Turk Info

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This page contains spoilers for all of FFVII, Advent Children, and Before Crisis. Most of this information is based on canon, but is embellished with author-interpretation. It is not condoned by the creators of Final Fantasy, Square, Squeenix, Nomurasensei, or any other important industry people who will probably never read this anyway, and cannot be constituted as official canon in any manner. This is simply a culmination of fan-geekery and mild OCD. Thanks for reading. ^_^

Contents 1 Nobody's Business but the Turks 1.1 Advent Children 1.2 FFVII 1.3 Before Crisis 2 The History of the Turks? 2.1 Vincent Valentine 2.2 Charlie 2.3 Tseng 2.4 Reno and Rude 2.5 Tegwin 2.6 Adrian 2.7 Andrew, Rafe, and Rosalind 2.8 Valerie and Alexander 2.9 Samantha 2.10 Cyr and Durman 2.11 Elena 3 In Summation

Nobody's Business but the Turks

So now that we've gotten physics out of the way...let's talk about the Turks. That's right...ShinRa's Department of Administrative Research, the crème de la crème elite task force that not only holds Top Secret security clearance to all of the information ShinRa knows and kicks ass to preserve it...but looks damn snappy doing it in their three-piece suits and ties. While the exact history of the Turks and their origins with the ShinRa Company remain unknown, a close analysis of the compilations of FFVII give us enough of a foundation to be able to glean a feasible back story for this R&D-turned-assassin faction of the corporation. So let's work our way backwards, from the events of Advent Children back to Before Crisis, to try and understand just how deep the roots of the Turks as a department go. Below is a general synopsis of everything stated in canon regarding the Turks. Please keep in mind that for the sake of brevity, this is a very abridged version of the events the Turks take part in. Mentioned below are simply the most notable moments in the canon history of the Department of Administrative Research, and is not all-inclusive.

Advent Children

In Advent Children, ShinRa itself is mostly in pieces. After Rufus's being stricken with geostigma, what remained of the company after the horrific events of FFVII had no leadership with which to rebuild. As a whole, ShinRa as a global presence was done for; the president was dying, the planet was dying...there was simply no room and no motivation for ShinRa to rebuild...that is until Rufus came upon the idea that Kadaj and his brothers were after Jenova and there was suddenly an opportunity for ShinRa to 'redeem' itself in the eyes of the planet. It appeared that post-FFVII, the Turks (all of them--we discover in the final episode of Before Crisis that all of those Playable Turks who were believed dead after the battle with Zirconiade had actually been in hiding with Veld) were basically reassigned to simple bodyguards for the ailing president. Aerith was dead--the projects to attempt to recreate the Ancients died with her. Hojo was dead--the Jenova project died with him. Heidegger and Scarlet were dead--Weapons Development and the SOLDIER Project no longer had management. We are actually not given much indication what became of Palmer, but the Space Program was mostly shut down after the failed rocket launch... Reeve survived, but had gone off in the direction of the WRO in something of an effort to try and repair some of the damage ShinRa did.

In short, ShinRa Electric Power Company had basically been reduced to the dead corporation of a dying president whose worldly dreams had been destroyed with the tower in old Midgar.

That didn't mean that the loyalty of the Turks had been shaken, however. Despite the crumbling foundations of their corporation, the Turks stood by Rufus and were prepared to defend him to the death from the Remnants and their plan to resurrect Sephiroth. Mostly all this tells us definitively is that the steadfastness of the Turks is unwavering and endless, despite the impermanence of their company. Even without ShinRa's logo to stand proud before, the Turks would never back down from their duties. Even decades after the creation of the department, despite scandal, conspiracy, betrayal and tragedy, the constancy of the Turks remains unbroken.

In the end, we don't know what is to become of the ShinRa Company...but it appears that regardless of where Rufus plans to take his company now, the Turks will stand by him to whatever end.

FFVII

The role of the Turks in FFVII-proper was decidedly that of anti-heroes of choice. While the Turks certainly weren't the good guys, they were far from villains. Over the course of multiple altercations with these blue-suited opponents, even Cloud seems to come to the conclusion that the Turks might not be entirely bad. They even temporarily team up in an effort to rescue their respectively kindapped teammates.

For that matter, as a general rule, the Turks don't really seem to want to engage Cloud and his group. There are a couple of occassions in which Reno actively refuses to act offensively against them, claiming he and the other Turks are 'off-duty'. In fact, the final battle with them is completely optional--they'll let you go if you opt not to fight them, even though they're supposed to be keeping you away. This rather proves that while their orders are important to them, even the Turks will bend the rules when they know it's the right thing to do. Despite being given direct orders to find and eliminate Cloud and his group, Reno, acting as leader in the absence of Tseng, in the end allows the heroes to pass. Despite the chagrin it undoubtedly caused him to allow Cloud to go ahead, Reno knew that unless Sephiroth was stopped, there was no hope for anyone.

What all of this indicates is that, while the Turks' loyalty to ShinRa is obviously fierce and runs deep, even the most faithful Turk isn't blind to reason. Adding this layer of depth to the Turks as a whole helps humanize them significantly--no one can really relate to or like or significantly respect a bunch of corporate dogs who will follow an order to certain death. But take that loyalty and add reason and the ability to think for themselves, and we get a smart team of upright and ultimately likable anti-heroes who know when to follow an order to the end...and when that order will lead to their end.

