Sangiovanni
The Sangiovanni bloodline is seen by many Mekhet as an embarrassment, an uncomfortable confirmation of certain unwholesome rumors surrounding the clan and its dealings. Based in Venice, the Sangiovanni family both acknowledges and disregards the contempt in which other Mekhet hold the bloodline. Members of the family, living, dead and undead, maintain degenerate traditions honed through centuries of incest and black magic.
Among the Venetian elite, during the waning years of the Renaissance, Lodovico Sangiovanni was a prominent, wealthy and talented citizen. An architect, Sangiovanni specialized in building churches, organizing the swift and masterful construction of many beautiful houses of God. The faithful who filed obediently into Lodovico’s churches could never have guessed that the walls and foundation had been constructed almost entirely by the animated corpses of the dead.
How convenient it was for Lodovico that new churches were often built on the sites of old churches, and that the sites of old churches nearly always harbored old, forgotten graveyards. Dead workers never tire, require no payment and never complain. His patrons never guessed at the truth behind his methods, and it’s doubtful the clergy would have appreciated the irony of their churches being constructed with the aid of the black arts.
Nearly all of the ancient lineages that converged into the prestigious and wealthy Sangiovanni family as it existed in Lodovico’s time had produced a number of sorcerers, seers and witches. Lodovico learned at an early age to worship things his mother claimed were older than the Christian God — shadowy things lurking behind the faÁade of the material world. It was she who taught him to grasp at the curtain between worlds, to conjure spirits and raise the dead, binding them to his will. It was she who arranged his education as an architect as well, securing his place of esteem in the mundane world. He repaid her with a dagger in the heart, and an innocent slave was executed for her murder.
An alcoholic and a womanizer, Lodovico spent as much time drinking and whoring as he did working in construction. Occasionally, his tastes ran to darker pursuits, and much of his family’s gold was spent acquiring artifacts of a distinctly unnatural nature. At the height of his career, Lodovico’s name was gasped in Italy’s filthiest brothels, even as it was whispered in the Vatican.
Whether the fact that Lodovico was never made to face the consequences of his less savory activities is a testament to his cleverness or to some dark pact, no one will ever know. It is known, however, that he endured the rigors of life at that time for a great many years, reaching quite an advanced age and siring a number of bastard children along the way, some of whom he even formally acknowledged. In any event, Lodovico’s understanding of the world beyond lent itself to an almost insane fear of death in his later years, and the aging Sangiovanni threw himself into more and more desperate means of staving off his own inevitable demise.
It was the midnight sacrifice of his youngest daughter that attracted the notice of a being with the power to grant Lodovico the immortality he craved. A creature described in Lodovico’s journals as having “fangs like a bat, a face like a skull” appeared to him, “arising… from the darkness… where no man had been but a moment before.” The creature offered no conversation at first, but seized a shrieking Lodovico and swiftly drained his blood, transforming him into one of the undead. Its voice, Lodovico wrote, was like the crackling of a fresh fire in dry leaves, and it spoke to him, mostly nonsense, or so Lodovico thought at the time, about “men walking, men sleeping, men kneeling before God.” Lodovico could feel the creature’s thoughts pierce into his mind, and in an instant he was made to understand. The creature dissolved into blackness, leaving an acrid smell and dark visions of the dead rising to outnumber the living. Lodovico rose, but stood motionless for the rest of the night. Those of his acolytes who had looked on in mute horror as their guiding magus had been slain and resurrected later wrote that the freshly undead Lodovico roared with mad laughter until the sun forced him to sleep.
Lodovico Sangiovanni never saw his sire again, and his journals tell of the nightly discoveries he made in the first years of his Requiem. Those who would read his writings in the centuries to come would note the steady pace with which the Sangiovanni elder’s grasp on sanity slackened. Lodovico wrote that he had been entrusted with a duty to raise up all the dead of the world, as had been foretold in the Book of Revelation. Initially, however, it seemed he had lost his former powers of sorcery upon becoming immortal, and his surviving writings from those early nights clearly reflect his rage. His sons aged and died before he mastered the arts of necromancy once again. Lodovico Embraced a daughter and a son, each of whom was forced to Embrace a brother and a sister. Lodovico was clever, never allowing the number of vampires in the family to endanger its ability to produce a new generation of living offspring. Nevertheless, he ruled over the family as a twisted tyrant for many generations, slaying out of hand those who incurred his displeasure. Not all of his childer and descendants shared his strange vision for the family or his crazed devotion to his dead mother’s wicked gods.
