An aether-what?

[Anonymoose]

How common was Allag tech in the original storyline?

Very rare until the guy whose family was descended from the Allag showed up.

At first we only had a road that was built by them (Royal Allagan Sunway/Starway) and a levequest centered on reclaiming for some archaeologists Allagan coins minted in the Third Astral Era. A few months later, on NM runs, we started to come across Allagan runestones that had the symbols of the Twelve carved into them. Then nothing for a while... in Eorzea, anyway. Back in Garlemald, House Darnus had been using their family's secrets to resurrect the use of Magitek without the Magi part for use by the magically inept Garleans for a few decades.

When Nael killed his father and took the war to Eorzea under Bahamut's puppet strings, he started unearthing a lot of the long-buried Allag ruins looking for tomestones filled with the information he'd need to finish his project - between those unearthings and the ones pushed up by the Calamity messing with our geological landscape, the Allag remains are a lot more visible.

I mean, a hundred years ago, the Allag were just a myth to most Eorzeans when an archaeologist named Coinach proved they existed. Between then and Darnus showing up, we mostly just had coins and runestones, and those who knew of the Allag greedily hoarded those.