Before Crisis

This chunk of the compilation of FFVII is probably the best source for defining the Turks. It is in this side of the story alone that we truly get a Turk's-eye-view of the world and how it works. After reading through the story of Before Crisis, I personally had a much clearer image of the Turks as a unit and ShinRa as a company. Before Crisis's story begins shortly after the ending of the war between the ShinRa Electric Power Company and the Wutai tribe, a conflict mentioned only in passing during Final Fantasy VII. With Wutai defeated and the people of the world now dependent on their mako energy and materia, ShinRa finds itself the dominant economic, military and political power in the world. But there are those who remain dedicated to the destruction of ShinRa, chief among them being the newly emerged insurgent movement known as "AVALANCHE". Before Crisis focuses on this conflict between ShinRa and the original AVALANCHE group, which began six years before the events portrayed in Final Fantasy VII, and lasted up to the time immediately preceding the events that took place in that game.

The first few mission files of Before Crisis deal with AVALANCHE's first hostile assault on ShinRa and its global power. AVALANCHE confronts the Turks in Sector Eight at all hours of the morning, and then make an assassination attempt on President Shinra himself in Junon. However, at this time, the Turks are already a highly trained and deadly force. This indicates that something, at some point, triggered ShinRa to take their Department of Administrative Research and turn them from simple recon teams into highly skilled assassins. It is also implied that prior to this trigger, the Turks consisted solely of Reno, Rude, Tseng, and Veld (and Vincent Valentine, much much earlier), since all of the Playable Turks are basically all referred to as rookies (save for three of them, who will be noted upon further along in this analysis).

The next major development Before Crisis hints at is in mission four, about two weeks later. We find out that the Turks are apparently the department in charge of scouting out recruits for the SOLDIER program. This not only clinches the fact that the Turks are basically in on all the shit going down in the dungeons of ShinRa's scientific laboratories, but that they are apparently aware of the traits and characteristics and nitty-gritty specifics that make a good candidate for various programs being run by the company. Three months after mission four, it is proven again that the Turks have grade-A security clearance, since they're sent to protect the doctor in charge of delivering Top Secret information regarding the SOLDIER program itself.

Now, up until this point in the story, the Turks are pretty much unknown to people in general. Come mission seven the following year, we learn that AVALANCHE has actually created their own band of creepy experimental soldiers in an effort to combat the Turks, meaning AVALANCHE has recognized them as formidable opponents. While most people appear to have no idea who the Turks are and what their specific ties to ShinRa may be, AVALANCHE has become well aware of their intentions, and cultivates a pratcically immortal combat team to counteract their forces. Also in this mission we learn that the SOLDIERs really dislike the Turks--for obvious reasons. Nobody would be too fond of the group who turned them into a bunch of experiments. It seems that the Turks are regarded with general disdain by most of ShinRa--even the president himself doesn't like them. He appears to see them as too much of a wild card. They're too strong; they know too much. The Turks could literally bring about ShinRa's downfall, and the president is anything but reassured by this... In fact, in mission eight, Rufus convinces the president that the Turks must be leaking information to AVALANCHE, since the terrorist group always seems to know exactly when and where ShinRa is going to make a move. In retaliation, President Shinra removes Veld from his position as leader of the Turks and instead puts Heidegger in direct charge of them, claiming Veld is incompetent and cannot maintain a firm hand over his own department. However this doesn't last for long--when Veld threatens to go public with all of the top-secret information he has on ShinRa's controversial research, he is quickly put back in charge of his beloved Turks in an effort to maintain the company's secrecy. All of this fully supports the supposition that, while the Turks are indeed completely loyal to ShinRa--and more specifically, to Veld--they are not afraid to throw their weight around in an effort to keep their team intact. There appears to be a lot of in-fighting in the ShinRa bureaucracy, and it seems that perhaps the Turks are the only department where all of the members trust each other completely... The Turks are every bit the 'family' Veld sees them as.

Mission ten gives us insight into just how top-rung the Turks really are on the ladder of ShinRa's chain of command. When all of Hojo's experiments are set loose in ShinRa tower, not even the SOLDIERs are permitted to make a move. Only the Turks are allowed to know about these experiments, and if word of Hojo's controversial doings were to be leaked, ShinRa could be done for. This may be the best indication given that the Turks were not always a combat team. After all, why would a bunch of assassins have information on every little minute detail of ShinRa's underhanded internal workings? Perhaps the Department of Administrative Research is more aptly named than is initially apparent...

In mission thirteen we are shown a very sad flashback of when a faulty order given by Veld results in the destruction of his hometown, Kalm. This helps to explain why Veld is so very attached to his Turks--they truly are the only family he has anymore. Here we also see just how dedicated to his job Veld is. He says to your playable Turk, "This is what the Turks do. Even if it means killing your family, you’ll continue to do your job." This leads me to believe that all of the Turks, in order to be considered for Turk-dom, must have either no family at all, or sever all ties with them entirely. Having given the order that killed his own family tore Veld apart inside...and the only way he can justify his actions at all to himself is to accept that he did it because it was his job. If being a Turk has to come before being part of any family other than the Turks themselves, it would serve to reason that Veld would not want to put anyone else in the position he himself was put in on the day that Kalm was destroyed. Perhaps this is why, aside from Elena and her elder sister, we know nothing of the families of any of the Turks--they all forcibly removed themselves from their families, or had none to speak of in the first place.

