Character and Traits

Concepts

Antiquarian
When a family member dies and the family wants to divest themselves of the estate, you are there to help them. You know that antiques have far more value as links to the dead than they ever did as baubles and tchotchkes. You carefully examine every watch, every lamp, and every book of poetry, looking for the chains that bind spirits to this world. When you’ve found a powerful old soul, you have a network of anziani who collect the fruits of your labor, and they pay well for your trouble. 

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Candidate
You weren’t born into the Giovanni family. You understand the information economy in ways that baffle the Necromancers, and they’ve made you an offer. The company you founded — your “family” — might be the next one brought into the fold. You’re not stupid. Far from it, you get things a kid your age shouldn’t understand. You see patterns in big data, ways to exploit and aggregate suffering to help bring about the Endless Night. You also see that you’re a trial run, and you know that you have to be exceptional, or else the family will turn on you before you can build an exit strategy.

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Enforcer
When outsiders think of the Giovanni, they imagine a Mafioso necromancer, Tony Soprano with ghostly button men. You’re half the equation, at least. You’ve never been good at Necromancy, much to your sire’s disappointment, but you’re damned good at busting kneecaps and making the living do what you need them to. You may not get the calls for subtle work, but when a message needs to be delivered loudly, you’re on speed dial. 

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Exile
You were powerful once. The Ghiberti family treated you like a golden child, even if the Giovanni made snide remarks about your “double blood.” When was the last time they engineered a military coup? You built an army off of blood diamonds and human trafficking before you were even Embraced. After you became a vampire, you ruled a small region of South Africa with an iron fist. You were invincible, until you weren’t. You still don’t know who betrayed you; who made it possible for the people to rise up and cast you out. You barely escaped in one piece, and are now exiled from your country. The Giovanni elders think it’s best if you regroup as far away from your empire as possible. You’re better than the menial work they have you doing now, but it’s only a matter of time. 

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Grave Robber
You were disappointed when you learned how dry and academic the life of an archaeologist really was, before you were initiated into the family secret. Now, you work archaeology like a detective works cases. You question (dead) witnesses, follow leads, and discover long forgotten tombs full of treasures acting as fetters for ancient spirits of great power. You’re loyal to your Pisanob cousins first, and with the threat of the Harbingers of Skulls looming over the family, you’ve begun to hoard the souls you enslave rather than turning them over to the Giovanni. 

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Imposter
Nobody ever really paid any attention to you growing up. You were two-blooded, and passed over at almost every instance, but all that did was fuel your ambition. The “family secret” wasn’t even that hard for you to figure out. You basically forced your way over to the adult table, and excelled so much that they had to pay attention to you. Now that you have what you wanted, though, you’re convinced that you don’t deserve to be there. You work harder than every single-blooded asshole cousin you have, and get better results. Inside though, you’re afraid that you’re an imposter, and you’re just waiting for everyone to notice. 

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Normal Envoy
You never really fit into the family when you were young. They’ve always seemed so odd and morbid, even before they brought you in and told you about the whole vampire thing. Your idea of teenage rebellion was to become incredibly, Stepford-class normal. Even now, you put on the most painfully boring front. Underneath it all, though, you’re afraid of how much you enjoy the dark things your family does. The temptation of it scares you, so you put up this facade as much for your benefit as anyone else’s. You never curse, and you favor polos and khakis from Land’s End and Eddie Bauer. “Normal” people like you. They find you unthreatening. So of course, you’re the favorite when the Giovanni need to deal with the Camarilla. Nobody knows how close you are to completely snapping. 

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Pure Necromancer
It’s true that the family was born of merchants, and you recognize that the criminal and financial pursuits of the Giovanni are necessary to keep things going, but you have absolutely no interest in it. The shocking, dilapidated beauty of the Shadowlands has obsessed you since you were a child. You first glimpsed the other side in first grade, when you watched your teacher die of a heart attack. His spirit didn’t leave school for weeks, and you learned more from his ghost than you did when he was alive. You’ve never been much for socializing with the living, even with the Goths in high school who mistook your obsessive morbidity as familiar. The Endless Night isn’t just lip service for you — it’s necessity. Nobody understands the other side like you do. Not even your own family. 

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Shroud-Breaker
Once a Milliner signs on to destroy something, they don’t stop, no matter how long it takes. You’re a saboteur, a demolition specialist who wants to tear down the sudario. A gas leak here, a little creative arson there, and oh, how tragic! Thankfully, the nice people at Milliner Realty can get a quick sale to help pay for the funeral arrangements. You profit off your victims’ suffering, and then you enslave their spirits, chipping away at the Shroud. It’s a win-win, really.

