The Albrook Reports

by espritduo

Like Strago and his book of monsters, Cid made a great many reports on the machines and human threats to be found across the FFVI world. As an Imperial scientist, he had inside knowledge of such things, and now I present that knowledge here in a series of confidential reports from both before and after the Collapse, known as "The Albrook Reports".

1. Foreword

The Albrook Reports

by Cid del Norte Marguez

Compiled by Mid Branford Marguez

Foreword:

My name is Mid Branford Marguez. I am the adopted grandson of the great inventor, Cid del Norte Marguez. Growing up as an orphan in Mobliz, I heard many stories from my adopted mother, the equally renowned Terra Branford, of the greatest scientific mind of our generation, and knew from my earliest years I wanted to follow in his footsteps. Now I am a grown man, and my dreams have been realized more than I ever could have hoped for. The man I idolized not only took me under his wing as an apprentice, but grew to love me like a son. Like Celes Chere before me, I was soon regarded as a member of his extended family, and he carefully groomed me to become his heir and successor. He knew the time required to see his great works to the end was far beyond his remaining years, and so entrusted me with his hopes and dreams. I have worked laboriously to finish the final volumes of his magnum opus, The History of the World, and with its completion and unprecedented success, I feel I have made my grandfather proud.

Sadly, my grandfather has since departed this world, and never knew the impact his final work had on it. The people now look to me with their questions about the life and times of this heroic, but intensely private man. I have but little to give them, for he was not a man to talk of his private life. I knew what most people knew - he was an ex-Imperial scientist who had turned his life to the science of peace after the Collapse. Beyond that, I knew the obvious pain his connections to the former Empire gave him, but I had no idea of the depths to which he agonized over that part of his life and just how much he blamed himself for the Collapse. It is only by searching through the surprisingly prolific amount of writing he left behind in various locked safes and forgotten storehouses that I have learned anything of the man my grandfather was before the Collapse.

Uncovered among these papers of my late grandfather were many long lost documents concerning the former Gestahlian Empire. These included in-depth reports on the capabilities of the entire combined armed forces of the Imperial war machine, from the lowest rank and file soldier to the most top secret Magitek weapons of mass destruction, many of which never saw the light of day until Kefka dredged them up as defense systems for his fiendish stronghold. They also included dossiers on all known enemies of the Empire as well as any persons or creatures that could potentially be a threat. Not only papers from before the Collapse, but a series of reports written afterwards were found in his lab in Albrook. These fascinating reports cover many of the strange entities that appeared after the Collapse, focusing mainly on the forgotten technology of the Magi and the new breed of magically-twisted humans that appeared alongside them. In this collection I have combined his previous reports with those uncovered in Albrook into a single manifesto I call "The Albrook Reports".

My grandfather had good reason to hold onto these papers to his dying breath, for in the wrong hands they could be used to create a new empire, even in the absence of magic. History had repeated itself once already, and my grandfather did not wish to be responsible for yet another Apocalypse. He was a gentle man at heart, and I feel the heavy sins he carried aged him prematurely, and contributed to his decline in health in his later years. Ultimately, his death at the relatively young age of seventy-two I attribute to a broken heart.

Even in this peaceful world we now enjoy, his fears of a coming threat from some forgotten corner of history kept him unnerved for much of his days. It had happened once already with Espers and magic, after all, so why couldn't it happen again? I had thought once I came of age and took over his work of creating new, peacekeeping technologies, he would rest easy. However, right to his dying breath he insisted on his own guilt in the state of the world. It did not matter to him that the name "Cid" was now synonymous with "Peace" throughout the world. It did not matter that I promised to carry on his work of uniting the world and making it impossible for another global catastrophe to ever occur by the hands of man. There has perhaps never been a man so burdened by his own past as my grandfather.

I present these reports only reluctantly to the Consortium of Nations. They represent a dark time in my grandfather's life, a time he spent creating machines of death and armies of hate. But they show how conflicted he was as well, and provide our world with a fuller picture of Cid the human, rather than Cid the legend. If nothing else, they prove that if it was not for the great conscience my grandfather possessed even in his darkest hours, our world would have been much worse off than it is now, and indeed, there may not have been any world left. It is for this reason I give these reports over to the people. Aside from the technical and historical value they contain, they shed light on the Cid that I and a select few others knew, and I feel sharing both the virtues and sorrows of the man are the best way to absolve him of the sins he so fervently believed he was guilty.

Grandfather, I pray that you find the peace you looked for in life wherever you are now, and I pray that with these documents the world you helped build will also find true peace, by knowing and remembering the strife that once nearly destroyed it.

-Mid Branford Marguez

Mobliz, 27AF