The Turks' first true taste of betrayal comes in mission sixteen, when it comes to light that Rufus was the informant to AVALANCHE, and he basically tells AVALANCHE to off the Turks if they want to stay in ShinRa's good graces. However, when AVALANCHE doublecrosses Rufus and basically tells him to sit on it and twist, the Turks--in a surprisingly merciful show of their loyalties to the company--save young Rufus's ass from a whooping at the hands of Fuhito and the Ravens. After this, Veld discovers that Elfe, the leader of AVALANCHE, is actually his daughter Felicia, who he thought died in the destruction of Kalm all those years ago. He more or less defects from ShinRa to pursue her, and Rufus is grounded for being a naughty naughty traitor. However, in Veld's fleeing ShinRa to try and find his daughter, he sealed his own fate. The information the Turks know is far too confidential for anyone to simply leave. As President Shinra once said, "The only retirement a Turk is entitled to comes with a body bag." Suddenly, Veld is a very wanted man, and the Turks are stuck between a rock and a hard place. What are they to choose? To save their boss and the father figure they have come to respect as their mentor would mean to forfeit their own lives...but how could they instead choose to murder Veld...? After a series of unfortunate events including but not limited to the Turks basically all-out turning against ShinRa in an effort to save Veld's life, President ShinRa decides that the only course of action is simply to destroy the Turks entirely.

But then there are more pressing matters at hand--Fuhito manages to complete the summon materia Zirconiade which will destroy everyone on the planet and revitalize the Lifestream. Crazy bastard. There are no scripts to be found beyond episode twenty of Before Crisis, unfortunately, so I don't have the details of how precisely the Turks manage to defeat Zirconiade, or what exactly becomes of Fuhito...however in the end, Zirconiade is defeated, and all of the playable Turks are presumed dead. Tseng pretends to shoot Veld and Elfe so that ShinRa will stop hunting him, and Rufus is satisfied that the Turks have reestablished their loyalties to ShinRa by killing Veld and destroying Zirconiade and the leaders of AVALANCHE. The epilogue of Before Crisis coincides with FFVII, as the remaining Turks are suddenly alerted to the attack on Mako Reactor One, and then we cut ahead to the Meteor crisis, where we discover that all of the playable Turks who were presumed dead are in fact alive and have been in hiding with Veld all this time.

The History of the Turks?

The information below, as with all of the not-specifically-canon information stated in this wiki, is not supported or condoned by the creators of FFVII, and is merely the speculation of the authors. The stories to follow are abridged, and many of them will actually be explained in further detail in the story itself. These notes are here mostly so that the reader can garner an understanding of the relationships between the members of the Turks as we have interpreted them. This is our take on the Turks, and how they came to be not only the most powerful defensive force of the strongest bureacratical presence on Gaia...but also its greatest liability... [dundunDUNNNNN!!!]

Vincent Valentine

It is established that Vincent Valentine was once a Turk, before he was creepily experimented on by Hojo and locked himself away in a coffin beneath the ShinRa mansion in Nibelheim so he could emo away the rest of his life as a freaking vampire. This is stated to have taken place thirty years ago, meaning that prior to 1967, Vincent was the only canonly-known Turk in ShinRa's repertiore. We're not even certain that Veld was in charge at this point. However, we're going to say he was, because while we're given no specific indication it was Veld, there is no statement that the Turks ever changed hands, and Veld does refer to Vincent at one point as his previous coworker. So thirty years ago, Veld was in charge of the Department of Administrative Research, and his only known employee was a one Vincent Valentine. Vincent actually states that he had been employed by ShinRa as a hired gun...so here we hit an impasse--if Veld was the only acting member of the Department of Administrative Research and yet Vincent was a hired gun for ShinRa, what exactly were the circumstances of his employment?

Before the beginnings of the Jenova Project, ShinRa logically had little to no call for a scientific department; why else would Gast have conducted all his research in the basement of a mansion in Nibelheim rather than a pre-established laboratory somewhere? So, we can conclude that before the establishment of the Jenova Project, whatever scientific research, if any, that ShinRa was funding could have been overseen and reported upon by one executive--Veld. Back before ShinRa was financing multiple endeavors, the president would have only needed one employee to oversee any and all research done in the name of ShinRa, a sort of acting executive to make sure the research was being carried out properly and being fully reported to the president. This Department of Administrative Research would have safeguarded against scientists making amazing and profitable discoveries with ShinRa's funding and then turning around and patenting them without giving ShinRa its due. The Department could also do surveillance and reconnaissance to gather information for ShinRa; the company was assuredly interested in the inner workings of enough so that Veld was kept sufficiently busy gathering information.

Enter Gast and the Jenova Project. Suddenly, ShinRa had more going on than one man could keep tabs on. Veld saw the need for a suboordinate, someone he could assign to the Jenova Project and report upon it, leaving Veld free to continue his data mining in other venues. We don't know much of anything about Veld's early days, but we can assume he was all right with a gun and fairly decent in combat--we figure he was hired straight out of the military academy as ShinRa was just starting out. Perhaps Veld found himself in a situation where those combat skills came in handy once or twice. Additionally, judging from the fact that Gast planned to delve into the realm of genetics with the supposed Ancient dubbed Jenova, Veld could very well have predicted some kind of public outcry against the experimentation and might have sought to safeguard against potential turmoil by hiring a research suboordinate capable of defending the scientists against anti-experimentation aggressors (you know the type). We think that for these reasons, Veld decided to hire a subodinate with satisfactory combat abilities, meaning Vincent was indeed employed by ShinRa as a hired gun, as he states in FFVII, but that Vincent was actually an executive of administrative research, in line with our theory of the Turks' origin.