Eventually, Lodovico’s insanity would prove immensely detrimental to him. In the early 1800s, his ‘beloved’ family at last decided that they’d had enough of the despot, and the old patriarch was staked and left out to greet the sun. After a tremendous restructuring, one of Lodovico’s surviving grandchildren, Santino Sangiovanni, took over the mantle of leadership, and the family became less a den of degenerates bent solely on the preservation and empowerment of their founder and more a lodge for scholarly pursuits. The Kindred, however, are known for being set in their ways, and slow to change their minds, and even today the Sangiovanni family is seen as a blight on the history of the Mekhet clan.
More than once after Lodovico’s death, the Sangiovanni family found itself the target of Invictus attempts to eradicate them, and advances by The Circle of the Crone seeking to force mass membership upon the bloodline. Each such expedition met with hideous failure, as the Sangiovanni Necromancers’ occult prowess would seem strangely bolstered in the face of such concerted aggression. One such skirmish, eclipsed in the annals of Kindred history by the travails of those undead caught up in the American Civil War, saw the presence of both The Invictus and the Circle undermined so thoroughly in parts of Venice that even to this day neither covenant dares intrude upon Sangiovanni lands. As to how a remote bloodline of scholars managed to so soundly defeat two covenants, many theories exist, but the Sangiovanni themselves have remained unsettlingly silent on the matter. What is known is that, afterward, startlingly large sums of money were transferred anonymously to the coffers of an occult lodge in Florence.
The Sangiovanni family and bloodline exist now as an Embarrassing Secret, hushed up by both Clan Mekhet and an order of mortal sorcerers. Breeding and inbreeding for centuries within polite Italian society, the Sangiovanni are considered little better than a nest of cockroaches by those who know them. Those who understand the Sangiovanni’s secrets, however, often wish they could forget. Santino’s efforts in recent decades to establish ties with The Lancea Sanctum, calling upon the family’s old association with the Catholic Church, have yielded pleasing results. Diplomatically couching the family’s occult activities in terms that evoke images of biblical resurrection, Santino has secured the covenant’s protection, if not its respect.
As for old Lodovico himself, many unanswered questions remain. Records are unclear as to the exact nature of his necromantic power before his Embrace, and less educated Kindred are quick to label him a mage. Mages, though poorly understood by Kindred society at large, are nonetheless known to seldom, if ever, survive the Embrace. The possibility that Lodovico was somehow the exception to this rule has kept many scholars, vampire and wizard alike, up through many long nights of wondering. What can be discovered, by those dedicated or suicidal enough to pry, is that the Sangiovanni bloodline’s survival unto the modern day is ultimately attributable to the subtle intervention of a subsect of mages — debauched, soul-stealing immortals, if the rumors are to be believed. Those few in the know seem to by turns inexplicably vanish, or choose to ignore their more disturbing findings on the matter.
Today, more Sangiovanni are leaving Venice than ever before. Modern Kindred have more on their minds than stories of nests of twisted vampires in the Old Country, and thus, the Sangiovanni are finding with increasing frequency that Kindred beyond Italy do not know who or what the Sangiovanni are. Borrowing from the family’s coffers or drawing on their substantial web of European business Contacts, young Sangiovanni have been striking out into Western Europe, and even to the Americas, offering their services in the fields of business and accounting, as well as their family’s unique and eldritch specialty. Covens of Sangiovanni Necromancers have appeared in New York City, Paris and even smaller towns and cities as the reach of the bloodline races to expand to match the new communications capabilities of today. For every Prince disgusted by the prospect of necromancy in his domain, at least one instead chooses to see potential in a Sangiovanni’s black magic, and many American Sangiovanni find that they can claim domains of their own in hospitals and funeral homes in return for providing their Princes with data both occult and scientific. Of course, whether times are truly changing for the Necromancers, or whether they have merely set themselves up for a new, modern witch hunt, remains to be seen.
Among the Venetian elite, during the waning years of the Renaissance, Lodovico Sangiovanni was a prominent, wealthy and talented citizen. An architect, Sangiovanni specialized in building churches, organizing the swift and masterful construction of many beautiful houses of God. The faithful who filed obediently into Lodovico’s churches could never have guessed that the walls and foundation had been constructed almost entirely by the animated corpses of the dead.
How convenient it was for Lodovico that new churches were often built on the sites of old churches, and that the sites of old churches nearly always harbored old, forgotten graveyards. Dead workers never tire, require no payment and never complain. His patrons never guessed at the truth behind his methods, and it’s doubtful the clergy would have appreciated the irony of their churches being constructed with the aid of the black arts.
