Characters / Vampire: The Masquerade - Independents

The Neutral Clans

Assamites

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To other Kindred, the Assamites (or Banu Haqim, "Children of Haqim", as they call themselves), are assassins supreme, unholy terrors hungry for the blood of other vampires. As the Assamites see it, however, they are protectors of mortals and judges of the Kindred, a duty they believe to have inherited from their Antediluvian founder, Haqim the Hunter. They are unusual among the clans in that they are comprised of three castes: warriors, viziers and sorcerers. While based in the Middle East, the clan claims members from both genders and every ethnicity.

Weakness: During the time they were cursed, the Assamites could not commit diablerie (their bodies simply rejected it), and had to tithe 10% of all blood they took to their sires. Now that the curse is broken, their original weakness has manifested: it is extremely easy for one of the Assamites to become addicted to committing diablerie.

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• Badass Bookworm: The sorcerer and vizier castes.
• Blood Magic: Assamite Sorcery.
• Bloody Murder: Quietus, their signature discipline, possessed by all three castes, can not only create supernatural zones of silence but turn the user's blood into a deadly weapon in its own right.
• Cannibalism Superpower: Prior to the formation of the Camarilla, the Assamites saw diablerie as a perfectly acceptable means of bringing themselves closer to their founder — though they rarely used it on other members of the clan. However, the newly-formed Camarilla took a dim view of this practice, and commissioned the Tremere to put an end to it- leading to a...
• Curse:
  • The Tremere's blood-curse prevents any Assamites from ingesting the vitae of other Kindred. Unfortunately for the former, the curse has begun to fail in modern nights...
  • Before the Tremere laid their curse, the Baali laid one of their own - an addiction to the blood of other vampires, amplifying and aggravating the clan practice of diablerie.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: The Assamites try for this - the Law of Protection expects them to protect mortals from other Kindred and treat them with honor.
• The Hashshashin: They formed the ancient organization, and they often serve as assassins.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Thanks to their widespread use of diablerie in the past, the Assamites are generally considered the vampire equivalent of this.
• The Migration: The clan schisms over ur-Shulgi's interpretation of the Law of Judgment - "Judge those of Caine's blood, and punish them should they be found wanting" — which holds that all non-Assamite Kindred have been found wanting, are ultimately a blight on existence, and should be eliminated. As much as a third of the clan, not on board with the idea of Kindred genocide, and/or wishing to practice their mortal religion, petition for membership in the Camarilla. In addition, the dispossessed, those Assamites independent of the clan's hierarchy, see their numbers rise to about a third of the clan, as a sizable number of Assamites decide they want nothing to do with ur-Shulgi, the Camarilla, or the Sabbat.
• Monstrous Cannibalism: While diablerie can be committed by any vampire, the Assamites were known for it.
• Murder, Inc.: They believe killing, particularly vampires, brings them closer to Haqim, their Antediluvian.
• Neutral No Longer: After Ur-Shulgi, an incredibly old and powerful Assamites, awoke from torpor and demanded that the clan renounce their faith in Allah, a schism occurred which resulted in a large portion of the clan joining the Camarilla. Additionally, with the Ashirra, a sect representing all Muslim vampires, forming an alliance with the Camarilla, the Assamites have been admitted as a Camarilla clan.
• Order Versus Chaos: Setites and Assamites hate each other. This is not just because the two are locked in a perpetual battle over dominance in the Middle East, but also because of the Setites being a clan all about promoting chaos, while the Assamites are known as a clan of judges and lawkeepers.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: They absolutely refused the Followers of Set entry into the Camarilla. Considering it's the Followers of Set, the Assamites aren't exactly in the wrong for keeping them away from the Ivory Tower.
• Perception Filter: Both the warriors and the sorcerers possess Obfuscate.
• Professional Killer: The stereotypical view of the Assamites is as a clan of assassins. They really hate this fact, although playing into it often serves as a useful smokescreen for the rest of the clan's pursuits.
• The Purge: In Revised, the Fourth Generation ur-Shulgi rises from slumber... and proceeds to eliminate those Assamites who do not revere Haqim above all else, including those who follow mortal religions (Islam is the clan's majority religion, but not the only one).
• Religious Vampire: The majority of clan members are Muslim.
• Retcon: In their original clanbook, the Assamites were portrayed as a fanatical cult of Kindred assassins; in later write-ups, they are a faction within the larger clan.
• Scary Black Man: Really old Assamites have skin as dark as obsidian.
• Sneaky Spy Species: The Assamite Warrior Caste possesses the Disciplines of Celerity, Obfuscate, and Quietus, so they're well-suited to stealthy covert ops work... and because the Warriors were the only members of the Clan that other vampires were liable to encounter for most of Kindred history, the entire Assamites are popularly stereotyped as nothing but monstrous assassins akin to The Hashshashin. Furthermore, after the Assamites were cursed with their allergy to vitae, the Sorcerer Caste attempted to get around the Clan's new affliction through alchemical blood potions - but in order to get the ingredients, the Warrior Caste had to take up mercenary service as real assassins, only strengthening the stereotype.
• Super-Senses: The viziers in the modern nights have Auspex; in the Dark Ages, the sorcerers had it as a caste discipline as well.
• Super-Speed: Both the warriors and viziers possess Celerity.
• Undeathly Pallor: Subverted; unlike other vampires, Assamites actually grow steadily darker as they age, to the point that elders look as though they've been carved from obsidian. Al-Ashrad, leader of the sorcerer caste, is the sole exception, having pale white skin. None of the other Assamites know why.

