Consortium

The Consortium, also simply known as the Organization, is a secret and global society mentioned in the Dead Island series, loosely controlled by their leadership known as Eschaton, and serve as the series' unseen antagonists, having put into motion the events of a majority of the series. While only briefly referenced by several characters, various collectible files and emails throughout the series paint the Consortium as a massive organization with countless agents in high places, including the government, military, and even the political spectrum, allowing them massive resources and capital to fulfil their objectives.

History and Preparations on Banoi

While the origins and history of the organization still remain largely a mystery, their name implies that they are an assortment of various companies and organizations, including the Palm Garden Order, working together to achieve common objectives, namely increasing their wealth and power. Further details can be found within Dead Island: The Book, which describe the nature of the organization as being comprised of and controlled by a secret assortment of the wealthiest individuals in the world primarily motivated by the investment of research and development in nearly every branch of science towards the creation of new weapons for use in warfare, regardless of what country or force would deploy such weapons, in order to ultimately increase their ill-gained fortune.

While the organization doesn't "officially" exist since there is nothing about them on record, their agents are nonetheless revealed to be stationed nearly everywhere throughout the world and within the political spectrum, with their eyes and ears always on the lookout for additional opportunities to increase their power and wealth by means of exploiting global conflicts, tragedies, and catastrophes, even if that means engineering such conflicts for the sake of profit. They are more than willing to resort to highly unethical and amoral research, often revolving around the purposes of manufacturing and selling biological weapons, and even commit criminal acts on a massive scale to obtain their goals.

Specifically by the start of the series, the organization, after being alerted by theirs labs in the area, seeks to weaponize a highly mutated form of the Kuru disease that began to plague the native tribes within the Banoi Archipelago; a disease born from the cannibalistic tendencies of those same tribes occupying the islands. Upon further discussions within the organization, the Consortium's leadership body, Eschaton, realized that this disease is very similar to their prior discoveries in the human DNA strand and could be instrumental towards their own operations in preventing future biological disasters from occurring on a much wider scale and ordered for a weaponized version to be produced to further advance their research.

The Consortium eagerly accepted their orders, but they also had plans and ambitions of their own that were much more self-serving. Specifically, they aimed to exploit their orders to create a weaponized version of the disease for their employers, but also planned to subsequently sell their own versions to military organizations throughout the globe. Projecting the profits that could be secured by selling a weaponized version of the disease to be in the billions, the Consortium went to great lengths to develop and test such a weapon.

With their orders and seeing the archipelago as a highly lucrative opportunity, the Consortium mobilized several labs to be be used by GeoPharm, a scientific research corporation under their control, to conduct inhumane experiments, including human testing, to discover the full potential of the virus. The labs were mainly built in secluded locations in order to ensure the highly unethical and illegal nature of the research and experiments were kept away from the public eye. These labs were originally built by GeoPharm's original, and much more ethical, founders as a means to research and eventually cure the fatal diseases that plagued the archipelago, specifically the indigenous tribes, but once GeoPharm was brought under the control of the Consortium, the goals and visions of these labs radically diverted towards researching the diseases for the use of biological weapons.

Eventually, after several of the first known infected from the highland tribes were captured and studied within the labs per the Consortium's orders, the researchers discovered the true cause of the recent disease plague is an extremely deadly virus that has mutated beyond anything on medical record. Eventually classified by the Consortium as Pathogen HK, the virus is comprised of a much stronger and faster variant of Stage 2 Kuru, Stage 2 HIV and others diseases that combined and mutated together over the course of many years and originated from the cannibalistic lifestyles of the local tribes, with an asymptomatic carrier of the tribe serving as patient zero. The deadly disease quickly contaminates any infected individual and kills them, leaving only their most primitive brain functions active, while the host becomes highly aggressive and prone to attack and devour any uninfected individuals seemingly out of survival instinct and could easily spread the disease to others via blood and salvia. Thus, one victim could easily start a chain reaction that could infect an entire population in mere minutes.

Greatly intrigued and unable to pass up such a viable opportunity, the Consortium assembled an international team to carry out further experiments and isolate a stable specimen of the pathogen to be weaponized. The potential of adapting this new disease into a biological weapon was seen as world-changing and highly lucrative by the Consortium, quickly becoming their top priority, and they immediately ordered for further studies to be conducted in order to asses the pathogen and begin the process of creating prototype mutagens. To this end, the organization needed to further understand the pathogen's properties, how quickly it spreads, and if it can be controlled, and began to plan out several tests in order to obtain the answers that they sought to these questions.