Charlie

After Vincent's unfortunate mishap involving an irritable scientist, a bullet, and a coffin, Veld once again found himself in need of a subordinate. So, in light of Vincent's inability to defend himself sufficiently, Veld sought to hire an incredibly competent subordinate who would be capable of surviving any situation. Reflecting upon the training he received in the military academy, Veld once again turns to the school for recruitment, and comes up with a youth from Junon who graduated at the top of his class. This man is referenced in Before Crisis as the "Legendary Turk" and becomes a playable character in the game after completing Episode 24; he has no canon name or widely accepted fanon name, and so we have dubbed him Charlie. Because he only becomes available after the entire story is completed, and he is considered legendary and known as the God of Death on the battlefield, we can conclude that Charlie was actually not present for any of the events of Before Crisis, since he would have probably been mentioned at some point throughout the story if he had been there.

Before Crisis begins in 1991, and so Charlie must have left the Turks before that point. Because he does become available, however, we know he is not actually dead, but merely absent. Given that we decided Reno and Rude joined the Turks in 1987, and that Tseng was an established employee at the time, we can estimate that the latest Charlie could have left the Turks was immediately prior to Tseng being hired, which could have been as late as 1986. Based on our earlier speculation, this gives Charlie a potential nineteen-year period between Vincent's demise in 1967 and his own departure from the employ of ShinRa. This gives Charlie plenty of time to go from a competent military academy graduate to a legendary Turk feared on the battlefield as a God of Death, and given Charlie's impressive capabilities, a successful vanishing act after developing an interest in retirement is completely plausible.

Tseng

Tseng's attachment to Veld is very much like that of a student to a mentor, as well as a son to a father. Tseng seems to have an overwhelming sense of duty and respect toward Veld, fueling the idea that Veld may have actually found Tseng on the streets and, sensing in him a potential for greatness, decided to train him to work beneath him in the Department of Administrative Research. Why? Perhaps it had something to do with the loss of his own family. Veld's own misconstrued order destroyed Kalm and killed his wife and daughter, so he believes, and his personality clearly dictates that he longs for that feeling of unity. Going on the assumption that Reno and Tseng are about the same age, and Reno is visibly in his mid to late twenties at the very oldest (and Tseng's photo from Before Crisis seriously looks like his highschool sophomore yearbook photo--he can't be older than like sixteen there), we settled on a solid 27 years old for these two come Advent Children. Like pretty much everything about the Turks, Tseng's origins are completely unknown to anyone, however seeing as how he appears to be very young in Before Crisis and yet is almost unnaturally loyal and steadfast to his cause, it seems plausible that perhaps ShinRa and the Turks are all Tseng has.

Born in Wutai (as his name itself is Chinese in nature) in 1972, Tseng is far too disciplined in his youth to have been raised without some manner of guidance. Because his personality is such that he trusts Veld absolutely, and views duty, loyalty, and efficiency sacred above all other things, Tseng would have obviously been taught as a child that in order to be successful in life, one had to understand and practice these values. As the war between ShinRa and Wutai begins in 1982 when he is but ten years old, it serves to reason that Tseng subsequently either lost touch with his Wutaian roots, or was somehow betrayed by his heritage, else it is exceedingly unlikely that he would have joined forces with the very company Wutai was at war with. Tseng's personality is very remniscient of a virtuous and honorable samurai, and so we suppose that if he is not of full Wutaian ancestry that his father at least was probably the Wutaian parent (it rather feels like Tseng's mother died when he was very young--perhaps he never even really knew her, which would explain at least some of his very clipped and harsh-edged ways), and instilled into his son all the honor and pride that went with being a male from their respectable country. But when the war broke out between Wutai and ShinRa, Tseng was too young to enlist in the ranks of the armies that would fight for Wutai. Left alone--most likely with a neighbor, nanny, or friend of the family--as his father was sent off to war, Tseng would come to learn that his father fell in battle. Enraged, stricken with grief, and suddenly left questioning all of the honor and virtue he had been taught as a youngster, Tseng would flee the safety of his home to charge into battle to avenge his father's untimely demise at the hands of ShinRa.

Naturally, a ten-year-old would be about as successful on the battlefield as rollerskates on ice. Tseng fell quickly to the might of the SOLDIERs of ShinRa's forces, left to curse the very foundations of intrinsic worth that his family had always believed would save them from wickedness.

But Tseng was saved. When the SOLDIERs were ordered to comb the bloodied battlefield for survivors to be brought in for questioning, the battered body of a young boy would have been brought before Heidegger, who was in charge of the SOLDIER Department. Obviously, the executives would see no merit in questioning a child. But when the order was given to have the boy shot, there was a voice of objection...from the Department of Administrative Research. What a waste it would be to simply kill a boy with the courage to face the power of ShinRa at the tender age of ten! If Heidegger had no use for the boy, then Veld would find one. Suddenly, those intrinsic values of Wutaian faith were worn upon the lines of a very different face, and spoken in the voice of a man who would prove to be a worthy surrogate father to the upright and principled young boy from Wutai.