Followers of Set

A cult believing themselves to be the vampiric descendants of the Egyptian god Set, the Setites devote themselves to corrupting others, human and vampire alike. In this way, they gather new recruits for the cult and prepare the world for the return of their infamous founder.

Weakness: Set's childer are vulnerable to the light. Exposure to bright light inflicts penalties on their attempts to do anything.

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• Blue-and-Orange Morality:
  • Setite morality is simple, but it is quite alien. In essence, rules and order are bad because they are the "shackles of light" that restrain Set, therefore they must be broken. Despite their association with vice, drugs and sex and the like are not universally of interest to the Setites. They wish to tempt people into breaking whatever is the dominant, rule-imposing belief system in their community, and to a lesser extent their personal convictions. This means that in a hyper-capitalistic society, Setites would aim to "seduce" people into giving charity, and in a martialistic one, they would promote pacifism. Fifth edition outright made this their clan compulsion. Beyond this point, the different doctrines branch off from each other. Traditional Setite theology actually hates disorder, seeing it as only a temporary necessity to revive Set, while the Path of Apep essentially worships chaos and corruption for their own sake.
  • The original Path of Typhon, which takes the process of corruption, humiliation and gradual devotion to Set into truly bizarre levels.
• Break the Haughty: How most mortal devotees are taught the Path of Typhon, via their future sires going out of their way to completely ruin their lives and push them towards "The Revelation of the Void," whereupon the future member of the cult is stripped of all worldly attachments and devoted entirely to Set.
• Card-Carrying Villain: While their obsession with corruption is technically a form of Blue-and-Orange Morality that can lead to them doing good by 'corrupting' the evil, this trope is what they're not-entirely-unfairly stereotyped as - cultists of a Religion of Evil that makes the world worse for the sake of making the world worse.
• The Corrupter: The Clan's hat; religiously devoted to spreading corruption in order to attain new members for the cult, they will use any methods imaginable: money, power, sex, drugs, knowledge- anything, so long as it ensures the moral decay of a victim and further devotion to the cult. The Path of Typhon often requires that this become part of the embrace, with some prospective sires seeking out individuals vulnerable to corruption in some way and orchestrating their downfall prior to inducting them into the clan- Maria Kenyon and the Psychiatrist and Mystic Artist templates from the Followers of Set Revised Clanbook being prime examples.
• Cultural Translation: They are masters at this, digging through the mythology and religion of non-Egyptian cultures in search of serpent/chaos/storm motifs and adapting their Setite beliefs accordingly to make sense to local sensibilities. There are, at minimum, Hellenic, Norse, Mesoamerican and Abrahamic versions of their Set story.
• Enemy Civil War: There are three main bloodlines among the Setites, and they despise each other: the normal Followers who serve Set, the daitya (Blasphemers) who serve Shiva, and the Serpents of the Light (Cobras) who believe Set to be their enemy.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Set himself fought against the Baali during the Second Baali War. Which tells you all you need to know about how fucked up the Baali are.
• Evil Counterpart: To the Brujah. Both Clans are famous for their scholarly legacy, both have an instinctive dislike of and urge to act against the status quo (politically, for the Brujah, socio-religiously, for the Setites), both are heavily involved with alternate systems and fringe ideologies, and both have a tendency towards Satan Is Good thinking (the Setites obviously have Set, while the Brujah tend to idealize Prometheus and Satan as lightbringers and rebels against an unjust Heaven). But while the Brujah genuinely want to bring positive change and try to keep their humanity close to their dead hearts, the Setites subvert and corrupt simply because it's in their nature regardless of the system at hand, and look down on genuine compassion as weakness, preferring to lose themselves in Blue-and-Orange Morality.
