Lorebook: Rapiers

Could someone share or perhaps confirm the existence of excerpts of rapier lore from the second lorebook that point to fencing having Ishgardian elements/origins? I recall reading a comment about such on reddit, but have not been able to confirm it through personal research, particularly since I don't have the lorebook in question.

Good thing you thought to ask here before repeating it. (Rarely the case with reddit! +50 dkp!)

In actuality, the Lore Book II specifically states:

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It is interesting to note that, despite distinct Elezen origins, the rapier never became popular in the city-state of Ishgard. This is believed to be a result of the nation's long history of strife with dragonkind—weapons with far more reach, such as the lance, being valued over those better suited for close combat. It was instead the Elezen of Amdapor and Mhach who fled to Gyr Abania following the Fifth Astral Era's great flood who introduced the dueling weapons to the region's red mages and oversaw the eventual addition of the trademark aetherial mediums to their hilts.

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Thanks for sharing, Anonymoose. I usually attempt to confirm the sources of second hand information. I do find it interesting that it never became popular in Ishgard though. Figured that the nobles would have jumped on it for dueling or as a status symbol.

Glad I saw this. I saw the tidbits of the rapier coming from elezen and assumed that those elezen were also tied to what would become Ishgard but seems that's not quite right.

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Originally Posted by Wyssahtyn

Thanks for sharing, Anonymoose. I usually attempt to confirm the sources of second hand information. I do find it interesting that it never became popular in Ishgard though. Figured that the nobles would have jumped on it for dueling or as a status symbol.

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While there was some posturing though, there wasn't ever really much actual infighting was there? They had tourneys but given the thousand year war with dragons, I can see why they would focus on weapons more effective against them. Especially with a lot of Ishgard nobility seeming to lead from the front and be knights/fighters themselves rather than sitting on the sidelines. They seem to get much of their posturing and glory from kiling dragons.

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Originally Posted by Wyssahtyn

Thanks for sharing, Anonymoose. I usually attempt to confirm the sources of second hand information. I do find it interesting that it never became popular in Ishgard though. Figured that the nobles would have jumped on it for dueling or as a status symbol.

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Well, the Machinist storyline kind of shows how the nobles look down on anything that isn't being a Knight or Lancer/Dragoon.

Meaning, if they wanted to duel or have a status symbol, they'd likely duel with knight gear, sword and board style. With status symbol being a fancy longsword and shield adorned with the family crest.

Even more so if you recall that the actual houses decent from knights, them becoming nobles because Haldrath decided to forgo taking over after his father died and instead become the Azure Dragoon. So it's quite likely that knightly arms and combat persisted as a core tenet of the houses.

Speaking of Ishgard...did they ever fill in the gaps on how they ended up with the Archbishop as the head of state? Did the church just grow in power over the years? Is Thordan VII not actually a descendant of Thordan the I, but more like how Popes of the catholic church choose a new name?

I'd imagine it was like that. Given some of the crazy stories about Popes and turning back Genghis Khan while all of Europe was falling apart politically... I can easily see the Halonic Church being seen as being more reliable then a bunch of squabbling noble houses were. Let that kind of thinking go on long enough and...

I'm away from my Lorebook at the moment unfortunately, but it's fairly correct that the Ishgardian Orthodox Church got more and more power over time. The Lorebook describes that the earliest versions of the church (and indeed the scripture according to the Scholasticate quests) focus on the 'maternal' aspects of the church such as spiritual guidance, charity, and religious contemplation. The realities of the Dragonsong war, however, gave rise to a 'paternal' aspect involving direct governance, martial skill, and 'justice' against heretics. With Ishgard stuck in a state of Total War for nearly its entire modern existence, a bureaucratic body was necessary to maintain logistics and continue prosecuting the war against the dragons. The Church proved more than capable of this task, and built up the necessary logistical and governing bodies over time, with the Archbishop soon becoming the most powerful figure in the land. It was seen as better for this task due to both its holy status, and the fact that it was not directly aligned with any particular family or group of nobles. However, with the revolutions and new discoveries at the end of Heavensward, the Church's 'paternal' aspect is being heavily dialed back, and the church is going through reforms to emphasize its more charitable, 'maternal' aspect.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Good thing you thought to ask here before repeating it. (Rarely the case with reddit! +50 dkp!)

In actuality, the Lore Book II specifically states:

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Stumbled on this, and since there's a non-zero chance the comment that spurred it was one I made like three weeks ago replying to someone temporarily away from the game asking if book 2 had any RDM tidbits...