Now, it might seem nonsequitur for a man such as Tseng to ultimately swear fielty to ShinRa, when ShinRa was the power who felled Wutai and killed his father, but bear in mind that all of Tseng's youth was steeped in honor and integrity. Although undoubtedly resentful at first, Tseng would come to terms with his hatred for ShinRa, and his admiration and respect for the man who saved his life when even the virtues of his own ancestry had abandoned him would rise to dwarf and eclipse his bitterness and abhorrence of ShinRa. So great would Tseng's loyalties to Veld grow to become that he would swear allegience to the very company that destroyed his country in order to stand by Veld's side. When he faced the door of death, it was not ShinRa who extended a hand to save his life, but a man--Veld--who would cast aside the precedents of war and opposition to spare the life of a child. Surely Tseng owed him that same benefit of doubt and suppression of discrimination in return.

Acting as Veld's apprentice and eventually--when he grew old enough to bear the gravity of such responsibilities--earning the title of his second-in-command, Tseng took his job as a Turk very seriously, and maintained that immaculate work ethic unwaveringly. At the age of fourteen, Tseng would become the youngest junior executive on ShinRa's payroll.

Tseng is the only Turk you never engage in battle in FFVII, however in Before Crisis, there is a special episode in which you can actually play as Tseng. In this episode, we learn that Tseng's weapon is a pistol, and that he's damn good with it. If Veld was seeking to hire additional employees with combat skills, you can bet your PHS that Tseng would have undergone strict and regimented combat training before he achieved any manner of significant status in the department. It is likely that his father gave him some manner of training as well, so Tseng probably took to the tutelage of the Military Academy like a fish to water. So although we have little hard evidence to work from, it would make little sense that Tseng would serve as leader of the Turks come the time of FFVII if he wasn't just as capable in battle--if not moreso--than his subordinates.

Reno and Rude

The history of Reno and Rude is a subject of great debate in the fandom. It is given that these two have been friends for a very long time...but that amount of time is never specified. It is stated that come the events of Before Crisis, the two of them have both been Turks for several years, but just how many years, we are never told. Given the stark opposing personalities coupled with the fact that Rude rarely speaks more than three words at a time and yet Reno has little difficulty knowing exactly what is on his partner's mind, it would serve to reason that these two were buds before they signed on with ShinRa. A chatterbox like Reno is going to have difficulty getting along with a taciturn person like Rude--surely he would get terribly bored. And a stoic and levelheaded man like Rude is certainly going to find Reno's boisterous nature downright obnoxious, his reckless methods foolhardy and idiotic. We supposed that these two boys were friends from childhood--it's really the best explanation for how they can stand each other for extended periods of time, and how despite the dichotomy of their characters, they serve as the best pair of agents on the Turk team. Rude appears to be a few years older than Reno, both in body and spirit; we settled on a four-year gap, and so when they signed on with ShinRa in 1987, Reno was fifteen and Rude nineteen.

Obviously, Rude seems like an excellent candidate for an administrative career. Quiet, stern, and no-nonsense, Rude would have likely been hired on the spot--most likely by Tseng, since he would have the authority to act in Veld's place in non-emergency situations. Tseng probably liked Rude's levelheadedness and businesslike manner, and would have quickly sought to add him to their team. With his broad, strong shoulders and obvious strength, Rude's need for training with the Military Academy would have been minimal. Serious, smart, and strong as a bull, Rude was already prepped and well on his way to being an excellent addition to the Department of Administrative Research.

Reno, however, would have been a completely different story. Reno was rather the embodiment of everything Tseng stood against. He was brash, excitable, loud and gung-ho, with little finesse and no strategy to speak of. Even before the interview process could take place, Tseng surely would have dismissed Reno as a loose cannon--an accident waiting to happen. And while Reno was, in fact, a few months older than Tseng, he would have been seen as far too immature and peurile to handle a serious job that required stealth and strategy. Reno walked through the door a dark horse; he was going to have to prove himself before Tseng would even look his way.

Infuriated that his best friend got hired by the cool and illustrious corporation when he didn't, Reno probably set out to...put it in Tseng's eye. He'd show that stiff white-collared jerk just what a loose canon he could be. You can imagine Tseng's shock and disbelief when a one redheaded young man ninja'd his way into Tseng's excutive office through the air ducts and snuck silently up behind the deputy to the most top-secret department in the ShinRa company. Poking two fingers into the back of Tseng's head, Reno asked darkly, "Who's not good enough to work for you now?"

After being shown out in handcuffs by security and returned to an exceedingly embarrassed Rude at the hotel room the boys had rented in Sector Eight, Reno would receive a phone call the next day from a one Cheif Veld of the Department of Administrative Research, asking him when he was free to begin training.

While Reno was somewhat disenchanted by the idea of being a paper-pusher, it never crossed his mind to look for alternative means of employment. ShinRa was the largest most well-to-do company around, and anywhere else Reno might have been qualified to work at his age wouldn't have paid anything near the paycheck ShinRa offered. And once the Turks' job description began to morph and warp from officework to field work to something much more sinister and clandestine, Reno really found his niche. While both Reno and Rude excelled in their positions, Tseng still found Reno a vexing presence, and the two often locked horns. When Veld made the decision to put Reno in charge of field missions, Tseng protested fiercely. And while he has since come to the understanding that Reno's unorthodox methods and questionable morality are never executed in a manner that would endanger any Turk, he retains some long-standing general irritation with the redhead...perhaps for old times' sake alone.