• Evil Virtues: Some variants of the Path of Typhon hold that we may never let our fears or personal dislikes get in the way of when we need to act. Thus, many Setites deliberately face up against what they hate and fear repeatedly in order to break its hold over their mind and become extremely fearless, determined, and in control of themselves.
• Gnosticism: The default Setite belief system resembles the Gnostic one: to the Setite mind, the truth of the universe, that all are able to become as powerful as gods, has been concealed by the Demiurge and his Aeons, who have imposed false systems of law and morality to hide the truth and enslave humanity. It is Set and his childer's goal to cast down the Demiurge and reveal the truth. Other Setite bloodlines share the belief in becoming as gods, even if their loyalties aren't with Set.
• The Hedonist: The Path of Typhon requires that its followers spend time indulging their desires to the fullest; however, this is in order to realize that their desires ultimately have no real hold over them.
• Horny Vikings: They do have some members in Nordic Scandinavia.
• I Have Many Names: Set, otherwise known as Sutekh, Typhon, Jormundgandr, Nergal, Dis, and many others.
• Inhuman Eye Concealers: In the revised Followers of Set clanbook, the Setite vampire Renenet wears wraparound shades to hide her hypnotic, snakelike eyes - either because she's suffering from a clan flaw causing her to manifest reptilian traits, or just because she's secretly using the Serpentis Discipline.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Gehenna was not kind to the Serpents:
  • In "Nightshade", the Setites finally succeed in bringing Sutekh back from the dead. Unfortunately, he's not very impressed by the current state of his progeny, and decides that none of them are worthy of his blood: a massacre follows as the resurrected Antediluvian goes about reclaiming his blood and enslaving the few dozen survivors that remain.
  • At the end of the same scenario, Set himself forces the reincarnated Saulot to drink from the Cainite Vial, believing it will destroy him. Instead, it kills Caine, allowing Saulot to call down divine retribution on all the Antediluvians gathered there, including Set.
  • In "The Crucible of God", the Setites try and resurrect their master yet again, this time leaving the war between humans and vampires en masse for a pilgrimage to Ombos; there, they conduct a ritual to draw Set out of the underworld, sacrificing dozens of humans and vampires alike. Although the ritual works, Set is unable to leave the underworld, so he instills a compulsion in all of his childer to join him there: mass suicides follow, with ghouls poisoning themselves and vampires incinerating themselves with gasoline or explosives. By the morning, few Setites are left on the planet.
• Light Is Not Good: The so-called "Serpents of the Light" faction reject Set and his influence and battle against the main Clan in an internal civil war. Lest they be mistaken for Defectors From Decadence, they do so using the exact same horrible means as the rest of the clan, spreading corruption and death everywhere they go.
• Manipulative Bastard: They control many vices, and use them against their clients.
• Master of Illusion: The daitya, a bloodline of the Followers from India, use this.
• Meaningful Rename: In the V5 timeline, the Followers have changed their formal clan name to "The Ministry", as a part of an extensive charm offensive towards the rest of Kindred society.
• Neutral No Longer: With the Sabbat's Gehenna Crusade leading to most of their territory being invaded, the Setites joined the Anarchs for protection after their application to the Camarilla was rejected.
• Odd Name Out: Their clan's formal name is technically "Clan Followers of Set".
• Opposing Combat Philosophies: They have both Obfuscate and Presence, allowing them to either sneak away unnoticed or overwhelm everyone around them with sheer force of personality.
• Order Versus Chaos: Setites and Banu Haqim hate each other. This is not just because the two are locked in a perpetual battle over dominance in the Middle East, but also because of the Setites being a clan all about promoting chaos, while the Banu Haqim are known as a clan of judges and lawkeeprs.
• Pet the Dog: The Setites are known to treat their clan's ghouls far better than other vampires do, seeing them as relative equals rather than slaves to be used then discarded when they are no longer of use.