Absolutely deferring to you on anything lore! In my mild defense in case it WAS my comment tho: It was a couple dozen pages earlier (181) than the Rapier entries, on the Red Mage page, that gave me an Ishgardian implication. The Guespiere was "forged by the Ishgardian forefathers following their colonization of Coerthas" and says that an Elezen who took refuge in Gyr Abania (which I assumed to be the Count Ganelon mentioned under the Murgleis as credited with instructing the first red mages) offered to teach them "his race's traditional sword techniques." Which was presented as a reason for "the odd similarity between red mage and olden-day Coerthas weapony."

So I had taken that as basically that while Ishgard itself didn't take up the weapon, partly because they're not great for dragon-poking, but that the guy who taught the first red mages how to do it came from (pre-actually-Ishgard) Coerthas

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Originally Posted by Avisari

Absolutely deferring to you on anything lore!

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On the other hand, if ever your case of debate ammo contains citations that run contrary to anything I say, fire.

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Originally Posted by Avisari

The Guespiere was "forged by the Ishgardian forefathers following their colonization of Coerthas" and says that an Elezen who took refuge in Gyr Abania (which I assumed to be the Count Ganelon mentioned under the Murgleis as credited with instructing the first red mages) offered to teach them "his race's traditional sword techniques."

So I had taken that as basically that while Ishgard itself didn't take up the weapon, partly because they're not great for dragon-poking, but that the guy who taught the first red mages how to do it came from (pre-actually-Ishgard) Coerthas

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If I'm reading that correctly, only part of it is askew, actually: the assumption that Count Ganelon was himself Coerthan Proto-Ishgardian.

If Count Ganelon taught "the first red mages", then he should have been from amongst the Elezen of Mhach and Amdapor who fled into Gyr Abania during the Sixth Umbral Calamity, right? After the floods of the Sixth Umbral receded, the Elezen were the first to return to Eorzea (many returning from Ilsabard). 350 years later, the first great wave of Hyur would arrive, forcing these Elezen deeper into the continent. One such band of displaced Elezen were those that arrived in Coerthas and waged a turf war with the dragons before a 200 year period of cooperation later scrubbed from Ishgardian history. It was during this period (350 to 550 Sixth Astral) that Guespiere was forged.

So, if I'm reading that right, first the Elezen became the masters of the rapier. Then, eventually, Elezen would end up in Mhach and Amdapor. Then, during the fall of the Fifth Astral Era, such Elezen would end up in Gyr Abania - Count Ganelon among them. Then other Elezen - still masters of the rapier - would move to Coerthas, where one would forge Guespiere. Thus, there are similarities between red mage weapons and some Proto-Ishgardian weapons - not because Count Ganelon was a Proto-Ishgardian, but because both the Proto-Ishgardians and Count Ganelon were descendants of earlier Elezen rapier-wielders. (Hence the line, "For two groups that are otherwise unrelated, such historical context readily explains the odd similarity between red mage and olden-day Coerthas weaponry.")

Then the Dragonsong War purged any notion of wielding rapiers in Ishgard proper.

An aside, it makes you wonder how Ganelon got the title "Count", right? I even made sure that was the intended title. (It was.)

Speaking of the flood, there's something that confuses me a bit about Ala Mhigo.

So elezen were the first to return to Eorzea after the flood, meaning Eorzea was abandoned after the flood.

But some things seem to point toward Ala Mhigo being founded by survivors of the flood, following the red star to a safe haven? Their national anthem seems to highly imply this, and ala mhigo's largest demographic is highlander hyur. So I'm a bit confused as to the time frame of the founding of ala mhigo, or the settling of Gyr Abania in general post flood.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

So I'm a bit confused as to the time frame of the founding of ala mhigo, or the settling of Gyr Abania in general post flood.

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Ala Mhigo wasn't founded until 1135 6AE. Before Anshelm Cotter unified Gyr Abania, the region was home to various tribes and peoples that warred with one another back and forth since the Flood.

So Elezen count themselves as one of the first races to "return" to Eorzea after the Flood and spread back out across the continent from Gyr Abania. Later, three migratory waves of Hyur would return and force the Elezen out of their lands and force them to the Shroud and Coerthas to form Gelmorra and pre-Ishgard. Presumably, the exodus of the Elezen westward is why Gyr Abania today has such a high Hyuran population as peace wasn't achieved between the two races for many centuries yet.

Sounsyy hit the key point: Gyr Abania was a safe haven for peoples of many races and nations a thousand years before Ala Mhigo came into being.