Tegwin

When Reno and Rude became part of the Turks, it wasn't long before they were introduced to Tegwin. Small, slim, and rather serious for her young age, Tegwin was the youngest person ever recruited by the Department of Administrative Research. Having been signed on with the company at the tender age of six in 1985, Tegwin was merely eight years old when she met her new coworkers. Growing quickly attached to the two of them and coming to view them in the same big-brotherly light in which she saw Tseng, Tegwin took it upon herself to show the two new recruits the ropes of the Department of Administrative Research. But Reno was suspicious. How had a kid like her gotten through the door (especially when he himself had had to jump through eighteen flaming hoops to get his foot in)? Only after much pestering on Reno's part did she finally explain how exactly someone so young came to work for ShinRa.

Tegwin was born to a mother she can barely remember and a father no one can forget. She is Charlie's flesh and blood, and while she is anything but ashamed of this fact, Tegwin had been keeping her family ties a secret from all other ShinRa personnel, even going so far as to take a false name--Shisune--to wear over her true name in an effort to keep Charlie's legacy quiet. Trusting her new seniors with this information was a difficult enough task for little Tegwin, but when a curious Reno pressed for more details, she was inclined to balk. Only after the first indications that ShinRa was in for a long hard road against AVALANCHE's predecessors did the little redhead gear up the nerve to tell Reno, Rude, and Tseng the full truth.

It had been no secret that Charlie got around in his day. But when his romps with a particular young lady in Lower Junon left the poor girl expecting, Charlie was caught between a rock and a hard place. Certainly Veld trusted the man enough to know that he would have taken ShinRa's secrets to the grave, but President Shinra was not so forgiving of the Department of Administrative Research. Charlie had no choice but to leave the young mother of his child to raise the infant alone. ShinRa paid its employees well, and so Tegwin's childhood was never a strained one, since her father sent plenty of financial support their way (he always insisted it was only because Tegwin's mother had plenty of information on him to sell him out to any of ShinRa's enemies...but Tegwin knew better), and while visits from Charlie were few and far between, there was never a doubt in her mind that despite her father's pointed absence through most of her childhood, she was loved.

But even the best-laid plans can come unraveled in one's grasp. One night when Charlie returned to his lover's home, he found the house empty, locked, and up for public auction. His lady and daughter were nowhere to be found. Alarmed that perhaps their secret had been found out, Charlie contacted Veld to try and nip any slander or libel in the bud, but Veld already knew. Charlie's lover had died suddenly, unexpectedly, of a heart condition even Charlie hadn't been aware of. Tegwin had been taken to a nearby orphanage. Charlie would never see her again.

That wasn't good enough. Many things could be said for the Turks, but never that they abandoned their families. Charlie pleaded with Veld to offer Tegwin some manner of sanctuary, for lack of a better word, within the safe walls of the ShinRa Company. After much haggling over the issue with President ShinRa, Veld finally found a workable loophole. As news of the precursors of the AVALANCHE movements grew more and more aggressive, it seemed that there would be a need for more members of the Department of Administrative Research. Family ties made recruitment into the department tricky, but wouldn't it be fascinating to raise a parentless child as a Turk? To take a child from an orphanage and steep them in the values of ShinRa for the entirety of their young life? To know that the loyalty of that Turk was so deeply rooted in them that they would never stray? Never question? Certainly the idea of unquestioned solid loyalty intrigued President Shinra, and he agreed to allow Veld his experiment.

Adopted from the orphanage only a week and a half after arriving there, Tegwin became the child of the Turks. She was trained in every field from her introduction into the family, and while Charlie's visits were still sporadic (he was, after all, 'dead' as far as the company knew), Tegwin's love for him was never shaken, and she poured her heart and soul into becoming just as legendary a Turk as her father had been.

Incidently, aside from Charlie, Veld, Reno, Rude, and Tseng, no one in the ShinRa Company ever found out that Tegwin was related to Charlie in the first place...

Adrian

Originally hailing from Gongaga, Adrian was born into a simple family with simple ideals. His mother died in childbirth, leaving him to be raised alone by his father--a swordsman who helped provide law enforcement for the little town. Serious, dedicated, and driven by his studies, Adrian grew adept at swordsmanship at a very young age, determined to surpass his father one day. Gongaga was a very small town; there was only one school, and everyone pretty much knew everyone else in the village, so when Adrian stumbld across a little redheaded girl being picked on during recess hours one day, he quickly took it upon himself to stop the injustice. Soundly silencing the bullies with his swift movements and well-placed strikes, Adrian dispatched the older students and turned to find out what they had been picking on the little girl about. She explained that her mother was unmarried, and her father was never around, and the older children saw fit to fault her for that. Her plight struck a chord in Adrian, who had always had an appreciation for others who bore the hardships of single-parent family life. While he was a full three years the girl's senior, the two became fast friends, and she never again had to worry about being bullied on school grounds. But the pleasant days of his childhood would not last. The little girl's mother died within a year of their meeting, and Adrian was saddened to see her sent off to an orphanage in Nibelheim (as Gongaga was far too small of a town to house an orphanage). Having no means to keep in touch with the girl, he expected they would never meet again.

Several years passed, and Adrian continued his training under his father, growing more and more skilled each day. But like his friendship with the little redheaded girl, it seemed that this, too, would be cut short. Adrian's father was killed on the job one night when a store robbery turned violent; shot in the head, he died instantly and painlessly, but Adrian was left with a feeling of unfinished dissatisfaction in his life--he would never fully learn his father's skill and would thus never be able to surpass him or pass his teachings on. At the tender age of thirteen, Adrian would be faced with a tough decision: either try and make a living on his own with no guardian, or be shipped off to the orphanage in Nibelheim. Supposing that there was more honor to be had in forging one's life for oneself, Adrian chose to remain in his father's house, doing odd jobs around the village to make ends meet. It was hard work, but he was happy knowing that his father would be proud of his efforts.

