Charles "Chas" Giovanni Tello was a Giovanni vampire involved in the illegal activities of his Clan within the United States.
Biography[]
| “ | We can hate in abundance, and we have no more suitable subject for our hate than ourselves. So we rise each night because we don't want to fucking hate ourselves any more than we already do. But we're going to fail at even that. | ” |
| — Chas Tello | ||
Chas was Embraced in the 19th century in New York. Before his Embrace, he already had built himself a family and was kept as a ghoul, the blood hidden in Roman Catholic communion. His boss, Frankie Gee, approached him with an offer to move up in the family hierarchy in exchange for leaving behind his mortal life. This meant that directly after his Embrace, his first meal was his own children. After realizing what he had done, Tello was forced to kill his own wife to hide any evidence. As a result of being Embraced as simply muscle, he was never tutored in Necromancy and mainly excelled in the part of organized criminality. Under the strain of these acts, his Humanity quickly receded and Tello felt the growing strength of his Beast within him. In this time, he met a mortal woman and fell in love with her. Unable to reveal himself and the causes for his strange behavior, the relationship did not last. Deeply jaded by the experience, it caused him to resign himself even more to the Beast.
In 1999, Tello was sent to Las Vegas, to establish contact with Milo Rothstein to find his missing clanmate Benito Giovanni. Together with his ghoul Victor Sforza, Tello investigated, but found no trace of Benito. Instead, Tello was contacted by the elder Isabel Giovanni, who revealed the existence of wraiths and the upheavals in the Underworld to him, as well as the stakes of Milo Rothstein and Sheriff Montrose in Benito's disappearance. In order to advance his mission, Tello decided to capture, interrogate, and eventually slay Milo. After getting no answers, he executed him by tying him to a vending machine and setting him on fire. In retaliation, the Rothsteins killed his ghoul by poisoning his coffee (although other clans suspected witch-hunters of doing it).
After the incident, Isabel Giovanni took him to Boston, where he acted as her bodyguard in talks between Francis Milliner and Jacques Gauthier, the Toreador representative of the Camarilla. Tello hoped to stay in Boston to investigate further into Benito's disappearance, but had no success. After Isabel headed off to Atlanta, Tello had to act as the bodyguard of a mortal agent of the Milliners, Genevieve Pendleton. The two had a falling out, during which Tello revealed the horror of existing as a vampire to her, causing Pendleton to try to cut her ties to the Milliners. In her place, Tello tried to argument with Gauthier, but fell into Frenzy and attacked him. After being interrupted in their struggle by two witch-hunters, Tello had to leave Gauthier behind and flee.
Later, he was taken by Isabel to Venice, where he was present at a conclave of Giovanni Elders (as hired muscle) that discussed the events in the Shadowlands, the appearance of the Imbued, and the disappearance of multiple Clan members that had investigated into the fate of the Cappadocians. Since Isabel sought one of the beings which apparently had been sighted near New Orleans, she took Tello along with her. In New Orleans, they met with Oliver Prudhomme, a contact that would reveal more about the creature. Since Prudhomme possessed a collection of child corpses whom he treated like real children, Tello quickly became disgusted by and even threatened him, until Isabel used Dominate on him to calm Tello down. Apparently losing himself more and more to his Beast, he attacked the being responsible for the attacks (implied to have been either Lazarus or a Cappadocian of similar age) and was reduced to ashes by a mere wave of the entity's hand.