Equipment and teams were sent to their labs across the archipelago and preparations were even made to orchestrate outbreaks on some of the islands, as the Consortium saw them as ideal locations to test and observe the effects of the disease, mutations, and any weaponized versions they develop, seeing the economic ramifications from the resulting death and destruction to be at a minimum on islands that were isolated from the rest of the world and thus also much easier to contain and control. The outbreaks would also serve as the most ideal tests in order to asses how the disease and mutagens function once exposed to a populace, allowing the Consortium to perfect a bioweapon that would pave the way for immense profitability. However, in order for the virus to be a viable biological weapon for military organizations and applications, a vaccine would also need to be developed. To this end, the organization eventually learned through their continued experiments that a small portion of individuals, all with type O negative blood, seem to be immune to the virus and that their blood could be the instrumental key to developing a vaccine.

The Consortium then made plans to lure a handful of such individuals to the Banoi island by first using their immense resources to scan world blood records and even initiating a multi-national blood drive under a variety of banners and initiatives to cast their net even further to locate viable individuals and then invite them to the Resort on the island via various communications. A total of nine such individuals were ultimately found and selected, not only for their blood type but also because of their vigorously resistant immune systems and fitting the required demographic survival profile, namely being young, healthy, and physically fit, which increased the likelihood of them being able to fight against the infected and follow the breadcrumb trail that would be laid out by the Consortium and their agents to lead them to their labs. The selected immune were then lured to the island via invitation communications to the resort for a two week vacation, free of charge, claiming they were entered into a random drawing for the free vacation when they participated in the blood drive.

Deploying Agents

With the selected immune on the way to the island of Banoi, the Consortium began deploying their agents into place throughout the archipelago to ensure that their plans proceeded with minimal hindrances. It is implied in the prequel comic that the Consortium made dealings with the corrupt manager of the resort, Kenneth Ballard, who often used the hotel as a front for illicit and illegal activities, in order to facilitate the arrival of the immune at his resort, as he had files and photos of several of the immune in his office. Hiring and employing as their covert operative and sleeper agent, Kevin "Charon" Barrister, a notorious terrorist hacker for hire who was imprisoned in the maximum security prison near the island, and GeoPharm scientist Dr. Robert West, located in GeoPharm's laboratory in Banoi's dense jungles and away from prying eyes, the organization ordered these two to work together to create an initial prototype of the weaponized virus mutagen and lure the immune to the lab to use their blood to create a viable vaccine.

However, unknown to the Consortium, Charon had his own plans to create only the weaponized virus. Not caring about developing a corresponding vaccine, at least not until after the organization and much of the world lay in ruin, Charon planned to spread the virus on a global level as a twisted form of revenge over the organization, especially the PGO, for their greed and the role they played in the death of his father, Dr. Chase Barrister, previously the co-founder of GeoPharm before it fell under the control of the Consortium and their inhumane experiments claimed his life as well, partially to make an example out of him for his refusal to cooperate with their operations. The organization had soon set its sights on Kevin's mother as well, seeing her as a loose end needed to be tied up, and while Kevin was able to hide and protect her, it came at a cost. Charon's various logs imply that his mother was horribly mutilated, most likely as an unwilling subject in the Consortium's experiments to keep her quiet on their illegal activities, before Kevin saved her, with her pain and eventual death, alongside the loss of his father, fueling his hatred.

Kevin's notorious career as a hacker for hire working with various terrorist organizations was simply a means to get noticed by the Consortium and hired in their employ, as well as build up adequate funding for his schemes and future activities, adopting the alias of "Charon" as a symbol of his lust to ferry the souls of his father's killers to their afterlife. Pulling the last string, Charon allowed himself to get captured in order to be sentenced to the Maximum Security Prison on Banoi, which was used to house only the most notorious terrorists in the world, situating himself in an ideal environment to be hired by the Consortium for their operations on Banoi.

True to his predictions, the organization eventually sought out to hire Charon, knowing of his skills and how invaluable they could be for their plans of surveilling and luring the immune to their researchers to create a mutagen of the virus and a corresponding vaccine, promising him a considerable profit and freedom for his assistance, which he agreed to. Having effectively infiltrated the Consortium, not being recognized as the son of one of the GeoPharm's cofounders, Charon planned to create the weaponized virus and use it to destroy the organization, along with most of the world, from within as a twisted form of poetic justice. Once he secured his revenge, it is implied that Charon would then auction off the immune to the highest bidder to develop a vaccine to cure what's left of the world and then live his life, content with immense wealth and fulfilled vengeance over the people who destroyed his family.

