempering, and wound up killing the researchers for summoner soulstones so he'd be strong enough to fight any incarnation of Ifrit/trade them in to an ascian for power. And it doesn't help that, because of the requirements, summoners can be "mistaken for tempered" and that's going to mark them as dangerous, deadly individuals rather than a person still with their free will, unbound to a non-Hydaelyn god. So Summoners themselves aren't well-regarded by the general populace, simply because they can be easily mistaken for something without kind intent and because there's record of summoners in living memory hunting down innocents. That said, Summoners do have the advantage that there's a scholarly community rooting for them, as well as a squad in the Immortal Flames made to fight primals with summoning magic. So while they do have some ill-regard, and will have ill-regard if they go and whip out Ifrit-egi in the middle of a city... some people actually know you are here to save the day while looking monstrous. And that's alright. (I mean your arcanist guild master is the one to be impressed by the egi and then teach you how to make them look like fluffy carbuncles if you so want. You've back up.)

And lastly, dark knight. Institutionally, fuck 'em. They were created by a knight that was so sick of the Church's abuse he took a broadsword and became the justice people deserved. Fray was treated as a heretic upon his death and thrown to rot in the Brume, and the Halonic Church does not like the abyss-walkers that take brutal retribution into their own hands to protect the downtrodden. That said; the downtrodden dig them. When they know of them. The art is basically a lost one, since Sidurgu's and Fray's master is dead, Fray is dead, and we're down to two active dark knights that we know of (assuming the WoL is, in fact, a dark knight. One if they are not). We essentially have no actual records or teachings of the guild, save what we learn from Sidurgu (and, at times, Fray) and Sidurgu's training was never completed. Shit being as it is, it does seem to be more of an informal master-to-disciple training aimed at helping those in need, keeping the need for revenge in check (and the desire to just go plunge full into the abyss never to return in check) and honing the blade/dark arts. The moogles know some of it, namely about being based off love (AND I COULD GO ON AN ENDLESS TANGENT ABOUT BOTH VARIETIES OF DARK MAGIC WE KNOW OF BEING BASED OFF LOVE if blm indirectly but shh) yet... we don't really pay the moogles much mind or respect. Myste seems to also back it up, about dark knight's power being grounded in some form of love, and grief, and anger... and the will to continue on despite it. To protect what MUST be protected, if it costs Hell, if it stains our soul, if it breaks with the Law (and for the sake of the Good), if it breaks our hearts. As it is, the pair of dark knights currently at large likely enjoy the fearful admiration of some (the downtrodden, the helpless under their wing, those they choose to protect), and the wary mistrust of the institutions at large. Rielle treats Sidurgu as her grouchy family, and she seemed to be close to Fray as well (and now to us!); Fray was the more caustic one that gave us a lot of hell and got us branded a wee bit as heretics but he still wanted to help.

THE TL;DR: classes are basically 'career choices', or something traditional in various cultures that simply indicates some degree of being in touch with the spirit world to kick ass. Jobs tend to be perceived, either by institutions or laypeople, as "an actual fucking danger" and thus disliked and mistrusted; however it varies from job to job, with BLM getting disliked on both counts, SMN on the 'laypeople' count and DRK on the 'institution' count. But there's still room for any of them to actually grow into "good regard"; it just has to fight some of the image.