Rep: The Consortium

The Consortium is a group of ethereal traders. (At least that is what they call themselves.) In reality these cloth wrapped energy beings are really little more than thieves and smugglers lead by their mob boss Nexus-Prince Haramad. Their main base of operations is located at Stormspire in Netherstorm, but they have smaller settlements and shops scattered all over Outland including such notable locations as Aeris Landing in Nagrand and within Mana-Tombs in Auchindoun.

One of the unique things about the Consortium is that once you reach friendly status with them you are officially considered a member and placed on the pay role. Once a month you can stop by Aeris Landing and receive your wages in the form of raw gems. The greater your reputation the better the quality and quantity of gems you will find in your Membership Benefits.

How you gain reputation with the Consortium has changes a bit over the course of the game so the options available to you are really manifold. Players usually first encounter this faction at Aeris Landing in Nagrad unless they happen to make it into Mana-Tombs first.

From Neutral to Friendly you could get reputation from:
NORMAL Mana-Tombs runs (These will get you reputation up through Honored)
Oshu'Gun Crystal Fragment turn in to Gezhe
Pair of Ivory Tusk turn in to Shadrek

Once you hit Friendly you can no longer do the Ivory Tusk or Crystal Fragments. Now is a good time to move on to either:
Obsidian Warbeads which can be farmed while working on Kurenai (Alliance) or The Mag'har (Horde)
Or the Zaxxis Insignia. which USE to be the preferred way to get you all the way to exalted.
But as I mentioned there was a change with patch 2.1.0 with the introduction of the Etherum Prision.

Now once you hit Honored you CERTAINLY want to head to Netherstorm no matter what. There you will find two quests (if you haven't been doing any of the other Consortium quests already) which will send you to Seek out Ameer. He will send you on A Mission of Mercy which will become in a sense a repeatable quest for you as you will continue to find keys and free prisoners. This will lead to the repeatable quest Ethereum Prisoner I.D. Catalogue. These keys can be farmed in three places: The Staging Area, and The Heap in Netherstorm and Bash'ar Landing in Blades Edge Mountains.

Where you chose to farm is entirely up to you. Some like the Heap as you can still get Insignias, some prefer the drop rate in Bash'ar Landing, and others prefer to stay close to all the prisoners at the Staging Area. There really is no BAD area to grind.  Each I.D badge will give you 250 rep. Opening a prison that frees a FRIENDLY prisoner will grant you 500 rep for THAT faction.

For those who like to break up the monotony of grinding there are a total of 90 quests offered that give reputation for this faction. Unfortunately a good chunk of them are tied to daily dungeons or repeatable "grinding" style quests. The majority of the quests are of course located in Nagrand and Netherstorm but don't miss out on those in Blades Edge Mountains as well.

Many consider the Ethereals one of the COOLER looking races and to be a part of them even if only by association is a lot of fun. While the "goodie bag" of gems may not mean as much now as it once did, they STILL are nice and those working on power leveling jewel crafting won't mind the extra help.

Happy Grinding!