The Crimson Robbers are a band of thieves in Final Fantasy VI. At the start of the game they are imprisoned in Figaro Castle, but ironically end up being used by the castle's king to unknowingly save its inhabitants.
Story[]
During the cataclysm Figaro Castle burrowed under the desert and hit a nest of sandworms. The worms got into the castle's engines and halted its advance, and a wall in the prison crumbled, letting the robbers enter the sandworm nest and use their tunnels to flee into the South Figaro Cave. During the escape their boss perished, eaten by the sandworms, but his men escaped to the surface. Their escape got them a bit of renown, as Figaro Castle never resurfaced.
King Edgar wanted to save Figaro but had no idea how to find the buried castle. When he heard of the Crimson Robbers he decided to use them to find it. Disguising himself as a thief named "Gerad", Edgar became their boss and convinced them to sneak back into the castle to raid the treasure room, really a pretense for Edgar to get into the engine room and fix it so the castle could surface.
As the robbers were prepping for their expedition in Nikeah, Celes and Sabin happened through town and heard about the robbers. Celes met "Gerad" and immediately recognized him, but Edgar refused to reveal himself to them and he and the robbers sailed for South Figaro and headed into the South Figaro Cave, unaware that Celes and Sabin were trailing them.
In Figaro Castle's engine room, Edgar sent the robbers ahead to loot the treasure room while he fought off the sandworms, and with the aid of Celes and Sabin destroyed the worms. The three hid as the robbers arrived; seeing no sign of "Gerad", they assumed the sandworms had eaten him, and left. Though they were escaped thieves, Edgar had no intent of trying to bring them to justice when there were more pressing matters still to deal with, namely Kefka.
Behind the scenes[]
An unused line of dialogue exists for the Crimson Robbers in South Figaro, where one of them remarks that they trust "Gerad", but he seems very familiar.
Only three of the Crimson Robbers are seen in Figaro Castle's dungeon, one of which addresses the others as "my boys", implying he is their boss. In the World of Ruin there are consistently shown to be four members.
The robbers are not seen again after Figaro Castle. The generic "bandit" sprite is used throughout the game for outlaws and there are many in the World of Ruin, so it is conceivable that one of them is the Crimson Robbers; the Cultists' Tower and Cave on the Veldt both have groups of four thieves camped out, though the ones in the Cave on the Veldt use a different palette than the Crimson Robbers.