Quote Originally Posted by Anonymoose View Post
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:
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