Dead Island

Around the same time as the selected and lured nine immune stayed at the resort, the virus plague on the island of Banoi went violently out of control, no longer just infecting the highland tribes but the entire island in an outbreak and killing and reanimating thousands of tourists, resort employees, and island residents alike. The resulting social chaos added to the carnage, with the authorities being completely wiped out while bandits and criminals took advantage of the destruction to further their own desires to steal and murder without restriction. It is heavily implied that the outbreak was deliberately initiated by the Consortium, who would later be directly responsible for a second outbreak just days later, to further test the potential of the virus and lure both infected and the immune into their labs for research. Evidence to support this is the organization's equipment being moved to the islands and their agents setting contingencies in place weeks prior to the outbreak to prevent significant army intervention.

With the outbreak gaining global attention and causing worldwide panic, the Banoi Island Defense Force quarantined the archipelago and would eventually call for a nuclear strike on Banoi if the situation continued to worsen. Previously knowing this and not wanting to let all their research go to waste, the Consortium had several of their agents begin investigations into Colonel Ryder White, the officer who would ultimately authorize the use of nuclear action on Banoi if the pandemic became uncontrollable. These agents pulled strings within the government and military to set up an interview between White and one of his superiors, who presented him with several photos of people he would hypothetically be willing to execute if it meant serving and protecting his country, using the excuse of the interview being used as a test of loyalty to his nation.

Upon being presented with a picture of his wife, Emily, Ryder briefly hesitated to give his answer before ultimately complying, something that did not go unnoticed by the two observing organization agents and, thus, saw White as a viable pawn in their plans, knowing that he would hesitate to order a nuclear strike so long as his wife was in danger. As Emily worked within the maximum security prison near the island as the chief medical officer (which was also the reason she urged her husband to be stationed in Banoi), the organization made plans to ensure that she would be infected during the outbreak to delay Ryder's authorization of nuclear action and allow their operatives time to develop both a virus mutagen and vaccine.

To this end, the Consortium orchestrated an outbreak within the prison complex as well by infecting one of its outside food suppliers who attacked a guard and began a chain reaction that eventually infected the entire prison population. During the resulting chaos and riots, Charon pretended to help Emily by saving her from various inmates and infected and then secretly unlocking the security door to the barricaded laboratory they were in, which allowed an infected to get in and bite Emily before Charon killed it. Once his commanding officer declared Banoi a lost cause and should be firebombed as soon as all military personnel evacuated, White travelled to the prison to find Emily, refusing to call in the firebombers until he confirmed her safety. Eventually meeting Charon who informed the colonel of his wife's condition, White agreed to work with the hacker, despite knowing his true criminal identity and terrorist history, to save Emily. With his wife infected and Charon guiding him for his own purposes, White would do everything in his power to create a vaccine.

With more than half of the lured immune on the island claimed by the social chaos, Charon posed as Ryder White on the island's communication channels to make contact and gain the trust of the remaining four immune (Logan Carter, rapper Sam B, Xian Mei, and ex-police officer Purna Jackson) and lure them to the GeoPharm lab where Dr. West would work with them to develop a vaccine and, unknown to the immune, a prototype of the mutagen. While the immune unknowingly helped to create the mutagen with the use of patient zero of the Pathogen HK disease, Yerema, Charon remotely disabled the locks of the infected cages in the lab to kill Dr. West and the other scientists after the former stated his intention to develop a vaccine per his orders from the Consortium. Charon, who only lusted to unleash the virus across the world and did not want the scientists to create a vaccine, at least not until after he secured his revenge over the Consortium, had them killed in his first visible act of betrayal against his employers.

Charon, still posing as White over the radio, then directed the immune to obtain the mutagen from the lab, lying to them by claiming it was the vaccine, and to meet him at the prison to escape the island. With all the pieces finally in place, Charon continued to manipulate White and had him gas the immune at the prison elevator to knock them out and steal what White thought was the vaccine. White hoped to use the vaccine on his wife, but Charon, wanting to preserve the mutagen, informed the colonel that Emily was too far gone. White refused to believe this and, having learned that Charon had been impersonating him, destroyed the radio, locked Charon in the control room, and planned to leave the island with the now zombified Emily to work on a full vaccine. Improvising, Charon escaped the control room with a spare key card he had hidden away and then met with the immune and turned them against White, lying to them that the colonel was planning to nuke the entire island after leaving with his wife and the vaccine.

