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Giovanni
Topic Started: Oct 14 2009, 06:35 PM (218 Views)
Lewis
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Antediluvian; Augustus Giovanni by diablerisation of Cappadocius in 1444

Giovanni Introduction; The upsurpers of clan Cappadocian and the youngest clan of Caine. The Giovanni are both a clan and a family. They embrace exclusively within their family (one of the many things kept within the family), and are heavily focused on two goals; money and necromantic power.

Giovanni History; Protean is a Discipline that gives the vampire the ability to adapt better to the natural world. It is strongly rooted in the idea of bringing the Beast out. The Gangrel developed this discipline as way of expanding their dominance of the natural world. It provides them with abilities to hunt and sleep in the wild, reducing their dependence on cities and other Cainites.

Renaissance Period
The ultimate goal of the clan was outlined by Augustus Giovanni after reviewing Cappadocius' original plan. Clan Giovanni acquired the bulk of its power by the hold it maintained over wraiths, so by tearing down the Shroud, the clan of Death would be able to increase its power beyond conception. Giovanni outlined plans to do so, with the most difficult goal being the acquisition of vast numbers of souls to enact the necromantic rituals necessary.
From 1528 onwards, the Giovanni were basically left alone to pursue their goals. By opting out from the increasingly hot Camarilla/Sabbat wars, their resources were devoted to three goals: increasing necromantic knowledge, acquiring additional financial clout, and eliminating the remaining Cappadocians and Lamia. Each of these goals tied back into their eventual plan to tear down the Shroud: Necromantic knowledge to acquire the souls, finance to increase the soul supply by buying slaves and engineering economic disasters, and eliminating Cappadocians to keep the only possible squealers tightly shut.
During this period, the Giovanni involved themselves in a variety of occult activities, primary through the clan's notorious scholar Ambrogino Giovanni. At the same time, the Giovanni made bargains with entities like the Capuchin to acquire Necromantic information.

Final Nights
In the beginning of the twentieth century, the Giovanni were riding high. They expanded the clan into other families (notably the Milliners, della Pasaglia, Pisanob and Ghiberti), wiped out the last of the Cappadocians and their Lamia protectors, and prepared to rend the Shroud and bring the dead to the living.
By the end of the century, things had gone pear shaped. Mysterious vampires, the Harbingers of Skulls, claimed vengeance on the clan for reasons unknown; the Sixth Great Maelstrom shredded Wraith Society; and the apocalyptic events of the Week of Nightmare destroyed their spiritual assets.
As the Final Nights ran out, the Giovanni began to wonder if maybe they'd made a mistake. Maybe Augustus Giovanni had underestimated the Antediluvians; maybe the dead would become more potent if the Shroud were pulled down; maybe Caine was real and in the end all of these petty plays and power moves had been nothing but a diversion until Gehenna.

Giovanni Culture; In many ways, the Giovanni are a Ghoul Family with less visibly disgusting parts. This doesn't mean the Giovanni aren't as warped as the Bratovitch clan; the giovanni are repulsive and degenerate in a more subtle manner.
Effective Giovanni are sadistic Giovanni. Controlling Wraiths means acquiring fine control over a variety of psychological levers (understanding passions and fetters) and then ruthless manipulating these tools to make a spirit do what you want. The Giovanni have been sadistic, manipulative and vicious since before the time of Christ, and it bleeds out into everything else they do. The outer shell of the Giovanni clan, the public face is less visibly cruel and horrid, but only because these vampires are explicitly tasked to deal with the outside world.
The most notorious example of this bleed off is the Giovanni Proxy Kiss. Giovanni make an art out of ghouling, since ghouling is a rite of passage for the Giovanni - ghouling means that the Giovanni is now part of the people who make the family work. Not necessarily a mover and shaker, but something akin to a made man: the Masquerade is pulled back and the truth about vampires is revealed. Giovanni tend to make Proxy Kisses aesthetic efforts, and take a point in pride in producing especially memorable or mind-destroying ones - blood received via fellatio, blasphemous masses and the like are all popular choices.
The sadism and weirdness of Giovanni internal culture is enhanced by its incestuous nature. Giovanni can spend the majority of their lives interacting with nobody except other Giovanni, and the resulting insularity breeds additional problems. The Giovanni are, in particular, arrogant and prone to underestimating the world around them.

Giovanni Embrace; Embraces
The Giovanni do not embrace outside of the family; nor do they embrace without permission. Not if they know what's good for them at least.
The Embrace is a reward which is almost always givin after a period of ghouldom known as the Proxy Kiss. Often it is a kind of promotion for good service.
More so than other clans, the Giovanni actively consider factors like generation in the embrace. Being embraced by a lower-generation clan member is considered a akin to a performance bonus.
While not uncommon, it is frowned upon to Embrace another of your own mortal family. This would encourage nepotism, and Giovanni much prefer to have the loyalty of their Neonates as divided as possible within the family. For example, while Agatha Milliner might put her own grandson forward for the Embrace, it is much more likely that Stefano Giovanni does the deed. Even better for the Clan if Agatha and Stefano are rivals - the neonate now has loyalty to his own grandmother and his own sire, which forces (somewhat) the two elders to avoid plotting against the other, lest the new childe betray either of them.

Giovanni Disciplines; Dominate, Necromancy, Potence

Dominate; Dominate is a Discipline that overwhelms another person's mind with the vampire's will, forcing victims to think or act according to the vampire's decree. While undeniably powerful, its use almost always adheres to two important restrictions: the user must meet the eyes of the target and must speak in language that is clearly heard and understood by the target. Furthermore, this Discipline cannot be used upon Cainites of lower generation and cannot force someone to be self-destructive or defy their Nature. Using Dominate is often considered very heavy-handed, hardly appropriate within what passes for polite vampiric society, but it is also favored by those of age and status as a efficient means of asserting their authority.

Necromancy; Necromancy is a form of blood magic followed primarily by the Giovanni clan and, oddly enough, the Samedi. The Harbingers of Skulls and the alien Nagaraja bloodlines also have a penchant for it. The blood magic style itself could be said to be an evolution and fusion of the Cappadocian's earlier discipline of Mortis (as writen up in the revised Dark Ages: Vampire setting) and the Giovanni's trademark Nigrimancy.

Potence; Potence is Discipline that grants the vampires supernatural strength. Each dot grants an automatic success on any rolls involving Strength, and does not require activation.
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