Character from Severance by Dan Erickson
Lumon's founder, dead prophet, and corporate god — a 19th-century industrialist whose philosophy of controlling human consciousness became a religion that outlived him by two centuries.
Kier Eagan founded Lumon Industries in 1865 and ran it for 74 years. He started by making topical salves. He ended by developing a philosophical framework for controlling human consciousness that his descendants turned into a surgical procedure and a multinational corporation. His Four Tempers — Woe, Frolic, Dread, and Malice — are treated as scientific categories of human emotion on the severed floor. MDR sorts data by classifying it as WO, FC, DR, or MA. His Nine Core Principles (Vision, Verve, Wit, Cheer, Humility, Benevolence, Nimbleness, Probity, and Wiles) are recited, displayed, and enforced with the solemnity of commandments. Kier Eagan is dead. His influence is the most alive thing in the building. Every hallway quotes him. Every reward references him. The Waffle Party's four masks represent his Four Tempers. An animated version of him thanks you for completing good work. He is a CEO who became a deity through sheer institutional persistence. The horror of Kier is not that he was evil — it's that his ideas about human suffering and its management were plausible enough that smart people built a religion around them. He believed human souls needed their emotions balanced and controlled. His descendants built a knife that splits the soul in half. The lineage from philosophy to atrocity is disturbingly short.
Known only through his wax statue in the Perpetuity Wing: an elderly man with white hair, a full beard, a prominent nose, and intense blue eyes. Dark suits, dark ties. He looks like a Victorian patriarch who has very specific ideas about what your soul should be doing. His statue is the most watched object on the severed floor.
Also known as: The Founder, Kier