Nearly all of the ancient lineages that converged into the prestigious and wealthy Sangiovanni family as it existed in Lodovico’s time had produced a number of sorcerers, seers and witches. Lodovico learned at an early age to worship things his mother claimed were older than the Christian God — shadowy things lurking behind the faÁade of the material world. It was she who taught him to grasp at the curtain between worlds, to conjure spirits and raise the dead, binding them to his will. It was she who arranged his education as an architect as well, securing his place of esteem in the mundane world. He repaid her with a dagger in the heart, and an innocent slave was executed for her murder.
An alcoholic and a womanizer, Lodovico spent as much time drinking and whoring as he did working in construction. Occasionally, his tastes ran to darker pursuits, and much of his family’s gold was spent acquiring artifacts of a distinctly unnatural nature. At the height of his career, Lodovico’s name was gasped in Italy’s filthiest brothels, even as it was whispered in the Vatican.
Whether the fact that Lodovico was never made to face the consequences of his less savory activities is a testament to his cleverness or to some dark pact, no one will ever know. It is known, however, that he endured the rigors of life at that time for a great many years, reaching quite an advanced age and siring a number of bastard children along the way, some of whom he even formally acknowledged. In any event, Lodovico’s understanding of the world beyond lent itself to an almost insane fear of death in his later years, and the aging Sangiovanni threw himself into more and more desperate means of staving off his own inevitable demise.
It was the midnight sacrifice of his youngest daughter that attracted the notice of a being with the power to grant Lodovico the immortality he craved. A creature described in Lodovico’s journals as having “fangs like a bat, a face like a skull” appeared to him, “arising… from the darkness… where no man had been but a moment before.” The creature offered no conversation at first, but seized a shrieking Lodovico and swiftly drained his blood, transforming him into one of the undead. Its voice, Lodovico wrote, was like the crackling of a fresh fire in dry leaves, and it spoke to him, mostly nonsense, or so Lodovico thought at the time, about “men walking, men sleeping, men kneeling before God.” Lodovico could feel the creature’s thoughts pierce into his mind, and in an instant he was made to understand. The creature dissolved into blackness, leaving an acrid smell and dark visions of the dead rising to outnumber the living. Lodovico rose, but stood motionless for the rest of the night. Those of his acolytes who had looked on in mute horror as their guiding magus had been slain and resurrected later wrote that the freshly undead Lodovico roared with mad laughter until the sun forced him to sleep.
Lodovico Sangiovanni never saw his sire again, and his journals tell of the nightly discoveries he made in the first years of his Requiem. Those who would read his writings in the centuries to come would note the steady pace with which the Sangiovanni elder’s grasp on sanity slackened. Lodovico wrote that he had been entrusted with a duty to raise up all the dead of the world, as had been foretold in the Book of Revelation. Initially, however, it seemed he had lost his former powers of sorcery upon becoming immortal, and his surviving writings from those early nights clearly reflect his rage. His sons aged and died before he mastered the arts of necromancy once again. Lodovico Embraced a daughter and a son, each of whom was forced to Embrace a brother and a sister. Lodovico was clever, never allowing the number of vampires in the family to endanger its ability to produce a new generation of living offspring. Nevertheless, he ruled over the family as a twisted tyrant for many generations, slaying out of hand those who incurred his displeasure. Not all of his childer and descendants shared his strange vision for the family or his crazed devotion to his dead mother’s wicked gods.
Eventually, Lodovico’s insanity would prove immensely detrimental to him. In the early 1800s, his ‘beloved’ family at last decided that they’d had enough of the despot, and the old patriarch was staked and left out to greet the sun. After a tremendous restructuring, one of Lodovico’s surviving grandchildren, Santino Sangiovanni, took over the mantle of leadership, and the family became less a den of degenerates bent solely on the preservation and empowerment of their founder and more a lodge for scholarly pursuits. The Kindred, however, are known for being set in their ways, and slow to change their minds, and even today the Sangiovanni family is seen as a blight on the history of the Mekhet clan.