 

Sophisticate
Raised among the elite, you went to the best schools, made all the right friends, and learned to appreciate culture in all its forms. You were also initiated early into the Dunsirn tradition of cannibalizing your enemies, and you refined it into an art form. You appreciate the finer things in life, and can hold your own at a dinner party with the most arrogant Ventrue or the haughtiest Toreador. Your dinner parties are the talk of the town. If only the guests knew what they were eating. 

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Merits and Flaws

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Cannibal (1pt. Merit)
Most vampires can’t eat food, and even those who can force it down, don’t gain sustenance from it. Like them, you still can’t stomach the crap most mortals eat. Human meat, on the other hand, brings you great joy. It can be baked, fried, or even raw, and you can tuck right in, and even gain sustenance. Even other vampires look askance at Kindred who devour their prey, though the Dunsirn applaud your respect for tradition. In addition to the blood points every human can provide, you can cannibalize a mortal and gain even more. An average human can provide up to seven helpings of meat (one per health level). Each helping provides you with one blood point. 

 

Consanguineous Resistance (1pt. Merit)
Your character cannot be blood bound by anyone who shares his mortal bloodline. That is, if you were born into the Giovanni family, you cannot be bound by anyone else who was born a Giovanni, though you can still be bound by, say, a Pisanob of the Giovanni Clan, or by Kindred of any other Clan. Similarly, a Dunsirn with Consanguineous Resistance could not be bound by others who were born into the mortal Dunsirn family, but could be bound by a Milliner of the Giovanni Clan. The Giovanni are extremely suspicious of anyone known to manifest this quirk. Although this blood-borne aberration hasn’t been documented, a few savvy Giovanni have a rough idea of what it is and does. It’s generally associated with being a rebellious young smartass who needs to be put down. This is not as unfair as it sounds; by the time a bond resistance is really obvious, it’s likely because a punishment isn’t working. A character who is discovered to have this trait probably earns her sire’s hostility at the very least.

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Mortuario (2 or 4pt. Merit)
You died. Perhaps you were murdered, or simply had a car accident. Whatever the cause, you were gone. But your sire found you too useful, or couldn’t let you go. You were Embraced using the Ferryman’s Recall ritual (see p. 109). The Embrace left you with the scars of your death, eternal tracework reminders of your trip to the other side. It also left you with the taut, pallid complexion of the dead. In addition to the traditional weakness of your Clan, you also suffer disfigurement from your time as a true corpse. While you are able to heal yourself just like any other vampire, the wounds do not heal cleanly. You retain the scars of every experience. Depending on the nature of the damage, this can make social dealings exceedingly difficult, and may decrease your Appearance dots over time (even to 0). However, your time across the Shroud also gave you a natural feel for necromantic blood magic. The difficulties of all Necromancy rolls are reduced by one. This trait costs 4 points for characters who already have an appearance of 0 (such as Samedi and the Harbingers of Skulls), or 2 points for any other Kindred. It is an incredibly rare condition even among the Giovanni, and essentially unknown outside the Clan. Giovanni with this Merit generally arouse the superstition of their Clan, and are treated with a definite wariness, particularly by anziani. Characters with the Mortuario Merit may not also possess the Sanguine Incongruity Merit or similar flaws such as Monstrous.

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Sanguine Incongruity (5pt. Merit)
Giovanni with this atavism are few and far between. Kindred possessing it do not bear the traditional Giovanni Clan weakness, the so-called Curse of Lamia; their Kiss causes no more damage than the blood loss itself. These vampires acquire a peculiar pallor upon their Embrace, however — they look like corpses, and no amount of blood ingestion can flush their features (as other vampires are able to do). Indeed, the bearer of this Merit more closely resembles the Clan’s Cappadocian ancestors, and they have a slightly unnerving air about them. As a result, all rolls involving a Social attribute (Charisma, Manipulation, or Appearance) are at +1 difficulty. Giovanni with this Merit are afforded wide berth, as the Giovanni tend to be quite superstitious about it. Characters with the Sanguine Incongruity Merit may not also possess the Mortuario Merit. 

 

Inbred (1-5pt. Flaw)
Inbreeding, a common occurrence among the incestuous Giovanni Clan, can take many forms. The Inbred Flaw covers all manner of physical, mental, and emotional defects. A one-point Inbreeding is something simple and unobtrusive, such as eyes too close together or an underbite (+1 difficulty on  Appearance rolls). A three-point Inbreeding is more severe: a congenital health condition (for mortals) or a crippling physical deformity (+2 difficulty on appropriate Strength, Dexterity, or Stamina rolls). Five-point Inbreedings are grossly disabling or emotionally crippling — everything from uselessly atrophied legs to a permanent Derangement — decided on mutually by the player and Storyteller. Inbred conditions may or may not be immediately discernible, though their point cost should be relative to their magnitude, as decided by the Storyteller. 

