I've even tried editing the patch script to remove all lookup tables, yet the damn ligatures continue to persist.

i.e.

  for table in sourceFont.gsub_lookups:
      symfont.removeLookup(table)

Any ideas on what's going on? I'm guessing there's some default ligature setting being inherited? Is there a way to turn that off in the generated font?

Turning off set macligatures in vim is my temporary workaround.