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.
Read more about this topic: Giovanni (World Of Darkness)
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—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)
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