 

Shadow Walker (6pt. Flaw)
The Giovanni Clan is by its nature inexorably tied to the realm beyond the sudario. Giovanni suffering from this Flaw are so tied to the Shadowlands that even in the lands of the living they must interact with the world of the dead on a nightly basis. To shadow walkers, objects in the Underworld are as real as anything found in the physical world. Such vampires find that the ghosts of walls may impeded their flight, ghostly objects may strike them, and wraiths’ powers work as if the Kindred were on the far side of the Shroud. This Flaw is similar to the Ash Path power Dead Hand (V20, p. 163), except that Shadow Walker is always on and it in no way allows the character possessing it to perceive beyond the Shroud. The Storyteller may determine that certain Shadowlands topography interferes with you. Unless you have some ability to do so, you can’t see into the Shadowlands, so you have to be careful in feeling your way about — essentially, a blind man subject to the Underworld landscape. At the Storyteller’s discretion, immaterial walls or environmental effects may restrict you. 

 

Combination Disciplines

 

Eyes of a Thousand Shades (Auspex •, Necromancy •••)
While not everyone who has died went on to become a ghost, the dead are legion. They stand in your room while you sleep, and walk the halls when you work late. This power allows the necromancer to harness the ghosts in a given area to act as a kind of phantom clairvoyance. Some younger members of the Clan refer to this power as “spook surveillance.” 
System: The player spends one blood point and rolls Perception + Occult. Each success widens the effect by 25 yards/meters, giving the necromancer a wider variety of ghosts to pull from in a broader area. While this power is active, the necromancer can see through the eyes of all the ghosts within the area of effect. He can flip from one ghost’s perception to another’s at will. However, the ghost’s vision is filmy, colored by the sudario. The detritus of memory is strewn about, and can cause confusion or obscure fine details of the living world. This power costs 12 experience points to learn. 

 

Sharing the Master’s Vigor (Dominate •••••, Necromancy •••)
Those who walk the Bone Path of Necromancy can summon grotesque zombie hordes to perform their will. For those few who have learned the secret of this power, those deathless guardians may be imbued with extra speed, strength, or toughness. 
System: The player spends one blood point and rolls Wits + Occult. Each success allows him to imbue one zombie summoned through the Necromancy power Shambling Hordes (V20, p. 165) with a dot of a physical Discipline (Celerity, Fortitude, or Potence) that the necromancer possesses. For example, he may choose to spend two successes on the same zombie by giving him 1 Celerity and 1 Fortitude or 2 Celerity. However, the necromancer cannot share a Discipline rating higher than his own. For example, if Beniamino has Potence 2, but achieves three successes on his activation roll, he cannot give a zombie Potence 3. The zombie retains these abilities as long as it is animate. This power costs 24 experience points to learn. 

 

Backgrounds

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Memento de Morte
Death leaves its mark on the world around it. Cold spots, places where the light seems too pale, the colors washed out and faded. Sometimes, something seeps into the items surrounding a death in such a way that it taints them forever. The fainting couch in a Victorian serial killer’s parlor, or the portrait that hung on the wall of his abattoir, for example. The blackened wood floorboards at uncle Vittorio’s estate, reclaimed from a plague ship lit aflame to cleanse its still-living passengers. Books wrapped in the flesh of the monk who inscribed them, carved from his still living body, and bound by him in his last moments of life. But the most common mementos of death are murder weapons. The scalpels of serial killers and the sabers of war criminals. Bludgeons and .38 Bulldogs, nooses and punchbowls. The more death that has drenched the item, the more power it absorbs. This Background gives you one or more of these mementos of death, allowing you to benefit from the ambient energies when using Necromancy. You must have the relic (or relics) with you to receive the bonus. Many necromancers have a special sanctum set aside for their ritual work for this reason. 

• You have one minor relic. +1 bonus die to Necromancy rolls.
•• You have a relic of middling power or two minor ones. +2 bonus dice to Necromancy rolls.
••• You have a few reasonably powerful relics. +3 bonus dice to Necromancy rolls.
•••• You have a very powerful relic, or a couple of less powerful items. +4 bonus dice to  Necromancy rolls.
••••• You have an incredibly powerful relic, or a couple of powerful items. +5 bonus dice to  Necromancy rolls.

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The Shroud
The sudario, or Shroud, is the permeable skin between the lands of the living and the lands of the dead. The world where ghosts live — the Shadowlands, Underworld, or whatever you want to call it — takes up the same space as our world. We’re standing in it right now. It’s like a double exposure on an old film camera. Ghosts walk the same halls we do, but it’s more like the memory of those halls. They haunt us, but our world haunts them. Grandmother’s favorite rocking chair may be gone, taken when she went to live in the old folks’ home, but it’s still there for them. Wraiths live in the wreckage of our memories. They watch us, but they don’t always see clearly. Our world is distorted and pale, a mirage seen through milky cataracts. It is possible for ghosts to cross the Shroud, given the right circumstances. Some ghosts may possess humans, in a manner similar to Dominate 5 (V20, p. 155). Others may actually manifest. 