• Red Right Hand: Some clan flaws can provide Setites with these- most of them being reptilian in nature.
• Religion of Evil: Their clan religion is built around spreading vice and corruption. Technically, Setites are capable of doing good according to the tenets of their faith by 'corrupting' evil people, but why bother when you can just be a Card-Carrying Villain like most of the rest of your clan instead?
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: As well as being utterly vile, their symbol of choice is a serpent- and their clan-unique discipline is called Serpentis, for obvious reasons.
• Satan Is Good: The original form of the Setite faith, as explained further below, is heavily steeped in Luciferian and Gnostic aesthetics, treating a generally disliked and feared god as the only one who's actually standing up for humanity.
• Scaled Up:
  • The Setites possess a discipline known as Serpentis, allowing them to assume reptilian traits- amongst other things. At early levels, they can make their eyes snakelike and hypnotic, grow a long, forked tongue and poisonous fangs, or form hard, scaly skin; eventually, they will graduate to transforming into a six-foot-long cobra. Advanced powers are even more extraordinary, allowing a Setite to take their transformations to One-Winged Angel proportions.
  • A few clan flaws have a Setite take on permanent reptilian features.
• Secret-Keeper: The Serpents are the only ones who are fully aware of the Giovanni's efforts to bring about the Endless Night. For their own reasons, they keep this information to themselves.
• Secretly Earmarked for Greatness: Once they find a promising mortal, they begin a process of observation and corruption designed to break the potential recruit of their mortal obsessions. Setite sires are prepared to spend months or even years on this before inducting their charges into the cult - either while remaining completely hidden or hiding in plain sight. In the case of the "Psychiatrist" character template, his sire spent six months testing him before tempting him into accepting sex with one of his patients in exchange for rubber-stamping her through treatment, then - once the former patient had gone to prison for statutory rape - presenting the psychiatrist with photos of his misconduct in order to prod him into joining the cult and beginning his journey towards the Embrace.
• Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Serpentis becomes dangerously unreliable in "Fair Is Foul," with users running the risk of being unable to shed their reptilian features.
• The Unfettered: Much of the Path of Typhon involves trying to become this by casting off all customs, laws and traditional notions of good and evil.
• Villain with Good Publicity: More skillful Setite manipulators are usually this. In full effect with the "Ministry of Love" faction in fifth edition, who have nominally thrown their full weight behind the Anarch cause in the name of liberating vampires everywhere, when they actually just wanted a powerful faction to infiltrate and shelter them (also the Banu Haqim blocked their application to the Camarilla).
• Weakened by the Light: Any sufficiently bright light is enough to weaken them.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Via Retcon. The Setites for the longest time were simply a bunch of Always Chaotic Evil hedonists and chaos worshippers. Then V20 Dark Ages came along and introduced the original form of the Setite faith, called the Via Set. Essentially an Egyptian-themed Gnostic religion, these vampires are genuinely convinced that their The Sacred Darkness Messiah has been backstabbed and imprisoned by a bunch of Light Is Not Good Jerkass Gods who made the world as cruel and unfair as it is. Seeing themselves as Unscrupulous Hero types who have to cause havoc and break rules in order to free Set, they are actually disgusted by chaos and hedonism, stress self-control above else, and believe that with Set's return, vampires and humans will be liberated. Practiced only by Elders in Egypt who actually knew Set in person during their earlier unlife, this faith was eventually swept away by the vastly more popular interpretation of young Setites who just want an excuse to indulge their darkest urges once the Elders fell into torpor. A handy way to distinguish the two is in Set's role. The original faith idolizes Set for being the heroic slayer of the chaos serpent, while in the corrupted form (know as the Via Apep), Set is the chaos serpent.