A generally gentle and amiable fellow, Adrian was well-liked by his neighbors, and was friends with most of the villagers. Raised to value honor, virtue, and loyalty above all things, Adrian did not take unfairness lightly. So when one of his friends was kidnapped by a rebel group and held hostage, Adrian went to retrieve him without hesitation, enraged that anyone would dare endanger a comrade. In his anger, he lost control and single-handedly killed every man guarding the stronghold where his friend as imprisoned. Suddenly, his motives were unimportant in light of the massacre at his hands, and he was apprehended and thrown in jail, never to live the life of a free man again. News of the crazed swordsman who had killed an entire rebel squad spread like wildfire through the media, and caught the attention of a particular young redheaded girl in Midgar. Upon seeing images of the imprisoned man, Tegwin was shocked to recognize him as Adrian, the little boy from Gongaga she had known so many years ago. Knowing that he would never be freed after commiting such a crime, Tegwin pleaded with Veld to do something to offer some kind of sanctuary to the captive swordsman. Impressed by tales of Adrian's skill, and intrigued by Tegwin's past ties to him, Veld decided to fulfill Tegwin's request. Adrian was offered a position in ShinRa's Department of Administrative Research in early 1988. Recognizing his recruiter as none other than the little girl he had known so long ago, Adrian quickly accepted the offer, and never looked back.

Swearing his loyalties to ShinRa and the Turks who had saved him from a life behind bars, Adrian pledged his sword and his life to Veld, carrying out his missions with deadly swiftness and accuracy. His friendship with Tegwin was rekindled, and while his fielty is sworn to the Turks in general, it is and always will be sworn to her in particular. He found it ironically fitting that the little girl he rescued from injustice on a playground years ago would be the one to save him from a life of imprisonment as an adult. Funny the way things tended to work out, he often mused, and how friendships had an odd way of coming full circle.

Andrew, Rafe, and Rosalind

Not long after Reno and Rude's induction into the Turks, things began to get sticky for ShinRa. With the discovery of the profitability of mako energy, the company began to grow, and its harvesting of natural mako began to draw attention. Though the team consisted of four very capable field agents in addition to Tseng behind a desk in the office, the Department of Administrative Research did not see the attack coming when AVALANCHE's predecessors unleashed an all-out assault on the company itself, howling about how ShinRa was going to destroy the planet. HQ was mostly unharmed, but several of the smaller facilities under the ShinRa umbrella were lost that day, along with many factory workers' lives. At that time, Veld knew things were going to do nothing but grow more and more difficult for his Turks, and decided to begin expanding their ranks.

Recruitment for the Turks was never done in a traditional manner once they ceased to be merely a recon department. When they turned from datamining to ShinRa's most capable line of defense, things were done in a much less public manner. In late 1990, after being promoted to second-in-command under Tseng, Reno scouted the talents of a young redhead from Junon (and by 'scouted' I mean incarcerated him after catching him trying to steal a motorcycle from the company garage), around the same time that a speedy ex-bodyguard of the infamous Don Corneo was pulled in for training. Along with a gunslinger girl whose father was a professor at the military academy, the three youths made up the first new batch of Turks. Rosalind was the oldest of the three, and was in fact older than her two teachers, however the fact that her tutors were younger than her didn't break Rosalind's strict and severe code of professional discipline. Reno and Tseng were still her honorable senpai, regardless of her two-year age advantage.

Andrew and Rafe were both trained by Reno, since he seemed to be the only one who really 'got' them in the first place. The boys were brash, reckless, and gung-ho, and so Reno's strict and brutal--if not unorthodox--methods were about the only thing that got through the thick skulls of the rookies. Rosalind, however, bounced back and forth between training with Reno and training with Tseng, and was handled very differently. Needless to say that while all three rookies turned out to be excellent Turks in their own way, their work ethics varied drastically. Whereas Andrew and Rafe bucked authority and preferred to do things their own way, Rosalind followed the book to the letter. Rafe even began bucking uniform regulations along with his tutor, and Tseng gave up reprimanding the two of them after about two weeks with no luck. Tseng had long ago stopped trying to get Reno to tuck his shirt in, and he hadn't appreciated his deputy condoning such sloppiness with the new recruits, but in the long run the most important thing was that the new Turks be able to get the job done. Tseng supposed he could overlook the lack of necktie for the sake of Reno's flawless field record, and only hoped that Reno's accuracy and dedication would rub off on the rookies along with his foul mouth and slovenly wardrobe.

Valerie and Alexander

While Reno was training Andrew and Rafe, Tseng was busy training two additional recruits. Alexander, a young man with the unusual talent of wielding nunchaku, and Valerie, who was deadly accurate with her throwing knives, were being trained simultaneously with the other rookies, but with a slightly different purpose. They were to serve as partners to Tegwin and Adrian. While the Turks often worked as a full group when out in the field, Veld had decided it might be a good idea to have each one assigned a partner to cover them specifically. Since Reno and Rude had been friends for years and already worked seamlessly together, it only seemed logical to assign them to guard one another's blind spots. Alex was to be assigned to partner with Tegwin, and Val with Adrian, so that each rookie would be working with a veteran. Once training was complete, the regimen of Turks numbered at seven, partnering the level-headed Rosalind with the hotblooded Andrew, and leaving the loose canon Rafe to work alone until a suitable partner was recruited into the ranks, as Tseng rarely went into the field and thus was not assigned a partner until many years later.