 

Spirit Slaves
This trait represents a hold you have over a ghost, or several ghosts. Usually this hold is in the form of catene, or fetters — either something that the ghost valued highly in life, or possibly a random object or place to which the spirito has been attached via a necromantic ritual. Regardless, you have a hold over the spirit and can bully it by threatening its fetter. Alternatively, you might have information about the spirit’s goals and can control it by aiding or impeding it. All Spirit Slaves are assumed to have statistics similar to a recently deceased ghost (V20, p. 385). However, higher levels of this Background might reflect more powerful spirits at the Storyteller’s discretion. 

• You have a hold on one weak spirito.
•• You have influence over two minor ghosts, or one of greater power.
••• You’re the boss of three lesser ghosts, or fewer who can do more.
•••• Four ghosts are under your sway, or fewer who are stronger.
••••• You have mastered five weak ghosts, or fewer who are more talented.

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Necromancy Rituals

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Death’s Communion (Level One Necromantic Ritual)
The Giovanni have spent centuries going through the motions, making sure that nobody can question their public devotion to the Catholic Church. In private, however, the family often practices their own warped Black Mass, showing devotion to Dis Pater and drawing power from the darkness. This ritual acts as a grim parody of the traditional communion, ingesting literal blood (perhaps even of the father) and dedicating the subject to the Endless Night. This ritual is not performed at every family black mass. An expedited, powerless version may be observed, but the full ritual is more involved. 
System: The caster of this ritual is usually not the beneficiary. If the caster and the subject are the same, the caster suffers a +1 difficulty to her casting roll. Death’s Communion takes one hour to complete. The subject of the ritual gains a bonus of +2 dice to all Necromancy rolls for one night per success achieved on the casting roll. 

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Manifest (Ghost ability)
This art allows the ghost to manifest in a mortal body that reflects her spotty memory of her living self. The ghost’s personality will color their appearance, however. A Spectre full of rage will be flush with anger, her face marked by intensity, while a forlorn shade will appear fragile and washed out or faded. All manifested shades are cool to the touch, and will seem constantly distracted (a side effect of the concentration necessary to maintain this form). Although most onlookers won’t notice anything wrong with a ghost using this ability, those close to her in life may pick up on the differences. 
System: The shade spends two Passion (V20, p. 385) and rolls Willpower; each success allows the ghost to remain solid for one scene. He takes damage as mortals do while in this form, gaining the standard seven health levels. However, if he is “killed” in this form, it merely ejects him back into the Shadowlands, where he must rest and recuperate for a number of days equal to his Passion pool. He may spend passion and activate powers while manifested, and use his stats in the physical world as if he were in the Shadowlands. 

 

The Ferryman’s Recall (Level Five Necromantic Ritual)
This obscure ritual is for the rare instance when a prospective convert has been killed before they could be Embraced, and they are determined to be too valuable to lose. Knowledge of this ritual is jealously, if not entirely successfully, guarded by certain Premascine Giovanni. 
System: The caster must have access to the corpse as well as one of the subject’s fetters, perhaps obtained using Ritual of the Unearthed Fetter (V20, p. 181). The Ferryman’s Recall takes 8 hours (reduced by one hour per success on the casting roll) to perform. The corpse must be relatively intact for the ritual to work, and the subject must have been a ghoul before death. If the necromancer performing the ritual was not the domitor, they must have a blood point worth of the domitor’s Vitae. The Generation of the Kindred giving the Embrace (usually, but not always, the necromancer performing the ritual) determines how much time may have passed since the subject’s death, as more powerful vitae has a more potent effect. 

Embracer’s Generation      Time Dead
Thirteenth                                      12 hours
Twelfth                                             1 day
Eleventh                                          2 days
Tenth                                                 3 days
Ninth                                                 4 days
Eighth                                                5 days
Seventh                                             1 week
Sixth                                                   2 weeks

First, the subject’s body must be cleaned and prepared, drained entirely of blood or embalming fluid. Then the necromancer paints a series of sigils onto the body, intended as place markers for the subject’s spirit to relearn how to use his body. At the climax of the ritual, the Kindred performing the Embrace pours her vitae into the subject’s mouth, and the Embrace continues as normal. Any wounds suffered before the ritual (including the cause of the subject’s death and any decomposition) close, but do not entirely heal, leaving scars on the newly Embraced Kindred’s body. In addition, the subject’s time across the sudario leaves its mark on him; giving him the ashen complexion of the Harbingers of Skulls, as well as endowing him with an improved facility for necromantic magic (see the Mortuario Merit on p. 106 for more information). 

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