More than once after Lodovico’s death, the Sangiovanni family found itself the target of Invictus attempts to eradicate them, and advances by The Circle of the Crone seeking to force mass membership upon the bloodline. Each such expedition met with hideous failure, as the Sangiovanni Necromancers’ occult prowess would seem strangely bolstered in the face of such concerted aggression. One such skirmish, eclipsed in the annals of Kindred history by the travails of those undead caught up in the American Civil War, saw the presence of both The Invictus and the Circle undermined so thoroughly in parts of Venice that even to this day neither covenant dares intrude upon Sangiovanni lands. As to how a remote bloodline of scholars managed to so soundly defeat two covenants, many theories exist, but the Sangiovanni themselves have remained unsettlingly silent on the matter. What is known is that, afterward, startlingly large sums of money were transferred anonymously to the coffers of an occult lodge in Florence.
The Sangiovanni family and bloodline exist now as an Embarrassing Secret, hushed up by both Clan Mekhet and an order of mortal sorcerers. Breeding and inbreeding for centuries within polite Italian society, the Sangiovanni are considered little better than a nest of cockroaches by those who know them. Those who understand the Sangiovanni’s secrets, however, often wish they could forget. Santino’s efforts in recent decades to establish ties with The Lancea Sanctum, calling upon the family’s old association with the Catholic Church, have yielded pleasing results. Diplomatically couching the family’s occult activities in terms that evoke images of biblical resurrection, Santino has secured the covenant’s protection, if not its respect.
As for old Lodovico himself, many unanswered questions remain. Records are unclear as to the exact nature of his necromantic power before his Embrace, and less educated Kindred are quick to label him a mage. Mages, though poorly understood by Kindred society at large, are nonetheless known to seldom, if ever, survive the Embrace. The possibility that Lodovico was somehow the exception to this rule has kept many scholars, vampire and wizard alike, up through many long nights of wondering. What can be discovered, by those dedicated or suicidal enough to pry, is that the Sangiovanni bloodline’s survival unto the modern day is ultimately attributable to the subtle intervention of a subsect of mages — debauched, soul-stealing immortals, if the rumors are to be believed. Those few in the know seem to by turns inexplicably vanish, or choose to ignore their more disturbing findings on the matter.
Today, more Sangiovanni are leaving Venice than ever before. Modern Kindred have more on their minds than stories of nests of twisted vampires in the Old Country, and thus, the Sangiovanni are finding with increasing frequency that Kindred beyond Italy do not know who or what the Sangiovanni are. Borrowing from the family’s coffers or drawing on their substantial web of European business Contacts, young Sangiovanni have been striking out into Western Europe, and even to the Americas, offering their services in the fields of business and accounting, as well as their family’s unique and eldritch specialty. Covens of Sangiovanni Necromancers have appeared in New York City, Paris and even smaller towns and cities as the reach of the bloodline races to expand to match the new communications capabilities of today. For every Prince disgusted by the prospect of necromancy in his domain, at least one instead chooses to see potential in a Sangiovanni’s black magic, and many American Sangiovanni find that they can claim domains of their own in hospitals and funeral homes in return for providing their Princes with data both occult and scientific. Of course, whether times are truly changing for the Necromancers, or whether they have merely set themselves up for a new, modern witch hunt, remains to be seen.
Culture
Culture and cultural heritage
History
Violence and murder punctuate the history of the Sangiovanni, drawing a line of blood from their brutal origin on into the uncertain future. It seems only natural that a family of Necromancers has left a trail of corpses in its wake, but some Kindred wonder when karma will catch up to the Necromancers at last.When Lodovico murdered his mother in cold blood, he must have felt he had learned from her all that he could. Scholars of the family’s history return to this pivotal moment time and time again, always failing to answer this most basic question: why Lodovico felt the need to kill his mother. Santino was not yet born when the murder took place, but no being exists tonight who had as much contact with Lodovico as Santino did. He claims that the killing was nothing more than the act of a sick mind, an arrogant young wizard indulging in an act of symbolic cruelty — for once his mother had imparted to him the secrets of holding power over death, Lodovico executed her, probably smirking at the irony all the while. Those few degenerates in the family who value and preserve Lodovico’s words and views make a different claim — that her sacrifice was necessary, even willing, and that her death ensured Lodovico’s immortality.
As the bloodline grew, its practices (and, particularly, the rumored perversions of its eldest members) attracted the attention of less-than-tolerant Kindred among the Venetian Invictus. Throughout the middle of the 19th century, the Sangiovanni were forced to fight a quiet battle to defend themselves against an Invictus purge. Strangely, the family seemed to possess arcane might beyond that a single small bloodline of Kindred should have been able to muster. It is well-known that large sums of money changed hands, and vampires with Contacts among the mages point to rumors of a mortal Sangiovanni who supposedly lives in Florence to this very night, tending to the affairs of a sheltered den of occult scholars there. Did the Sangiovanni trade an Apprentice to a cabal of mages in exchange for protection from The Invictus? Though it seems far-fetched, at least one Acolyte of The Circle of the Crone has angrily wondered aloud how one small family of vampires on one estate in Venice can possibly have consistently defended their holdings from two covenants for so long. On this one matter, Santino has remained more suspiciously silent than on any other.