The resulting confrontation led to White being forced to kill the reanimated Emily, as well as Jin who released the zombified Emily to attack White, after she bit him and use the mutagen on himself, still thinking it was the vaccine. With the mutagen turning White into a superhuman infected, the immune killed the colonel and left the island with Charon in White's chopper. While the mutagen was used and destroyed with White's death, Charon now had Yerema, the source of the initial Pathogen HK plague on Banio, with him and planned to use her to continue in the experiments and spread the virus on a global level.

Dead Island: Riptide

While the mutagen developed on Banoi was destroyed with White, the Consortium saw massive potential in the resulting mutation but also recognized the complications in controlling the mutagen and were eager to implement another test in order to further research and perfect a weaponized version of the Kuru disease. Per the Consortium's orders, Charon piloted the chopper to the HMAS Avenger, a military patrol ship located off the coast of Banoi and where another Consortium operative, civilian VIP Frank Serpo, was stationed. While the ship was under the command of Lt. Colonel Samuel Hardy, Serpo's affiliation with the Consortium enabled him to control the colonel and his military forces for their own ends.

Taking the immune to the lower decks for further experiments and research, Serpo sent Yerema to another facility for specialized testing and had Charon relocated to the Consortium's headquarters, per their orders, where the hacker would be debriefed on the next steps of their plans. At this point in time, the organization was also beginning to suspect Charon had his own agenda, one that did not fully align with their plans, but were still intent on working with him given his invaluable skills towards meeting their own objectives.

Before further concrete findings could be found on the immune and they could be transported to a secure facility outside the archipelago for vaccine development, another outbreak, born from Yerema biting a solider restraining her and thus infecting him, and a monsoon caused the ship to lose control and crash near the island of Palanai. Serpo was able to evacuate from the ship in time and began to oversee the research being conducted by the resident scientist on Palanai, Dr. Kessler, who traveled to the island and took up residence to learn more and study the kuru outbreaks that have occurred intermittently throughout the archipelago for years.

Palanai was believed to be the original birthplace of the Kuru disease before raiders brought it over to Banoi, where it eventually heavily mutated into the deadly Pathogen HK variant, centuries ago. Specifically, the organization was eager to test the effects of the infected with chemical weapons, left behind in bunkers from when Japan occupied the island during World War II, to create an even stronger variation of the mutagen developed on Banoi, using Japanese research conducted during the war as the basis of these experiments.

Dr. Kessler came to the attention of Serpo and the Consortium after reading a paper authored by him and his associate, Marcus Villa, before the two had a falling out, that detailed the potential of the chemicals being combined with the various diseases that have plagued the island tribes. While Villa was unsuitable to serve as a viable pawn due to his renouncement of his previous research, Kessler, while generally viewed as a decent and ethical man by the island populace, allowed his curiosity to get the better of him and agreed to aid the Consortium and Serpo in their experiments. To serve as a viable test, the Consortium ordered Serpo to cause another outbreak, this time on Palanai island, in order to observe the progression of this new mutation, effectively sacrificing the island's entire population as guinea pigs, while also instructing him to win the trust of the immune to complete the original plan of using their blood to create a vaccine.

While it is unknown if Dr. Kessler was aware that the outbreak was a direct consequence of the Consortium's orders, he nonetheless continued in their research within his Biosphere, which also suffered an outbreak that killed all his scientists, an incident which the doctor claimed was due to the carelessness of his now deceased staff, though the immune are suspicious as to whether it was indeed simply an accident or another twisted experiment to further test the virus mutations. Further experiments on the mutagen developed on Banoi also continued with several tests being employed on human subjects within a field laboratory in Henderson while several prototype vaccines based off the initial research of the immune were developed and tested on various infected within a lab in the Quarantine Zone. The resulting mutations from these experiments were consistent with the research previously conducted by Dr. West while the vaccine test trials all resulted in horrific deaths for the test subjects, further reinforcing the need for the immune to be captured for further experiments.

With Palanai being an External Territory of the Australian Commonwealth, unlike Banoi, which was independent, the political and military contacts of the organization were also able to ensure that the military would largely stand down during this outbreak, preventing nuclear action, in order to ensure the full results of the outbreak, now combined with chemical weapon exposure, could be fully observed and tested. However, some military personnel, including Lt. Colonel Hardy, went against these orders out of morals and conscience, resulting in Hardy's death at Serpo's hands and the destruction of the military base in Henderson, all under the orders of the Consortium.

