 A new criminal faction arrived in Elite Dangerous alongside Update 11, a criminal faction so significant that Frontier gave them an entry in the game's codecs. There's some very odd features to this new faction and their placement in the game is even weirder. Having spent a couple of days investigating their home system, here's everything we know so far about the consortium. To make sure you don't miss any of our videos hit like and subscribe, remember to click the little bell icon and select all notifications and to help directly support this channel you can also join our Patreon via the link in the video description. If you perused the patch notes for the much anticipated Update 11 to Elite Dangerous Odyssey and Horizons then you may have noticed that the games oft ignored codecs received some changes and additions. Alongside additions to reflect the new fleet carrier concourse services and functionality entries were also added or amended to reflect the generation ships, the pilots federation, the guardians and a new entry was added for a criminal organisation known simply as the consortium. If you've never looked at the in-game codecs knowledge base it's quite selective about what it reflects from the games lore. There are numerous criminal factions in Elite Dangerous, in fact Interstellar Crime and its many perpetrators are one of the many churning engines of the Elite background simulation but only the mysterious consortium has been deemed worthy enough for Frontier to give it a codecs entry all it's own. According to the codecs the consortium was founded sometime around 200 years before the events of Elite Dangerous and is described as being a successful and powerful crime syndicate specializing in blackmail theft and the production and trafficking of illegal drugs. Despite all these noteworthy criminal underworld plus points a cursory search across Google and through the Elite Dangerous Wiki can find no prior mention of the consortium in Elite lore before now, in short it's been retrofitted to the universe. So to recap a fairly ancient and powerful crime syndicate retrofitted to the game lengthy codecs entry added to flesh out the lore for the aforementioned syndicate pointing at it. The story however gets more mysterious the consortium having been added to the codecs has also been added as an NPC faction to the game and placed in a system that in and of itself is not that unusual it's where the consortium has been placed that makes it even more intriguing. Rather than being placed right in the centre of the bubble or colonia close to where they can maximise their profits or cause the most damage the consortium has been placed in a system some 4400 light years north of the bubble in the middle of a very picturesque nebula. What's more they have been placed in a system with around 20 planetary settlements most of which appear to be agricultural and mining based in nature and one asteroid or starport none of which they own. Everything in the extraction economy system they inhabit is owned by another NPC faction called the Interstellar Mining Corps no prizes for guessing what they specialise in and there appears to be nothing in the surrounding systems that either faction can expand into. In essence as best I can determine if the consortium were of a mind to overrun their more industrious and agrarian neighbour they couldn't then expand beyond their own single system nebula bound micro bubble. Before making this video I took a trip out to the system in question and have been there now for a couple of days. The system in question is NGC 6188 Sector LC-V C2-28. It's fairly unremarkable nice views pretty much wherever you go due to the surrounding nebula lots of odyssey surface missions from the settlements and starport and at the time of recording a compromised nav beacon offering lots of space based pew pew opportunity but not much else to speak of nothing obvious anyway. Where it's situated in one of humanity's bubbles in the galaxy it would be completely unworthy of note except that it isn't it's out completely on it's own with a criminal faction in it that is such a big deal it has a codex entry and yet owns no property whatsoever and can't expand anywhere if it did. So why have Frontier added the consortium to the game and why have they added them 4 and a half thousand light years away from the bubble honestly your guess is as good as mine. The most obvious answer I can concoct is that maybe the consortium is the next big antagonist to enter onto the galactic stage for reasons of plot. With the azimuth saga likely drawing to a conclusion sometime soon and the marlinist station bombers now having been royally squished there's definitely the opportunity on the horizon for a catch all troublemaker to enter the fray a powerful and mysterious criminal organization is a perfect plot maguffin any respective palpatine puppeteer or dungeon master at Frontier can have them do anything they so desire in whatever manner they concoct their criminals they do stuff for criminal reasons. Left to their own devices I'm not sure whether the consortium have the required level of activity needed to expand into the system from whatever invisible corner they inhabit influence wise the interstellar mining core holds most of the cards right now and generally speaking 4 and a half thousand light years is too far away from the player base for anything but a concerted and deliberate effort to affect any change it's certainly not going to happen accidentally. Of course if a player were looking for a faction based cause to call their own the consortium would I'm sure love to hear from you there's definitely a situation vacant if the consortium were to expand into the whole system their presence would make for quite a nice out of town consequence free materials shopping mall kind of like the crystal forests of horizons but for on foot mats and with more killing and random stealing somewhat of a beacon to any passing interstellar vikings maybe but maybe I'm missing something have you heard whispers of the consortium's meddling's before do you have a theory as to why frontier have placed them out in the black with some obviously very squishy neighbors do let us know in the comments below that's it for now thanks very much for watching if you enjoyed this video consider subscribing to the channel and maybe take a look at one of our other videos linked on screen right now.