Regardless, the battle claimed several Kindred on both sides, and provoked a reimagining of Sangiovanni policy. First, Santino took it upon himself to broker a deal with The Lancea Sanctum, pledging his family’s service, En masse, to the covenant and putting an end to the purge by earning its protection. Second, he began to encourage individual members to strike out and travel to distant domains with their living relatives, hoping that their dispersal would help to guarantee the viability of the family.
Kindred historians note the distressing ease of the Sangiovanni’s transition into The Lancea Sanctum. Accounts gloss over it, merely stating that the Sangiovanni patriarch had been in talks with The Lancea Sanctum for some years, and that the covenant finally agreed to admit the bulk of the family. It is relatively common knowledge that the general flavor of the family’s occultism shifted gradually until it was more in line with The Lancea Sanctum’s religious leanings, while seeming to lose not even a fraction of its potency. It can scarcely be argued that the old-fashioned Sangiovanni family, steeped in The Traditions of its founder’s day, likely found the transition into a Christian covenant a relatively painless one. The marvel, it is said, is that The Lancea Sanctum was so willing to permit Necromancers within its ranks. The Lancea Sanctum could not have been swayed with money or even Santino’s famous glibness, but rather must have been offered something far less tangible. Whatever debt, if any, the Sangiovanni owe to The Lancea Sanctum, a recent tension growing between the family and their covenant seems to suggest that it may soon be coming due.
The outward expansion of the Sangiovanni has been relatively rapid, in Kindred terms, because of the willing assistance of the large mortal family that supports it. Members of the line are protected by at least a few living relatives when they move to a new domain, and need not worry about finding trustworthy help to defend them on the road, locating or securing a new Haven or establishing influence. The Prince of Paris famously welcomed the Sangiovanni to his Court at the close of the 19th century, even encouraging them to display their strange power in his Elysium, for the “entertainment” of his subjects. In modern nights, more and more cities are playing host to the bloodline, and while some refuse entry or work to eject the Sangiovanni once they arrive, many are all too willing to allow them to move in. Some Kindred are just ignorant of the Sangiovanni’s ways, while others believe (mistakenly or not) that the depredations of the Sangiovanni are no worse than those of other Kindred.
Society and Culture
Within the family, individual Sangiovanni are subject to a number of expectations. First and foremost is the assumption that the bloodline comes first. No outsider is to be favored over a family member, no bloodline is to be accorded more respect than the Sangiovanni, no clan is to be held in higher regard than Clan Mekhet, no covenant is to be more revered than The Lancea Sanctum. Santino knows best — he is old, he is powerful and he genuinely cares for every member of his extended family, so disrespect to him is disrespect to the family, and vice versa. Every family member knows that Santino has made countless sacrifices for them, defending the bloodline in its youth and securing the protection of The Lancea Sanctum, and most have the good sense to appreciate all that he’s done. Disrespect is usually first met with harsh words from one’s peers, then several hours of stern lecturing from the eldest local member of the line and finally censure and ostracism by family members, or revocation of one’s access to the family’s Resources, based on the severity and frequency of one’s offenses. The Sangiovanni take respect and family very seriously, and can expect to be treated like family as long as they act like family.Betrayal is as serious a crime among the Sangiovanni as it is among any other group of Kindred. Though Santino typically allows The Lancea Sanctum to deal with those of his blood who betray the covenant, traitors within the family itself are handled by Santino and his agents alone. Sangiovanni who sell out, murder one another, share secrets — including living Sangiovanni necromancers — with outsiders or lead enemies back to family holdings are almost never slain, but rather staked and stored in a family vault. Only a handful of such traitors exist today, many very old indeed, but Santino refuses to ever have the blood of family on his hands. Whether some greater plan exists for dealing with these black sheep at a later date is known only to Santino. Only a few Sangiovanni would ever consider turning their backs on their family, but for those who might, thanks to their unique understanding of death and what comes after, the threat of an endless sleep in a cold Tomb, forever denied the release of death, is more than enough to keep them in line.
