Disclaimer: so I know i'm opening a can of worms here, and please bear with me. I would hate that to turn into a flamewar on how true to the lore it is to play a red mage or not. This is not necessarily the point of that post. I really want to investigate further to see what we can find about that peculiar point.
With that said, SE chose deliberately to stay very ambiguous with both words, Crimson Duelist and Red Mage, and followed the story of the last survivor of the Crimson Duelists (who are red mages).
So I parsed through the quests and lines and couldn't see any mention made of any group of red mages, since when red magic is mentioned, every time it's about the art of the red mage more than the remaining or current red mages in existence. It's always about the Crimson Duelists and how they were all betrayed by one of their own, Lambart (a servant of the voidsent Lilith). And that X'rhun, the red mage NPC senpai, is the last one of those duelists that opposed the King of Ruin.
People often chose to interpret it as the Crimson Duelists being a special group of red mages that chose to rise against the King, but... I didn't find any true mention of that anywhere. It could also be that all the red mages decided to take the mantle of Crimson Duelists too.
What I'm looking for is clues that I might have missed that can swing the balance in one way or the other, and if the Duelists aren't all the red mages of Gyr Abania, then do we have clues or hints on what has become of them if so? I mean here, all the ones that wouldn't be duelists in that hypothesis?Â
Which leads me to think about in what state is the red magic art left exactly? Is X'rhun the last one of them if we consider that the red mages all embraced the duelist rebellion? We know that he fled to Sharlayan and teached Alisaie a bit about it, but again, no mention of any other red mage besides Lambert and all the dead duelists. And then, even if there were survivors, how did they fare against the Garlean invasion? Like the monks (but the monks seem to have at least a handful of survivors, not just Widargelt though)? They seem to share a very similar fate, and it's hard to tell how many are left, if any, besides the NPCs we know of.
I know it touches the very basis of the viability of that job in roleplay, but I think that like most jobs, there will no matter what be a certain degree of uniqueness and "hard to find/become", so I don't consider that problem to be that relevant.
With that said, SE chose deliberately to stay very ambiguous with both words, Crimson Duelist and Red Mage, and followed the story of the last survivor of the Crimson Duelists (who are red mages).
So I parsed through the quests and lines and couldn't see any mention made of any group of red mages, since when red magic is mentioned, every time it's about the art of the red mage more than the remaining or current red mages in existence. It's always about the Crimson Duelists and how they were all betrayed by one of their own, Lambart (a servant of the voidsent Lilith). And that X'rhun, the red mage NPC senpai, is the last one of those duelists that opposed the King of Ruin.
People often chose to interpret it as the Crimson Duelists being a special group of red mages that chose to rise against the King, but... I didn't find any true mention of that anywhere. It could also be that all the red mages decided to take the mantle of Crimson Duelists too.
What I'm looking for is clues that I might have missed that can swing the balance in one way or the other, and if the Duelists aren't all the red mages of Gyr Abania, then do we have clues or hints on what has become of them if so? I mean here, all the ones that wouldn't be duelists in that hypothesis?Â
Which leads me to think about in what state is the red magic art left exactly? Is X'rhun the last one of them if we consider that the red mages all embraced the duelist rebellion? We know that he fled to Sharlayan and teached Alisaie a bit about it, but again, no mention of any other red mage besides Lambert and all the dead duelists. And then, even if there were survivors, how did they fare against the Garlean invasion? Like the monks (but the monks seem to have at least a handful of survivors, not just Widargelt though)? They seem to share a very similar fate, and it's hard to tell how many are left, if any, besides the NPCs we know of.
I know it touches the very basis of the viability of that job in roleplay, but I think that like most jobs, there will no matter what be a certain degree of uniqueness and "hard to find/become", so I don't consider that problem to be that relevant.
Balmung:Â Suen Shyu