While another mutagen was created and partially tested on WHO researcher Harlow Jordan, who was captured by the research staff while she was investigating the Quarantine Zone lab and forcibly used as a test subject, these plans failed when Harlow went into a crazed rage, killed the researchers, and was ultimately killed herself by the immune after they injected the mutagen into themselves in order to defend themselves against her. Serpo was left by the immune, realizing his true nature, to be killed by the infected while they escaped the island on a boat.

While it was eventually suggested that the immune ultimately survived and went on to return to their relatively peaceful lives, the Consortium is most likely far from finished in their unethical research despite these failed attempts. With Charon, who was seemingly continuing with his own plans for global panic and destruction, still in their employ and new findings into the world-changing and immensely lucrative potential of the virus, the Consortium still saw massive promise in a weaponized virus and would likely continue to remain a massive, unseen threat to the world as they continued in their attempts and lust to develop the biological weapon.

Aftermath of the Banoi Outbreaks

In the days and months following the outbreaks that were orchestrated across the Banoi Archipelago, it would eventually be reported that the crisis and world-wide panic was ending and calming and that rescue operations were being implemented to clean up the remnants of the monsoon. The rumors of the outbreaks were ultimately discredited and subsequently covered up.

Thus, it is unknown what became of the organization and Charon and if they were ever discovered by the authorities and faced justice for their crimes. Regardless, the rest of the world would remain ignorant of the true cause of all the tragedy and destruction that occurred on Banoi and its neighboring islands.

However, due to the Consortium never succeeding in developing a vaccine, it can be assumed that they were unable to profit off the weaponized mutagens they created, and only succeeded in furthering the research of their employers, Eschaton. Thus, all their operations on the Banoi Archipelago, at least in relation to their self-serving desires for profit, were in vain.

Eschaton and Los Angeles Outbreak

The developers of Dead Island 2 revealed that the Consortium and their associated companies and pawns were simply fronts that were controlled, albeit rather loosely, by a group known as the Eschaton, the true leadership, and were meant to carry out their more dubious operations via employing a "by any and all means necessary" mindset. The purposes of Eschaton was to research Autophage, a biological doomsday clock that they discovered is encoded within the DNA of every human and would eventually cause all of humanity to devolve into zombies.

In attempt to avert this world ending event, scientist Dr. Rueben Reed mobilized the Consortium, Palm Garden Order, and Geopharm to begin researching and weaponizing the HK virus as a method of jumpstarting the autophage, albeit within a relatively small population and under somewhat controlled circumstances, as a means to ultimately discover the solution to prevent humanity's destruction. This reveals that the HK virus itself does not specifically cause humans to transform into zombies, but rather causes the autophage to trigger prematurely within its hosts and initiates zombification. The motives for Dr. Reed were to eventually use a weaponized version of HK to cause a much larger outbreak to locate strong immune, classified as Numen, so that a cure could be developed to save the rest of the planet. As only one in a million of Numen are calculated to be created within a given populace, the outbreak needed to be considerable larger than the ones in Banoi to find a suitable amount for a complete and reliable cure.

When HK was weaponized during the events on the Banoi Archipelago and seen as effective enough as a prototype and starting point for his larger plans and objectives, Dr. Reed, over fourteen years later and after continuous experiments to perfect the biological weapon, with the final product classified as the HK1 Virus, used it to cause a much larger zombie outbreak in Los Angeles to finally breed the ultimate Numen and use them to develop the cure he sought for much of his life. While Dr. Reed's motives were not motivated by greed or power and were more so a severely misguided attempt to save humanity (as he saw the death of millions of lives to save billions was worth the price), it appears that there were multiple plans, agendas, and differing motives at work within the Consortium, who were essentially regarded as tools by Eschanton to fulfil their objectives, but they also sought to exploit their orders to further their own desires for lucrative opportunities.

With this knowledge, it appears that the Consortium became a different mindset entirely from Eschanton, intent on building up their own wealth and power while carrying out orders. It is likely Eschanton was aware of this, but did not pay it much attention, viewing the Consortium as a necessary evil to work with given their immense resources and connections, so long as their own objectives were met and humanity was spared from its fate, ironically failing to see that their orders nearly paved the way for the Consortium and Charon to cause the destruction of much of the planet.

Known members

• Kevin "Charon" Barrister
• Wong
• Androv
• Goss
• Dr. Robert West
• Frank Serpo
• Dr. Kessler

Palm Garden Order

The Palm Garden Order, a global conspiracy that is mentioned in Escape Dead Island, has a probable partnership with the Consortium, given their connection to the outbreak occurring throughout the events of the game on the island of Narapela. It's likely that the PGO is one of many companies under the collective name and leadership of the Consortium.