For those who uphold the values of the family, eternity can be an almost pleasant prospect. Encouraged to study what interests them, to experiment and to prepare presentations on their findings for older family members to appraise, the practice of necromancy becomes almost a hobby — at least for the young. The family’s elders take note of more promising individuals, subtly encouraging them to delve deeper into the black arts. The Black Ring, a small college of the family’s most accomplished necromancers, is always on the lookout for fresh blood for its ranks, and approaches those who take their studies seriously and possess an obvious natural talent for their craft. These elder Necromancers tattoo a slender black ring around the thumb on their right hand, but otherwise do nothing that might reveal their existence to The Lancea Sanctum. Preserving Lodovico’s methods, if not his ideals, the Black Ring encourages necromancy as more of a scholarly pursuit than an arcane one, with Santino’s blessing. Those who prove worthy can aspire to join, finding in the Ring a supportive structure not unlike a study group.
Of course, devoting oneself to necromancy is hardly required of every member of the family. Almost as valued are those who dedicate themselves to managing the family’s finances, trading stocks and making wise investments to keep the coffers full. Santino himself has proven far more adept in the world of business than with spirits, and tutors clever Sangiovanni businessmen in the wisdom of Medici and Machiavelli. Sangiovanni who come to own businesses of their own are afforded great respect within the family, as are those who land jobs managing finances for large corporations or wealthy individuals. More than a few lawyers come from the family’s ranks, and these are valued as well. Though the bloodline’s disfiguring weakness often makes maintaining public ties with mortals a taxing exercise, most Sangiovanni who are serious about their work make liberal use of makeup, choose their hours very carefully and keep their complaints to themselves. The Sangiovanni family knows all too well the price that is often paid for living in the past, and is more than willing to live as fully in the modern age as unaging beings can.
Common Dress code
Appearance: The elder Sangiovanni dress in fashions popular during the Renaissance, modern sensibilities be damned, whereas a startling number of younger family members seem to favor respectable business dress, typically in dark colors. A Sangiovanni of any ethnicity but Italian is a rare thing indeed, but not unheard of, as a number of foreigners have married into the family. Sadly, rather a lot of Sangiovanni are even more pallid than the average vampire, with weird, deep-set eyes, weak chins, eyebrows grown together, severe under- or overbites and other defects that betray the family’s penchant for inbreeding. Many make an effort to look gaunt or corpse-like in an attempt to make themselves attractive to the elders of the line — a bizarre practice that most onlookers never fully understand. Only a few can be said to look ‘normal.’
Art & Architecture
Haven: For obvious reasons, the vast majority of Sangiovanni establish lairs in Italy, the bloodline’s ancestral homeland, primarily in and around Venice. The family keeps a large estate not far outside of Venice, on the former site of a modest cathedral designed and built by Lodovico himself. Anyone who bears both the Sangiovanni blood and name is welcome there, but the family is infamous for turning away or simply destroying ‘double bloods’ — members of the bloodline who are not verifiable members of the family — who show up on their doorstep. Outside of Italy, Sangiovanni make their homes just as other vampires do, often grouping together when more than one of their kind meet in a given city. Independent Sangiovanni often go for theatrics, lairing in mausoleums or sleeping in the corpse drawers in morgues.
Major organizations
Covenant: The Sangiovanni family more or less enjoys the protection of The Lancea Sanctum. Those willing to pay lip service to The Lancea Sanctum’s religious leanings will find the covenant willing to tolerate the practice of necromancy to a surprising degree. However, this tie to The Lancea Sanctum is built more on old debts and favors than on any real loyalty, and Sanctified Sangiovanni seen to be flouting the ethics of the sect, or, worse, showing too great an interest in Lodovico’s heretical writings, can expect their punishment to be swift and uncompromising.
Though hardly the majority, more than a few Sangiovanni have sided with The Circle of the Crone — particularly those who adhere to Lodovico’s views concerning ‘old gods.’ Sangiovanni Acolytes almost universally found or join death cults centered around entities such as Charon or Cama Sotz.