Giovanni

Originally a Renaissance-era family of Italian necromancers before their embrace by the Cappadocians, the Giovanni remain a family even in modern nights, drawing new recruits exclusively from their mortal relations- which, thanks to the longevity of the family line, has expanded across the world over the past few centuries under many different names. However, much like the Tremere, they attained power as a clan by usurping it: Augustus Giovanni diablerized his sire Cappadocius and had the entire Cappadocian clan wiped out. It is for this reason- along with their necromantic practices- that few Kindred ever trust the Giovanni.

Weakness: The Kiss of the Vampire brings no pleasure when inflicted by a Giovanni. Instead, when they feed, it causes agonizing, searing pain to their victim.

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• Bad Powers, Bad People: The family is known for its signature discipline of Necromancy, allowing them to interact with wraiths. It doesn't automatically compel the ghosts to do what they want, however, and rather than simply convincing the wraiths to serve them, the Giovanni usually just use their powers to enslave the spirits by either torturing them, using their loved ones as leverage, or otherwise manipulating their emotions by doing things like screwing the ghosts' remains. This can end badly for the Giovanni when the ghosts they use occasionally go insane and tear their tormentors apart. Ambrogino Giovanni's hand is known to have turned into a blighted, rotted claw from constant use of this discipline over the centuries.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Giovanni follow the Path of Bones, which enforces the study of death to subdue the Beast.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Augustus Giovanni, especially in "Nightshade." He's a cunning strategist and the best necromancer of the modern nights... but still nowhere near as strong or as clever as he thinks he is. At least part of this is due to his utter failure to actually consume Cappadocius' soul while diablerizing him, leaving him weaker compared to most Antediluvians. Gehenna amps up his failures tenfold: in "Nightshade," he ends up reduced to hunting through the ruins of Kaymakli for a way of finishing the Apotheosis ritual, and dying thanks to the players.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family:
  • Domestic abuse, incest, necrophilia, sibling rivalry, political infighting... it only gets worse when you take into account that the only way to achieve status among the clan is competition between family members.
  • It's pointed out the Giovanni are as sadistic, warped, and degenerate as the most depraved of ghoul families beneath all the airs they put on, to the point that, deep down inside, they're really just like one of those inbred hillbilly families you would find in a teen slasher flick, only with a lot more money.
  • The Giovanni have incorporated a few other mortal families of wealth and power into their Clan over the centuries. Almost all of them are also big and screwed up too, like the Dunsirn, a Scottish family of cannibal bankers, the Koenig, German arms dealers and death fetishists, and the Pisanob, Mexican necromancers whose ancestors were blood-handed Aztec priests and who've kept to family traditions as much as any other Giovanni.
• Break the Haughty: "The Crucible of God" sees the clan lose all their influence over mortal society when the existence of vampires is unveiled, and unlike the Ventrue, they aren't able to recoup their losses. For good measure, the Giovanni's headquarters in Venice are mysteriously obliterated, killing off most of their leaders and scattering the family to the four winds.
• The Clan: There's no getting around the fact that the Giovanni family is huge, with branches in England, Scotland, the United States, South America, and many, many others.
• Collector of the Strange: They love collecting occult artifacts and keeping them around their homes.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him:
  • In "Crucible of God," the Giovanni headquarters in Venice gets whacked with a freak storm that wipes out more than half the clan.
  • In V5, Augustus Giovanni is, whether he was killed or diablerized, no longer around, resulting in the Spectres and Wraiths that were once under his control now being free and swearing revenge on the Giovanni.
