Giovanni

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.

Dark Ages
In 1005, in the hollows of Ericyes and under the shadow of Cappadocius' torpid form, Augustus Giovanni was brought into clan Cappadocian, directly embraced with the blood of the Founder and under the watch of Japheth and Constancia. While the embrace is relatively well known, what is not well known is the horse-trading before it.

The Clan of Death, the Cappadocians followed their Founder in a quest to understand the mysteries of death and God, including Cappadocius' plan to diablerize the Almighty. However, lacking knowledge about the soul (the Cappadocians' signature discipline of Mortis focused more on the act of dying then the events afterwards), the Founder began to shop for experts.

Enter the Giovanni, a family of prosperous Venetian traders who had for centuries depended on Necromatic skill to provide a business edge. Interested in expanding his family's power and seeing Vampirism as the route to doing so, Augustus Giovanni had been studying the clans and entertaining offers from various vampiric elders for the Embrace. The Cappadocian offer was the most attractive, providing the highest generation (as well as the most manipulable clan).

As a result, and despite the protests of Cappadocius' eldest childer, the Antediluvian rose from Torpor and provided Japheth with a small vial of his blood. Japheth reluctantly did so, draining Augustus and pouring most of Cappadocius' donated blood into the throat of a drained Giovanni (The remainder was hidden by Japheth, the True Vessel becoming a major element Giovanni rumor).

Following his ascent into the blood, Augustus Giovanni immediately began embracing his own family. In the course of doing so, the Giovanni became something between a bloodline and a cult within the Cappadocian clan. Acknowledged as the experts on Necromancy (and rapidly expanding the field), the Giovanni maintained themselves slightly separate from the mother clan. This, as the Giovanni claim is because Augustus had planned to usurp his sire from before he was Embraced.

In 1444, these plans came to fruition. Augustus Giovanni's childe, Claudius Giovanni formed a conspiracy to diablerize Japheth, the most beloved of Cappadocius' childer. The Conspiracy of Isaac was a criminal force in itself, but ultimately a distraction - since Hardestadt and other founders of the Camarilla had turned their eye towards the diablerie of elder vampires, Augustus wanted a catspaw, an obvious plan to distract them while he went after the greater prize. In 1444, both plans came to fruition, with Japheth dead, Cappadocius dead and both Giovanni raised a generation.

Taking advantage of the chaos of the era, Augustus began a purge of the Cappadocians that, while taking centuries to wipe out the stragglers, would be sufficiently successful that by 1528, he could negotiate a peace with the Camarilla. The Giovanni were left alone and left the Camarilla alone, exactly as the Giovanni wanted it.

Final Nights
Until the end of the twentieth century, the Giovanni were riding high. They expanded the clan into other families (notably the Milliners, della Pasaglia and Ghiberti), wiped out the last of the Cappadocians and their Lamia protectors, and prepared to rend the Shroud and bring the dead to the living. Then things went all pear shaped.