Any
enterprise (business, scientific, or artistic) needs adequate funding to be
successful. A little money goes here, a little more there, but when budgets
dissipate, bankruptcy arrives. Accountants keep businesses running by keeping
all the numbers straight or at least give them the appearance of being
straight.
I
love the specific skill list of Victoriana, and I highly recommend players take
one or two specialty skills based on their character’s vocation. Game masters
can look at these skills and see hooks suited to draw characters into their
adventures. The Accounting specialty skill moves the story forward in ways of
which the other skills can only dream, however to perform their most potent
“magic” they have to access to their “grimoirs”: receipts, invoices,
business records and ledgers.
The
Victorian “man of business” needs the unvarnished truth of a
business’s dealings to do his job. If you’re really thorough, asking lists of
disjointed questions and looking closely into private matters is all part of a
day’s work. Accountants have a reason to be wherever they are found, provided
an open ledger is nearby.
Once an accountant gets hold of a ledger they
can be as destructive as anyone armed with a list of their target’s assets,
profits, and expenses. There can be lists of anyone they do business with, owned
property, housing, and wage records. It may be in plain itemized lists or
chaotic illegible piles of notes, but somewhere deep is all the information
anyone needs.
Irregular expenses suggest irregular
operation. If you find records of deliveries to a house in the country, regular
payments to a few known thugs, and an unusual amount of entries for “assorted
laboratory glassware” coinciding with reported grave robbings, you may have
found the necromancer.
Skill Overlap
The abilities and experience of an accountant could bleed into other Specialty
Skills in some instances. This won’t outshine the other skill’s usefulness but
it can help round out a party’s abilities if they need it.
Appraisal
A
veteran accountant could use their professional experience to see the true face
of a business’s financial state without seeing a ledger. A bankrupt enterprise
can hide behind a thriving exterior, but letters from loan companies and
bottles of second-rate ink tell the whole story.
Business
Obviously,
accountants are well traveled in the world of business. News of success and
failure, or criminal dealings pass through an accountant’s perception.
Conceal/Forgery
Whether
to dodge creditors, the income tax, police, or investors, the criminally
inclined hire unlawful accountants to cook their books. A forger good with
numbers can hide debt or success by shifting figures in columns, adding decimals,
and making up entire factories of deductible expenses.
More
lawfully, an accountant might recognize when handwriting is being imitated or
if the wrong kind of ink was used in an official document.
Intimidate
An
accountant knows how to hit a man where it hurts: his bank account. The ability
to deduce the upper classes income tax could be the only leverage available to
a middle class man of numbers.
Legal Matters
While money matters and the law are closely
tied in all human civilization, Victorian businesses sometimes hired lawyers to
audit their finances. Their audit could then be presented to courts or
officials if required. Even if an auditor isn’t a lawyer, they will have some
knowledge or taxes, fines, and financial statutes.