• Genocide Backfire: Unlike the Salubri, the Cappadocians really were exterminated in the purge started by their usurpers. Unfortunately, this resulted in the clan using their mastery of the Mortis discipline to take control of the underworld; worse still, fifty members of the clan successfully returned from the grave in the modern nights, rebranding themselves "Harbingers of Skulls" and swearing vengeance upon the Giovanni. That's one view of things, anyway.
• Godhood Seeker: As of Gehenna, Augustus Giovanni has decided to take his sire's route to godhood via the Apotheosis ritual. It fails miserably, thanks to the players.
• Hated by All: Likely the single most despised major clan of all in modern nights, only barely tolerated by the Camarilla and the other Independents, and have at least two minor bloodlines actively working against them. Almost none of the other clans have anything nice to say about the Giovanni in their respective handbooks, with clan stereotypes often degenerating into "Reason You Suck" Speeches: those who don't regard them with suspicion invariably regard them with contempt and mockery, painting them (quite accurately) as inbred and self-absorbed, and the Malkavians go out of their way to point out that the ghosts hate them too. About the only clan that ever had any measure of respect for them were the Cappadocians, and quite a few of them weren't sure if Augustus and his family could be trusted; but they did- and the Giovanni diablerized their leader and killed them all. As a result, the Harbingers of Skulls, being resurrected Cappadocians, hate the Giovanni more than any other clan in existence. Even the handbook on Gehenna hates Augustus.
  ...the most hated of all the Antediluvians- the disgusting, incestuous, bloated and selfish bastard Augustus. He's Cappadocius' biggest mistake, and nothing more than a plague on the world since his inclusion in the ranks of the damned.
• I Love the Dead: The Ventrue mock them for this (and their habit of Villainous Incest):
  [Clan Ventrue's general thoughts on the Giovanni] Our stillborn siblings, who never developed a sense of right and wrong or what not to stick your cock into.
• Inhuman Eye Concealers: The Necromancy ritual "Occhio d'Uomo Morto" requires the practitioner to rip out one of their own eyeballs and replace it with a ritually-preserved substitute taken from a corpse. Though this ritual grants them the Shroudsight ability, it also results in the necromancer looking pretty disturbing unless they cover up the new eye with sunglasses.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In the V5 timeline, Augustus Giovanni is likely to have been killed or diablerized which resulted in the Spectres and Wraiths he kept under his control being free to exact their revenge. Additionally, the Harbingers of Skulls have launched an attack on the Giovanni's holdings in Venice and the Second Inquisition have killed several Giovanni elders. This, combined with rumors of the Promise of 1528 (a treaty between the Camarilla and the Giovanni declaring that they will not interfere with each other's affairs) having a time limit and would end in a few years, led the remnants of the Giovanni to form Clan Hecata with members of the very clan they diablerized in a bid to survive.
• The Mafia: Several of their branches have fingers in organized crime to some degree or another- including the Mafia, as their own WoD handbook makes clear. Interestingly, a sourcebook specifically about the Mafia in the WoD makes it clear this reputation is exaggerated. The Giovanni may be Italian, but their interests lay mainly in Venice and northern Italy rather than Sicily. There are some Giovanni with ties to La Cosa Nostra, but they're outnumbered by the Ventrue and Lasombra.
• Necromancer: In three different flavors: the Sepulchre path summons, manipulates, and damages ghosts; the Bone path makes zombies and places souls in new bodies, and the Ash path allows them to enter and travel through the Shadowlands. The Harbingers of Skulls stole the Ash path as part of their escape from the Underworld; aside from the Mortis path, which is an adaptation of the Cappadocian Discipline of Mortiis, it's the only path they care to learn.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Vampire + necromancer + The Mafia.