Organization: The Sangiovanni, as noted above, are primarily organized into a close-knit family originating in Venice. Santino is the oldest surviving member of the family, being the founder’s childe and grandson, and he continues to run things to this day. Family members willing to undertake the journey to Venice are encouraged to schedule an appointment to meet with Santino, should they require advice or formal aid, as Santino has made it well-known throughout the family that the survival and well-being of the bloodline is his foremost concern. The family’s Resources are widespread, but are not casually available for the taking by anyone who hasn’t spent generations cultivating pull with the higher-ups in the family. Nevertheless, being on good terms with the family has its advantages, as their various branches have fingers in numerous pies, including the obligatory ties to medical, religious and criminal establishments. Family members are expected to do their part to further the goals of the family, pulling their weight in financial and occult arenas alike, but also to ensure the bloodline’s long-term survival, which means keeping other Kindred in the dark as to their broader nightly activities. The family’s vaults are choked with corpses, and on nights of occult significance, the droning voices of chanting Sangiovanni witches can be heard on the wind for some distance around the mausoleum. Most of those Sangiovanni with ties to The Circle of the Crone make at least a token effort to attend the occasional gathering at the Venetian mausoleum. Most such Sangiovanni Acolytes hope that if some trace of Lodovico remains — even if only in the form of a lingering specter, or a tainted smear of ash — it will be one of them who finds it, and perhaps uncovers some hint to the bloodline founder’s true intentions. Even those loyal to The Lancea Sanctum are expected to participate in family rites and ceremonies, mostly practices codified by Lodovico and later revised by Santino himself. What even other Venetian Kindred need not know is that the Sangiovanni as a whole are as corrupt as ever, exploiting the dead for their own selfish ends — often for mere temporal wealth. For his part, Santino is not so foolish as to have overlooked the obvious benefits of possessing magics unavailable to any other Kindred lineage. A perpetually renewable army of corpses has its uses, and even the great covenants could scarcely contend with shambling forces that effortlessly replenish themselves. Nevertheless, even Santino realizes that the time is not yet right, so he plots and waits. As long as Kindred society at large believes the Sangiovanni are simple, deluded degenerates lurking in the dark, tending to their own selfish, insignificant matters, the Kindred are playing into Santino’s hands, and he remains free to plan for a secret war that may never come. Members of the bloodline who have rejected Santino’s leadership, and thus his protection, are seldom welcome at the mausoleum, though even Santino is more likely to simply turn them away than to destroy them. In the case of wayward members of the Sangiovanni family, it is hoped that they will someday return to the fold. The mausoleum has room enough for anyone of the blood with a passion for exploring the mysteries of death.
Though hardly the majority, more than a few Sangiovanni have sided with The Circle of the Crone — particularly those who adhere to Lodovico’s views concerning ‘old gods.’ Sangiovanni Acolytes almost universally found or join death cults centered around entities such as Charon or Cama Sotz.
Organization: The Sangiovanni, as noted above, are primarily organized into a close-knit family originating in Venice. Santino is the oldest surviving member of the family, being the founder’s childe and grandson, and he continues to run things to this day. Family members willing to undertake the journey to Venice are encouraged to schedule an appointment to meet with Santino, should they require advice or formal aid, as Santino has made it well-known throughout the family that the survival and well-being of the bloodline is his foremost concern. The family’s Resources are widespread, but are not casually available for the taking by anyone who hasn’t spent generations cultivating pull with the higher-ups in the family. Nevertheless, being on good terms with the family has its advantages, as their various branches have fingers in numerous pies, including the obligatory ties to medical, religious and criminal establishments. Family members are expected to do their part to further the goals of the family, pulling their weight in financial and occult arenas alike, but also to ensure the bloodline’s long-term survival, which means keeping other Kindred in the dark as to their broader nightly activities. The family’s vaults are choked with corpses, and on nights of occult significance, the droning voices of chanting Sangiovanni witches can be heard on the wind for some distance around the mausoleum. Most of those Sangiovanni with ties to The Circle of the Crone make at least a token effort to attend the occasional gathering at the Venetian mausoleum. Most such Sangiovanni Acolytes hope that if some trace of Lodovico remains — even if only in the form of a lingering specter, or a tainted smear of ash — it will be one of them who finds it, and perhaps uncovers some hint to the bloodline founder’s true intentions. Even those loyal to The Lancea Sanctum are expected to participate in family rites and ceremonies, mostly practices codified by Lodovico and later revised by Santino himself. What even other Venetian Kindred need not know is that the Sangiovanni as a whole are as corrupt as ever, exploiting the dead for their own selfish ends — often for mere temporal wealth. For his part, Santino is not so foolish as to have overlooked the obvious benefits of possessing magics unavailable to any other Kindred lineage. A perpetually renewable army of corpses has its uses, and even the great covenants could scarcely contend with shambling forces that effortlessly replenish themselves. Nevertheless, even Santino realizes that the time is not yet right, so he plots and waits. As long as Kindred society at large believes the Sangiovanni are simple, deluded degenerates lurking in the dark, tending to their own selfish, insignificant matters, the Kindred are playing into Santino’s hands, and he remains free to plan for a secret war that may never come. Members of the bloodline who have rejected Santino’s leadership, and thus his protection, are seldom welcome at the mausoleum, though even Santino is more likely to simply turn them away than to destroy them. In the case of wayward members of the Sangiovanni family, it is hoped that they will someday return to the fold. The mausoleum has room enough for anyone of the blood with a passion for exploring the mysteries of death.
