The Giovanni are a clan of vampires, from White Wolf Game Studio's Vampire: The Masquerade books and role-playing games. In the newest version of White Wolf's Vampire: The Requiem role-playing game they are a bloodline of the Mekhet Clan called the San Giovanni (or Sangiovanni).
The usurpers 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 many things kept within the family), and are heavily focused on two goals: money and (necromantic) power. Unlike most vampires, the Giovanni are associated with neither the Camarilla nor the Sabbat. Much of the Giovanni symbolism is Italian, and the organization was founded in Venice (c.1000 AD). Their symbol is the Giovanni seal.
The Giovanni Family is an enigma, standing outside Kindred politics, and is the only clan to have truly done so since its inception, The Giovanni have a reputation that causes most fellow Kindred to avoid them at all costs. The clan’s taste for the morbid is something that even the stuffy Ventrue and the wild Brujah can agree is not natural. They are the only clan that knows the joy of life, the dark twilight of unlife and the bitter ashes of true death.
Founded during the Dark Ages and coming to ascendance in the Renaissance, the Family of Giovanni has since grown to include several other families. They are now stronger than they have ever been, while all around them disintegrate into dust. Still, suspicion of this clan has continued to the present day. By staying neutral in quaint battles, the Giovanni have had free rein to build their merchant empire. The clan's wealth is quite sizeable, but no one knows the exact purpose for which it employs this wealth. Few outsiders have ever taken part in the clan's necromantic rituals, so the purpose of these is likewise a mystery. Instead, suspicions and innuendoes have taken the places of facts and truths. Clan Giovanni is one of the more rigidly controlled clans and contact is constantly maintained between members of the clan.
When a Giovanni bites a living being, they deal more damage and pain than "normal". This makes it difficult to keep people alive after feeding from them. In the modern nights, the Giovanni tend to have clandestine deals with blood-banks and many feed from the newly dead to avoid this nasty inconvenience. This unique clan weakness (distinguishing itself from the old Cappadocian clan) is believed to be the result of when Giovanni diablerized Lamia and the Lamia bloodline of clan Cappadocian.
Augustus Giovanni
Augustus Giovanni is the head of the Giovanni Family, a massive merchant family who made their mark on the world by being war-profiteers from the Crusades. Originally embraced into the Cappadocian clan, on April 12,[1] 1444, he rose up against his sire, and committed the act of diablerie. His family hunted down the rest of the Cappadocian clan to extinction.
Families
Most of the Giovanni are related to one another by birth in addition to their shared vampiric lineage; a number of their families are incestuous and practice necromancy. Unlike the bite of other vampires in the World of Darkness (whose bites induce a stupefying pleasure), the bite of a Giovanni (the so-called "Giovanni Kiss") is extremely painful. Many Giovanni prefer taking blood from blood-banks or corpses (instead of living humans).
There are very few Kindred who operate outside the Giovanni family, due to the insular nature of the clan, and the family structure. While members of the Ventrue and Lasombra clans spend up to 10 years evaluating and testing potential embraces, and the Tremere have a rigid apprenticeship where ghouls serve as acolytes for many ranks, the Giovanni embrace strictly within Family lines. Candidates are bred into the Clan and taught from the time that they can speak that the Family is everything. The most promising members of the generation are ghouled. And only those who show enough promise as ghouls are embraced.
Potential Giovanni have many opportunities to betray the Family long before they're even ghouled. Those who show signs of disloyalty are simply never embraced. Furthermore, even after the embrace, the traffic in wraiths and unwilling spirits is significant enough that should a Giovanni betray the Family, one of the wraiths they've been abusing would use the excuse to inform on them.
- Pisanob: Descendants of Aztec and Mayan priests from Mesoamerica. Their power base lie in the badlands of Mexico and South America.
- Hidalgo: Another branch of the family that originated within Mexico. Rumored to be wiped out by the Sabbat as contact with them has been broken.
- Rosselini: From a similar Roman decent as the Giovanni. Also accomplished necromancers who typically exert force even when force isn't necessary to control their wraithly servants. Considered near equal to the main family.
- Milliners: A family of bankers without par. The head of the Milliners has a longstanding hatred for the Kennedys. While not interested in necromancy, they excel at finance. The Milliners are a prime factor in Giovanni control of Boston.
- della Passaglia: Another family of traders who were rumored to have been connected to the great Marco Polo himself. They now serve as the Giovanni connection to Asian thanotology and their prime Asian mercantile business men.
- Ghiberti: A branch of the family from Africa and responsible for involving the Giovanni in the United States, West Africa, and West Indies trade triangle. Also responsible for inventing the Cenotaph path of necromancy. This path allows the necromancer control and even reassignment of a wraith's fetter.
- Dunsirn: A Scottish branch of the Giovanni. Savvy bankers with a nasty taste for cannibalism.
- Putanesca: Sicilian thugs with a temper that puts the Brujah to shame. Every clan has to have their guys to do the dirty work, and the Giovanni have the Putanesca.
- St John: Cabal of English Masons.
- Beryn: Flemish traders with inroads into Africa similar to the Ghiberti.
- Rothstein: Jewish-American Kabbalists who seem to be centered in Las Vegas.
- Li Weng: Chinese geomancers based out of San Francisco's Chinatown.
Minor bloodlines
Premascine
Technically a bloodline of Cappadocian Clan, the Premascine are Giovanni who were Embraced before the diablerie of Cappadocius. The Premascines are members of the Giovanni family, but are separated from the main clan by their old age, strong powers, and their choice of habitat; Premascines generally live in the canals underneath Venice. They live on the blood of the sea life and the occasional human they surface and drain. Under there they conduct bizarre and powerful necromantic experiments which they only occasionally inform the rest of the clan about. They are largely a footnote to Giovanni existence, although an inordinately powerful and foul-tempered one.
Premascine often have Giovanni clan disciplines, but the Cappadocian weakness. Additionally, some of the Giovanni families are Premascine (such as the Rosselini). Their name is Latin for "before the bite".
References
- ^ Giovanni Chronicles I: The Last Supper
Further reading
- Vampire: The Masquerade (3rd Edition) by Justin Achilli (White Wolf Game Studio) (1998)
- Clanbook: Giovanni by Justin Achilli (White Wolf Game Studio) (1997) ISBN 1-56504-218-2