Samantha

A few months after the successful 'graduation' of the first five rookies, Samantha joined the ranks of the Turks. Coming from a rich family in Mideel, Samantha wasn't exactly the first image that came to mind when one conjured an image of the Turks. She was the youngest on the roster aside from Tegwin, with more zeal than anyone really knew what to do with. But her energy was well-placed, and her skill with a shotgun unmatched. Growing up the only daughter of a wealthy old businessman, Samantha wanted desperately to get away from the sheltered life her father had offered her. Learning of her skill with rifles, Veld sought to recruit her into the Turks, as long-distance weaponry would surely prove useful in what was sure to be a significant battle against terrorist organizations that would condemn ShinRa for their use of mako technnology.

Samantha took to Turk-dom like a fish to water, her ardor encouraging her coworkers and her friendly, boisterous nature making her easy to work with, if not somewhat ridiculous. She was a surprisingly good match to partner with Rafe, their combined enthusiasm for their work making them an unstoppable force.

Cyr and Durman

It would be January of 1992 before any more Turks were hired into the department. A mercenary from the town of Icicle, Cyr was just what the doctor ordered when Fuhito and his Ravens infiltrated the city and put the other Turks in danger. Making a flashy debut by coming to the rescue of the away team, Cyr was thrown headlong into her first mission even before her first official day on the job. Similarly her partner Durman, an ex-detective from Costa del Sol, had proven himself a most useful addition to the team by providing information from channels the rest of the team had not thought to check. Though these two were officially assigned as partners to one another, they were both used to working alone and as such often split up to execute the missions they were assigned to.

Elena

The most recent addition to the Turks, young Elena didn't enter the scene until 1997. She was, in fact, still in high school at the time, attending the military academy where her father taught. She had always regarded the Turks with a feeling of disdain and resentment, since her elder sister Rosalind had joined their ranks several years prior and excelled in her position. Feeling shunted and outdone, Elena regarded her sister and all of the Department of Administrative Research with loathing. Despite her youth, however, Elena was somewhat well-known in school; she had won several awards for close-combat skills, and was very adept with a pistol. Despite her small stature and tendency toward bubbleheadedness, nobody messed with little Elena unless they wanted to get punched. Having been present for many of the training excercises her sister had gone through, Elena managed to develop something of a distant schoolgirl crush on Tseng.

After the Turks' battle with Zirconiade, all but Rude, Reno, and Tseng were thought dead, and while Elena was affected by the supposed death of her elder sister, she was perhaps not nearly as upset over the whole thing as people might have expected. She and Rosalind had never been close, after all. And so the Turks were down to three for a time, and Elena was stuck simply adoring Tseng from afar...until he approached her in late 1997 to ask her to fill in for a man down on a mission. Stricken with the opportunity to step up to the plate in her sister's absence, Elena didn't hesitate to take Tseng up on his offer. Despite her aversions to following in her sister's footsteps, Elena refused to pass up the opportunity to get close to Tseng and show him what she was made of and that she could be just as good a Turk as Rosalind.

Forced to drop her final semester of high school (although her records show her as having graduated early--it was good to have a father in the business), Elena donned the Turk suit with gusto, and joined the home team in Rosalind's place as the team's gunner. When she learned that her sister and the other Turks had in fact not died during that final mission against Zirconiade, Elena was worried for a moment that her position would be usurped, and put forth every effort to prove herself useful to Tseng and her other seniors. After being captured by Don Corneo, Elena was afraid that she had just destroyed any rapport she had managed to gain, however when Rude and Reno came to her rescue posthaste, Elena knew she had won herself her own place in the ranks.

In Summation

And so while a lot of fans seem to be under the impression that 'Department of Administrative Research' is simply a codename or a misnomer to throw the public off from what the Turks truly are, we the authors find it much more sensible to assume that there actually was a time when the name was apt, and suited the department as its duties were assigned. However, as time went on, ShinRa needed less an information-gathering unit and more a specialized combat squad. The Turks served well as both, and while the transition from spy to secret service might have proved a rocky one for those team members who were present for the change, the change was made nonetheless. It made little sense to assume that Turks were assassins from the get-go, in our opinion. And even if they were, why would ShinRa bother to come up with a big cover-scheme for a group of ninjalike assassins, unless they had once been out in the open as a department in the first place? It is much easier to wear a professional face on one side of a coin and a secret identity on the other, true, but when the entire identity was secret to begin with, why bother with a coverup at all? It's far too non sequitur for a huge corporation like ShinRa to jump through such hoops, and what's more--President ShinRa hated the Turks. Unless they had, at one time, proven to be a useful bureaucratical department, it's unlikely he would have given them a department name or significant funding in the first place.

It is our belief that the Turks began humbly, as simple paper-pushers and dataminers (who, coincidentally, happened to know a thing or two about kicking ass), and the needs of the company slowly required them to shift from being desk-monkeys and information surfers to special combat forces and, ultimately, ShinRa's best defense against the war with AVALANCHE to come. Turks don't take their job lightly, and they don't give up, regardless of how hard, hopeless, or heartless the mission might seem. And while their loyalties may lie with ShinRa on the surface, their true colors bind them to each other and no one else; when push comes to shove, the Turks are a family before they are part of a corporation, and in that lies their unique ability to come through victorious every time.

"When we take a job, we see it through to success no matter what. That's what makes us Turks."