• Obviously Evil: They're incestuous, cannibalistic, degenerate, omnicidal vampire necromancers (not to mention bankers) with penchants for sadism, necrophilia, slavery, domestic abuse, high finance backstabbing, and all other kinds of nasty stuff. They're involved in organized crime and perform dark necromantic rituals that make even other vampires uneasy. They exterminated the clan they used to be a part of wholesale, oftentimes horrifically torturing its members in the process, and mass murder is rather casually part of the family's MO, as it provides more resources for them to work with. Totally, one-hundred percent nice guys. Japheth and Constancia could tell what kind of a man Augustus Giovanni was the moment they met him, but failed to convince Cappadocius not to embrace him.
• Omnicidal Maniac: The Giovanni's ultimate goal is to bring about an "Endless Night," with the Afterlife and the real world merged into a single realm that they could rule. They would go about this by collecting 100 million wraiths - 50 million by tracking them down in both the real world and the Afterlife, another 50 by setting off a global nuclear war and harvesting the massive bounty of souls that would result. Then these wraiths would be used to shatter the Veil, merging the worlds. Unfortunately, it's believed that the attempt would have gone horribly wrong, killing the inhabitants of both worlds. Fortunately, Gehenna brings this plan to an end before it can get too far.
• Our Ghouls Are Creepier: Unlike other clans, the Giovanni use ghouling (or "the Proxy Kiss" as they call it) as part of promotion. Once a family member has been found worthy in a certain field, he or she will be made into a ghoul; after further competition - and decades of service, in some cases - the ghoul will eventually be embraced.
• The Patriarch: Augustus Giovanni - or, as the younger members call him, "Uncle Augie".
• The Purge: Much like the Tremere, they went out of their way to exterminate the clan they stole power from. Unlike the Salubri, no Cappadocians escaped the massacre... except the ones that managed to escape an in-clan purge almost a millennium ago. They eventually broke out of the Underworld, becoming the Harbingers of Skulls, and made it their goal in existence to wipe the Giovanni out to the last drop of vitae.
• Religious Vampire: A very strange example, since its members are expected to be nominally Catholic and declaring atheism is grounds for excommunication, even if all they do is pay lip service to the faith. Many of their vices- sadism, necrophilia, domestic abuse, cannibalism, slavery and backstabbing- are hardly good Catholic behaviour.
• Sadist: Comes up so often in the family that they might actually be genetically predisposed to it, and the Rossellini branch in particular (known for being forceful necromancers with skills on par with the main family) are known for this. It doesn't help that this is actually a useful thing to be when you're a necromancer, as being cruel, deviant, and emotionally manipulative is probably the easiest way to bend wraiths to your will.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Assuming they haven't already got a family member working there, the Giovanni will probably have a friend or two in the upper echelons of the local government or corporations.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Their wealth as a clan is second only to the Ventrue.
• Smug Snake: Augustus Giovanni believed he was the equal to the Antediluvians by right of pillage, and that he was a brilliant chessmaster who deserved the world. He was actually a slimy tick who played right into his master's hands by attempting to betray him, and he comes to an appropriately sticky end as a result of his own arrogance.
• Uncanny Family Resemblance: "Fair Is Foul" has the Giovanni clan start to resemble the Cappadocians, their bodies showing advancing signs of decay as Gehenna continues.
• Undeathly Pallor: An optional merit for a Giovanni gives them this as a clan weakness (and thus restores the Kiss of the Vampire that most in the clan lack). However, as this is a throwback to the Cappadocian clan, this results in some level of distrust from other Giovanni.
• Vampire Bites Suck: In sharp comparison to the intensely pleasurable bites of other vampires, Giovanni bites are extremely painful to mortals. Of course, with their connections and regular access to corpses, it's rarely a problem for the clan. In fact, the real problems with their feeding habits come from the fact that the Giovanni bite is also painful to the Giovanni itself, as is any type of feeding that does not involve the direct sources of blood.
• Villainous Incest: Let's just say that Giovanni vampires can take "Inbred" as a flaw and leave it at that. When you only recruit family members, things can get weird and messy fast.

