Kelldor Memorial Center for Personal Enrichment

On Akiton, across the street from the Crimson Forum in Arl’s historic district, a golden citadel gleams. Once an example of Pre-Gap architecture, the structure’s colonnades and towers have since been remodeled. Thanks to the structure’s current proprietors, a nano-diamond emulsion sparkles on every surface, white Jabaskan glowsilk festoons every spire, and rare plants decorate each spacious courtyard, all open to pilgrims seeking the path to prosperity. Tourists might mistake the building for an AbadarCorp temple, and those who question the white-clad greeters can easily confuse the message they offer with that of the Golden Vault.
The Kelldor Memorial Center for Personal Enrichment calls itself a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating the public on fiscal responsibility, offering personal financial counseling and communal learning opportunities to aspirants of all species and creeds. Their entry-level courses cover the fundamentals of building wealth, including cash management, investment, and resource conservation. They also teach the imprudence of charitable donations. To access these classes, a student must pay a modest monthly membership fee and perform a few hours of volunteer service. Even the destitute can sign a contract allowing members to lend capital to cover dues. With low interest rates and involuntary employment clauses, even the most impoverished newcomers can find a way to compensate their benefactors.
As members develop their business acumen, they gain access to higher ranks of membership that offer more advanced classes and greater prestige—at higher fees. The Kelldor Memorial Center counts Akiton’s most successful entrepreneurs among its upper echelons, making it an ideal forum for high-stakes negotiations among associates who have achieved the top tier of membership: the rank of prophet. These richly dressed individuals strut about the memorial center, giving fresh recruits an eyeful of the extravagance that awaits them.
By the time members have met the service and monetary commitments required to reach the tenth of sixteen membership tiers, the center’s money-managing tips take a turn toward the bizarre. Lessons on financial planning give way to lifestyle sermons on the advantages of wearing white clothing and adhering to specific dietary restrictions. Members are advised to avoid physical contact with those unaffiliated with the center, abstain from sexual activity, and deny themselves even the most basic comforts as the accumulation of wealth overshadows all other desires. Most of those who reach this rank are too deeply invested to risk losing their station over a few dubiously beneficial practices, and in time they fully embrace these tenets, encouraging others to follow suit.
Of the hundreds of thousands who flock to the Kelldor Memorial Center each year, only a handful ever manage to invest the millions of credits needed to reach the rank of prophet. At this level, hopefuls enter the lavishly inlaid golden doors that block the building’s upper chambers, going to an austere room to meet the center’s founder, High Prophet Luwin Carel Dynasi (LN male Human envoy). This middle-aged man keeps his handsome face out of the limelight as much as possible, but he is one of the savviest entrepreneurs in The Pact Worlds. He is also the head of an ancient religion dating to pre-Gap Golarion. As he reveals, all the Kelldor Memorial Center’s teachings derive from the dream journal of the fortune-teller Kalistrade, who espoused the accumulation of wealth as a necessary preparation for some untold future event, which ends with Luwin and his fellows “owning” the known galaxy. Luwin invites each member to join him in this enterprise as a fellow Kalistocrat. Acceptance of this honor marks the conclusion of a prophet’s climb through the ranks, but their pursuit of affluence continues to be a lifelong endeavor.
The Kelldor Memorial Center’s practices have been called dubious or even predatory, but the organization adheres to all laws and encourages its members to do the same. Its association with the Prophecies of Kalistrade is an open secret—Kelldor was a pre-Gap High Prophet. Despite these facts, the masses continue to hearken to the center’s promises. None can deny that the promises hold true, at least for a few. The less fortunate find themselves in dire financial straits as they mire themselves in mounting fees and compounding interest. Occasionally, the center must deal with associates defaulting on loans or attempting to terminate membership. In such cases, the center hires mercenaries to collect debts and reprimand wayward members by legal means. Compensation for these jobs is staggering; however, contractors who fail to read the fine print might later face a rude surprise when their 2-week trial membership to the Kelldor Memorial Center expires and the first fees come due.

Type

Monastery

Parent Location

Akiton