I was reading the TGA forums the other day, and came across an interesting point. The point was this: if Blind can disguise himself, couldn't Ganon, with the power of gold, be able to disguise himself? The interesting theory was this: when Ganondorf got the Triforce of Power in OoT, it turned him into a form that reflected his heart, the piglike Ganon form. But Ganon disguised himself with his former Ganondorf form. So when we see Ganondorf in OoT, this is really Ganon disguising himself as Ganondorf. Ganon is the true form, and he only reveals it when he wants to intimidate his opponents. This flips around what we usually think - that Ganon is stuck in his pig form, and can't change back if he wants to. And one doesn't normally think of Ganon disguising his piglike form with his previous, Gerudo, form.

Another interesting theory was that Ganondorf had a moon pearl in OoT - until his tower collapsed, and the pearl was destroyed. Or perhaps Ganondorf stopped using the pearl.

I think, as agents of Ganon, Blind and Agahnim are given special powers. I hold that it is Ganon transforming everybody, using the Triforce. He need not transform his own servants, unless he wants to make them into more fearsome monsters.

Going back to the thieves in ALttP. Recall that whoever wrote the ALttP manual knew Ganondorf was the King of Thieves. Perhaps, when he wrote this, he wasn't thinking about the Gerudo at all, but the current remnants of thieves. He envisioned Ganondorf as the leader of a highly organized army of male thieves.

So were the ancestors of the thieves in ALttP once associated with Ganondorf? I find it likely. Ganondorf may have had many followers other than the Gerudo, followers who we never see because Link is busy dungeon hopping. Who's to say that Ganondorf stormed Hyrule Castle with only Gerudo? He could have gathered his army of thieves together and attacked the castle. Yet Ganondorf is still king of the Gerudo thieves. This brings up difficulties - the Gerudo are known to dislike men. They wouldn't have allowed Ganondorf to openly ally with separate bands of thieves made up of men. So perhaps Ganondorf backstabbed the Gerudo, and built armies of non-Gerudo thieves in preparation for taking over the world. After Ganondorf got the Triforce of Power, the Gerudo continued to follow him, but Ganondorf seems to have more Hyrulians openly following him. It seems the Gerudo were forced to accept whatever Ganondorf did - indeed, how could they now oppose him? And not all the Gerudo were happy with Ganondorf - we see Gerudo dancing with the rest of the Hyrulians in OoT's ending.

When Ganon's army lost the Imprisoning War, any of his followers would have been discredited and/or destroyed. This explains why the thieves in ALttP are organized in disparate little bands. But as for why they are in the Lost Woods - perhaps it was just the safest place to have a hideout. Safer than in Kakariko, at any rate. The King probably drove them out when he found out that thieves were headquartered there. I don't think Kakariko could have ever been a village soley made up of thieves. In OoT, Kakariko was originally a Sheikah village before Impa opened it up to the common people. Kakariko in ALttP was obviously founded in memory of the original village. So Kakariko, in OoT and ALttP, has always served as a kind of "fiefdom" of the Royal Family.