Ravnos

Fifth Edition Logo

Classic Logo

Daredevils, mystics, rogues, and tricksters, the Ravnos were among the hardest hit by the Week of Nightmares, when their Antediluvian, Zapathasura, awoke from his slumber and wrought havoc across India before finally being brought down by the Technocracy; thanks to their founder's predations and death, few Ravnos remained at the opening of the 21st century. But they are still on the move in the Final Nights, as survivors and new blood have started to adapt to the new normal.

Weakness: Originally, each Ravnos had a particular crime (ranging from con games to murder to violating their own moral codes) which they were addicted to, forcing them to fight to resist the urge to indulge when it arose. After the Week of Nightmares, the clan had a different curse laid upon them: no Ravnos may sleep within a mile of where they slept the previous night, lest they suffer greatly.

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• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Ravnos embrace the Path of Paradox, which- in the original Indian version- is most definitely this. The western variant... not so much.
• Con Man: A role they may excel in. This was once their clan weakness, but this has been retconned in the Fifth Edition.
• Deadpan Snarker: Quite a bit of the revised Ravnos clanbook was snarking at the others. Comes of being a clan of jokers to start with and then having little left to lose after the Week of Nightmares.
• Flying Dutchman: Since the Week of Nightmares, the Ravnos are cursed to itinerancy, as the gruesome, protracted death of their Antediluvian in the sunlight created a magical source of trauma that has permanently altered the blood of his descendants. They cannot sleep within at least a mile of the same place more than once in seven nights, or else their blood will start to burn them from the inside. City-dwelling Ravnos often circumvent this limitation by keeping mobile havens.
• I Have Many Names: Their Antediluvian: Zapathasura, Ravnos, Ravana, Dracian, and Churka.
• It Amused Me: Actually enforced by the western branch of the clan.
• Karmic Trickster: Also something they excel in.
• Last of His Kind: After the Week of Nightmares, their numbers are much reduced, though by how much depends on the book. At best, around 30% of the Clan survived the Week. At worst, there's only 100 Ravnos left in the world by the end of the Week.
• Master of Illusion: Through their mastery of Chimerstry. A sufficiently expert user of the Discipline can create illusions that are, in every possible sense, basically just real objects, so long as it's something they have personally experienced or handled.
• Mr. Vice Guy: Prior to the Fifth Edition, all heroic examples of the clan had some kind of compulsive vice they were associated with. It takes a willpower check to avoid indulging in it. In the 20th Anniversary Edition of Vampire: The Dark Ages, this was softened to compulsions of a personal vice or virtue.
• Roguish Romani: The former stereotype and predominant cultural roots of the Ravnos known to most of Kindred society, before the introduction of the Eastern Ravnos in the Revised Edition. Their writeup in the Fifth Edition completely sidesteps this by omitting any reference to the Roma whatsoever, substituting a multicultural characterization of their roots as tricksters.
• Thrill Seeker: Fifth Edition Ravnos are compelled to seek dangerous solutions to problems they are put up to. This can be avoided if other non-Ravnos can solve the problem instead, but this is no more likely to be the case without any other motivation.
• Villainous BSoD: A large chunk of the Ravnos that survived the Week of Nightmares are still deeply traumatized by the horrors they saw, decades after the fact.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: A tactic they commonly employ following the Week of Nightmares.

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