About Ilberd

[Dillia]

What do we know about him? Other than that he was an mercenary originally from Ala Mhigo. Does he have any prior connections to the royalists or the monitarists?

Since it was pretty heavily implied he has some off-the-books interests I am trying to speculate on his motives. I can see a few possibilities for his back handed behavior.
1) He is using his position in the Crystal Braves to work towards rearming the refugees from Ala Mhigo for a possible attempt to (unlikely) take back their homeland, or (more likely) take what they feel they are owed from Ul’dah.
2) He has a prior loyalty to one faction or the other in Ul’dah and is trying to put swords in the right place to see his friends come out ahead in the coming conflict.
3) Similar to 2, he has a vendetta against a member (or members) of the council and is trying to put swords in the right place to make sure they do not come out ahead in the coming conflict.
4) He is just plain greedy and is abusing his power to line his own pockets so he can come out ahead, regardless of the events of the coming conflicts.
5) He can see the trouble brewing and is trying to make sure that when the dust settles, the Ala Mhigans are in a position to claim Ul’dah as their own.

I may be reading him completely wrong, but really get the impression that he has a big interest in who sits on the throne of Ul’dah and is actively working to manipulate it

[FJerome]

I'm going with;

6) He has friends among the currently stranded Garlean troops, many of which were forcibly conscripted from Ala Mhigo, and is just trying to get supplies to them on the sly so they don't starve.

[Dillia]

I'm going with;

6) He has friends among the currently stranded Garlean troops, many of which were forcibly conscripted from Ala Mhigo, and is just trying to get supplies to them on the sly so they don't starve.

That is a very good point, and one that I had not thought of. If that is the case then it would make him a traitor in the eyes of most. Providing supplies to the Garlean troops, Ala Mhigan or not, while they still wear the imperial uniform would be enough to have him expelled from the Braves and arrested at the very least.

[Nalien]

7) The events went about exactly as he described it and he is a red herring. The missing supplies are missing because word of the Crystal Braves plans was leaked before he got there. Someone else is the traitor and informed the traders of the Crystal Braves plan, resulting in Ilberd being suspicious.

Personally, I'm hoping F'lhaminn is supplying the enemy with information (she stands at the bar right in front of where we're informed of most Crystal Braves plans). Why? Well, Niellefresne. He is still somehow relevant and they've said they'll clear up his story eventually. If he is effectively in a coma in Ul'dah, it wouldn't be massively difficult for certain groups to get to him and use him as a bargaining chip to extort information out of F'lhaminn. I mean really, the Songstress of Ul'dah reappears after all these years, working for the Crystal Braves no less, and nobody in Ul'dah is going to try and use her history against her to gain an advantage with the Crystal Braves?

[Phyllo]

snip

There's a tiny little problem in your theory, niellefresne isn't in coma, he is dead.
He's completely dead however his body cannot decay because some special artifact I forgot was placed on him after his death, the power from the artifact then moved from it to his body, rendering it unable to decay "forever" technically (goldsmith v1 questline).

[Wadoka]

...the bloodbath which would start when Thancred found out someone was threatening F'lhaminn, would make Order 66 look like a tea party.

[myahele]

Hopefully he's just a red herring to distract us.

Still, isn't there a Alphinaud Levelieur in Tactics that's a villain there? While I doubt Alphinaud will become a bad guy, I do wonder if he'll end up being betrayed and accused of ___ which will lead to the disbandment of the crystal braves and him being branded as somebody to not trust(which is a lie)