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The Giovanni are a family of Vampires, and one of the outer clans of the Camarilla.
History[]
The Giovanni trace their vampiric ancestry to Cappadocius, a high priest in Enoch before the Flood. Cappadocius delved into dark necromantic magick in an effort to control death itself, believing this would help him one day escape the curse of Caine and cease being a vampire. His Cappadocian Clan eventually spread throughout Europe and the Mideast, and around 1000 AD they embraced several members of the Giovanni family of Venice, merchants who had recently gotten filthy rich off of war profiteering during the Crusades. One of these merchants was named Augustus Giovanni, and he was embraced by Cappadocius himself, becoming his right-hand man and chief enforcer. On April 4 of the year 1444 AD, Augustus Giovanni turned upon his sire in a surprise attack, and killed and diablerized his own clan's Antediluvian founder. This touched off a war between the Giovanni family and the other branches of the Cappadocian clan, a war eventually won by the Giovanni when the last surviving Cappadocian was killed in the 1600's. The Giovanni renamed the clan after themselves, and withdrew from Vampire society and clan politics, refusing to take sides in the endless struggle between the Camarilla and the Sabbat. Instead, they focused on seeking profit as bankers, financiers, and gangsters, controlling both the Mafia and the emerging stock and bond markets. But when the Sabbat attacked them during Gehenna, and Augustus Giovanni himself fell in battle, setting his own body on fire to prevent Mordred from diablerizing him, the clan joined the Camarilla for protection and revenge. When most vampires fled the Federation to found the Kingdom of Enoch, many of the Giovanni stayed behind to continue running their business and criminal empires from the shadows, where they joined the Nosferatu in being the eyes and ears of the Camarilla in the upper circles of Federation society.
Clan Traits[]
The vampires of Clan Giovanni recruit exclusively from their extended mortal family. From the time they can first talk, young Giovanni are taught that family is everything. Only the most loyal and talented members of the family are given blood to become Ghouls, and only the most loyal and talented of the Ghouls are finally embraced to become part of the vampire leaders of the clan. These apprenticeships can last decades or even centuries, and thus any Giovanni who survives to become an actual vampire is already extremely talented and experienced. To keep the wealth and secrets within the family, the mortal members of the clan practice incest, marrying off cousins and even siblings to each other to avoid having in-laws who might ask awkward questions. Among those secrets kept within the family is the continuation of the Necromantic dark magick of Cappadocius, which the Giovanni have pefected to the level where they can not only re-animate dead bodies, but they can bind and control Wraiths and other spirits of the departed. Unlike other clans, whose bite induces a stupefying pleasure in the victim, the bite of a Giovanni is extremely painful, and thus they cannot clandestinely feed on mortals outside their absolute control without risk of discovery. The Giovanni thus prefer to feed off of the freshly killed, or to kidnap victims and slowly drain them over a period of months or years, or even to take clandestine and corrupt control over medical blood banks.