Variable Font won't export, saying "Invalid Character “.”" Found in: feature 'rlig'

Exporting variable font with weight axis.
This issue came up after adding several alternate layers [wght > 800]

Ok found the problem.
I had a bracket layer for question mark, that rolled its way into .notdef

And probably that’s how the automatic rlig code surprisingly ran into a glyph name that started with “.”

Decompose and letting go of the alternate layer in .notdef solved it.