There's some interesting context for this, as well. Once the Sixth Astral Era was underway, people were (as they tend to do when not unified over a greater threat, such as extinction by drowning) squabbling over all sorts of resources. The Highlanders of Gyr Abania especially took to this lifestyle, with factions rising and falling and allying against one another left and right. Meanwhile, between the years 500 and 900, the thriving civilizations of Eorzea raised the first great cities:

550: Ishgard
737: Belah'dia
740: Gelmorra
875: Limsa Lominsa

This push/pull (squabbling/cities) caused racial tension to spike even higher, and drew the races to the cities where they were the most populous. Elezen who had not already moved onto Coerthas or fled into the deepwood to escape the Hyur (giving rise to the Wildwood Elezen clan) would have traveled to Ishgard or Gelmorra around this time. The Roegadyn either went to the Farreach or Limsa Lominsa. The Lalafell to Limsa Lominsa or Thanalan. The Miqo'te kept to their own groups unless they integrated into the city life, and of course the Hyur went just frickin' everywhere.

This more or less left the Highlanders free to keep beating the seven hells out of one another until Cotter unified them and Ala Mhigo was raised.

I think it's mostly the migration back to Eorzea part that confuses me, because it seems on one hand that Eorzea, which includes Gyr Abania, was abandoned until the Elezen returned to be the first settlers, yet on the other hand it also seems like there were people living in Gyr Abania post flood. So I'm a bit confused if Gyr Abania doesn't count in terms of the elezen being the first to migrate back to Eorzea, or if maybe the survivors of the flood in gyr abania eventualy left and then the elezen were the first to come back? It seems like maybe the former if people kept living in Gyr Abania between the flood and the founding of Ala Mhigo.

I suspect it's just a matter of how literally should each word be taken?

When someone says, "The continent was abandoned," is that claim invalid if there is a single person somewhere on the continent? Or is it enough that civilization as it was known has collapsed? That culture has vanished, that cities have fallen into ruin, that the population has radically fallen to the point that any shared identity beyond small clans and tribes is impossible? Most of Eorzea's people fled the realm entirely; some just hunkered down where ever the land was too high for the waters to reach. Gyr Abania just happened to be one of the most elevated areas (and right next to Ilsabard, at that).

It's a bit like asking, "If the Mayans 'disappeared,' how are there still people with Mayan heritage?"

Most of us I think would consider Chernobyl "abandoned," but even the 1,000 square miles of the Exclusion Zone is home to ~200 people.

And even then, the migration back to Eorzea was not as if one massive caravan led by a dude with a bullhorn decided, "Alright, we're all going back!" Think of how ill-informed the commonfolk are in general; now imagine them after the collapse of civilization. Technology, culture, history, all more or less collapse. Not everything vanishes, but the ability to preserve, maintain, steward, preserve most information is gone.

Then, eventually, a group of Elezen decides, "Hey, let's explore over there." and descends into the lowlands of Eorzea to find it lush and pristine. They don't know to think, "Oh, wow, look how nature has reclaimed all of this because of the flood." They see unspoiled nature and think, "We have arrived at the promised land! A gift from the gods!"

They stay, they flourish, they build a group identity. That group grows and splinters. Other groups arise an disperse. If they run into a Miqo'te or a Lalafell here are there, how would they to know think, "Ah, yes, this is a descendant of Mhach whose ancestors were left behind in the exodus of the great flood but must have found refuge in a small mountain hamlet, and now the clan that remains is traveling to the desert to raise a new post-Mhachi civilization" rather than, "Oh, hey, who's that dude? Just a dude, I guess."

Then one day this huge caravan of Hyur show up and they're like, "Come on, man! We left you like, that whole other continent! The Gods gave this to us!"

But the secret's out. "LOTS OF FERTILE LAND AND OPEN SPACE OVER HERE, LADS." Cue immigration from all directions and peoples. Civilization begins anew.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

An aside, it makes you wonder how Ganelon got the title "Count", right? I even made sure that was the intended title. (It was.)

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I think that ended up being both the same detail that caused me to muddle my timeline with an Ishgardian assumption, and a really good point itself. I'm not sure how else we'd end up with much more detail on him so I suppose I'll just go with fingers crossed for future RDM job quest lore goodies! Mostly I just want to say thanks for that breakdown tho. Makes sense and I totally get how i interpreted it differently -- and I agree your take sounds better. Being accidentally wrong on reddit paid off!