“Efficiency and Humanity”
The Ellsons are oldest known family in Acheron, so ancient that their history has been lost even to themselves. Ellsons own the majority of the banks in all Districts. This gives them the finances to stay in power, even in places where they are unwanted. Generationally minded, they’ve invested in mining precious stones and metals, acquiring art and artifacts, and most recently historical research. They enact their power through their banks, schools of Mathematics, and Tax Collectors - family agents trained since childhood to calculate risk and reward on a deadly level and see that debts are paid in gold or blood.
The Ellsons corporate body consists of Banking, Insurance, and investments in large companies and small businesses. The Ellsons have acquired a very diverse groups of interests, from food production to drug manufacturing. To an outside observer it seems like they acquire all their external businesses through people defaulting on their loans. Instead of selling the foreclosed businesses, they exert great effort to reorganize the businesses and hire new management. All of their businesses follow the same structure. The Ellsons have millions of indentured servants, most of whom they call interns, that they use to fill positions at various skill levels. Interns can be anyone who owes debt that they can’t pay off in cash. Some interns work for for a few days, while others can work for the rest of their lives, after which their next of kin is forced to pay off the remainder of their debt. They have also been known to take healthy children as repayment for a family's debts. These children are typically turned into Tax Collectors.