Nickname: Necromancers (among themselves) or Necrophiles (to everyone else)
Character Creation: In spite of occasional handicaps levied by inbreeding, Sangiovanni are typically clever and knowledgeable. Mental Attributes and Skills are common, and members of the family are encouraged to develop these aptitudes from an early age. After all, occult studies comprise the bulk of their lives and, for the lucky and clever ones, their Requiems as well. The family’s vast stores of knowledge, in the form of both occult tomes and ather-figure mentors who may have existed for centuries, make Encyclopedic Knowledge a common Merit, and it’s a rare Sangiovanni indeed who lacks any Resources, thanks to the family’s coffers, bloated with the sins of centuries. Of course, a second dot of Blood Potency is a good investment as well, if one wishes to begin play as a member of the bloodline. Finally, Allies and Contacts are extremely common, especially at high levels, due to the family’s many business partners, occult acolytes and organized crime Contacts.
Bloodline Disciplines: Auspex, Cattiveria, Celerity, Obfuscate
Weakness: All Sangiovanni share the weakness of the Mekhet clan.
In addition, the Sangiovanni carry a deep spiritual taint that comes of their close contact with the energies of death. While they may still appear pristine, even beautiful, there is an undeniable touch of the grave in everything they say and do. While they do not diverge physically from other Kindred, the Sangiovanni all appear somewhat unnatural in some intangible sense, repelling living onlookers. Dice pools for social interactions with mortals are capped at two lower than the vampire’s Humanity rating, and observing Kindred likewise tend to misinterpret the Sangiovanni’s closeness to the Beast.
Sangiovanni who degenerate are especially vulnerable to a peculiar type of Obsessive Compulsive behavior with regards to corpses. They begin to believe that the dead are somehow “more beautiful” than the living, and many develop necrophiliac urges, choosing to conduct amorous, one-sided affairs with preserved bodies. These Sangiovanni fawn over the objects of their affection, dressing them, speaking to them and otherwise lavishing attentions that would be better paid elsewhere. Though not necessarily sexual, these affairs are considered extremely distasteful (to say the least) to outsiders who discover them. To the Sangiovanni, this madness is understood to be a common feature of the family and, while embarrassing, is generally politely ignored.
Concepts: Unsavory mortician, half-crazed librarian, charismatic cult leader, dread dark magus, laconic gravedigger, degenerate jetsetter, established Haven designer, wild-eyed Catholic priest, simpering pervert.
Parent ethnicities
Bloodline Disciplines: Auspex, Cattiveria, Celerity, Obfuscate
Weakness: All Sangiovanni share the weakness of the Mekhet clan.
In addition, the Sangiovanni carry a deep spiritual taint that comes of their close contact with the energies of death. While they may still appear pristine, even beautiful, there is an undeniable touch of the grave in everything they say and do. While they do not diverge physically from other Kindred, the Sangiovanni all appear somewhat unnatural in some intangible sense, repelling living onlookers. Dice pools for social interactions with mortals are capped at two lower than the vampire’s Humanity rating, and observing Kindred likewise tend to misinterpret the Sangiovanni’s closeness to the Beast.
Sangiovanni who degenerate are especially vulnerable to a peculiar type of Obsessive Compulsive behavior with regards to corpses. They begin to believe that the dead are somehow “more beautiful” than the living, and many develop necrophiliac urges, choosing to conduct amorous, one-sided affairs with preserved bodies. These Sangiovanni fawn over the objects of their affection, dressing them, speaking to them and otherwise lavishing attentions that would be better paid elsewhere. Though not necessarily sexual, these affairs are considered extremely distasteful (to say the least) to outsiders who discover them. To the Sangiovanni, this madness is understood to be a common feature of the family and, while embarrassing, is generally politely ignored.
Concepts: Unsavory mortician, half-crazed librarian, charismatic cult leader, dread dark magus, laconic gravedigger, degenerate jetsetter, established Haven designer, wild-eyed Catholic priest, simpering pervert.