The Kortos Consortium is a guild of merchants that controls a significant part of the trade between the towns of Diobel and Absalom. Its managers are also the chief political rivals of the teriarch, Lord Avid of House Arnsen. While on the surface the Kortos Consortium is an open merchant's collective, accepting anyone willing to pay dues, it is in fact a semi-covert crime syndicate specializing in running contraband in and out of Absalom. Many of the organization's members currently hold elected office, or have high social positions in the port town of Diobel, which enables them to reach even higher levels of success in their shady business endeavors. Their positions of authority enable them to actively persecute those not affiliated with the Consortium, and "righteously" turn smugglers ov