No other clan is more intent on maintaining a front of respectability than the Giovanni, and none is more repulsive at heart. Giovanni vampires are rich merchants, speculators and investors who spend most of their nights manipulating their vast assets from skyscraper offices. They spend the rest of their nights in crypts and mausoleums carrying out their dark and morbid rites.
Legend has it that clan founder hoped to bolster his own power by Embracing a coven of Venetian necromancers. This coven was actually a tightly knit family of Giovanni who had strong trade interests in the Mediterranean region. The Giovanni repaid their sire for his gift by slaying him and all his other descendants. Vampires from around the world reacted with fear and horror, and many joined together to hunt these Devil Kindred. After almost a century inter minted warfare, the clan made peace with its foes by promising to maintain a low profile and keep out of Kindred politics. The Giovanni clan has apparently maintained its pledge to this day.
Still, suspicion of this clan has continued to the present day. By staying neutral in quaint battles, the Giovanni has had free rein to build its merchant empire. Now the clan's wealth in undeniable, 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.
Every member of this clan is also a member of the Giovanni family. By longstanding tradition Giovanni only Embrace those of their own family, and most of their retainers and ghouls are also of the family. Three members of each generation are chosen as children to be embraced when they are ready, and are carefully raised to prepare them for it. Others in the family may be embraced later in their lives, as a reward for extraordinary service.
Because all Giovanni are related by blood (in both senses), the are extremely loyal to one another, and betrayal by one of them is unthinkable. Certainly the Giovanni possesses the most reliable Retainers of any clan.
Clan Giovanni is one of the more rigidly controlled clans, and contact is constantly maintained between members of the clan. It is still ruled with an iron hand by its patriarch, Augusts Giovanni, the original leader of the coven when it was first Embraced. Augustus sees his control over the line as similar to that of a prince's control over a city, and requires those below him to add here to the Rule Of Creation: his permission must be obtained before the Giovanni embrace can be gifted to anyone. However, some younger members of the clan are given significantly way and freedom to pursue new control over corporations. Because the clan's influence in America is still limited, many of its members have been sent to the New World in recent years.
If asked, most Giovanni would say they do what they do in order to gain a complete understanding and appreciation of the form they will have for all eternity. These Giovanni believe this form to be of one use -- gaining power. Other Giovanni refer to the god-like feeling they get from having power over death.
Tell me, then, oh great lords of the night: How is it that a clan of independants, hated by every other child of Cain, has managed to survie through the years, regarless of your fervor and persecution?
Take heed, princes and priests- were you ever to see the truth, you would blind yourselves in order never to look apon it again And in your blindess, we would consume you."
taken from the Giovanni clan book, written by Justin Achilli
