Augustus Octavian

Name: Gaius Octavius Augustus Giovanni
       Nicknames: August, Gus, Gusbus, Gussy, Bastard

DOB: September 23, 3000 BC

Birth Place: Rome
Current Location: New Avrilis, Hellifyno
Education: Extensive studies into the biology, physiology and spiritualism of the dead. Retroactive resurrection of the dead. Extensive combat and war strategy.
Occupation: Antediluvian and Patriarch of the Giovanni, God of several universes and worlds
Alignment: Chaotic Evil.
Vices: Drinking, women, blood, The Void
Sex: Bisexual
Romance: Married – Kage-Hime and Zaire Huon. Mated – Kage-Hime.

Leila Marie Carter, Delilah Rousseau, Delilah Giovanni, Aurora Rousseau, Jaelle

My Appearance:
Height; 6 Feet 3 Inches.
Weight/Body; 215 lbs/Athletic-Muscular.
Skin; Pale/Fair Skinned.
Hair; Dark brown.
Eyes; Originally chocolate brown, light blue after being turned by Delilah Rousseau.

Tattoos/Piercings; None.

Family:
M, Mother. F, Father. S, Step. H, Half. G, Great. A, Aunt. U, Uncle, B, Brother. S, Sister. F/MC, Female/Male Cousin.
Parents;
[F] Romulus Bloodwalker
[M] Venus under the guise of Atia Balba Caesonia
Grandparents;
[FS] Romulus Bloodwalker (Don’t ask)

[MS] The Greek and Roman Pantheon
Children
Unknown x3
Lamora Acardi
Lilliana Rousseau

Solaris Octavian

Asterin Octavian

Amirah Octavian
(There are dozens more)

Powers

Blood Manipulation: Granted limited control over blood and life force by Romulus through dark magics. Also studied three paths of Thaumaturgy (Blood manipulation into powers).

Advanced Auspex: Grants a vampire superhuman senses that can then be used to perceive supernatural entities, decipher languages among other things like pushing one’s mind into another realm of existence and astral projecting.

Celerity: Grants a vampire supernatural speed and reflexes.

Advanced Dominate: Grants a vampire the power to force one’s will on a bystander so long as one has eye contact or is touching them. Some vampires, like Augustus, do not need to be in contact with others. Does not work as well when a vampire has high Auspex skill.

Advanced Fortitude: Grants a vampire high resistance to damage, even going as far as to protect a vampire from the sunlight and fire. Caine’s curse makes it so that vampires are easy corrupted by this skill, thinking themselves invincible to the world around them.

Advanced Necromancy: Is a taught skill, not one that is innate within a vampire already. One must go through years of scrupulous training and research to practice and even then you might not have a talent for it. Members of the Giovanni with an advanced level in the skill are able to interact with wraiths, even going as far as to injure them or corrupt them to their own will. They are able to walk in the gauntlet and interact with the realm of the dead and undead.

Obfuscate: Grants a vampire the ability to disappear from sight or remain hidden in the shadows. Some individuals who have it can easily get around without being noticed. Others only know it in so far as to only remain unseen if they do not move in the shadows. This is the reason for the rumors of vampires just appearing out of no where.

Advanced Potence: Grants a vampire supernatural strength and vigor. Vampires who are granted this skill are the reason for rumors of vampires with the strength of 10 men, or some with the ability to throw cars and the like. It can also render the world through simple motions like a flick of the finger or with telepathic energies. Augustus has a Potence at the level of 9 which is the highest level of Potence.

Advanced Presence: Grants a vampire supernatural allure and emotional control over crowds which allows a kindred or vampire to control, attract and sway them. At Gus’ Majesty level, he can control an area as large, if not larger, than a large stadium or theater. He also has the ability to send all members of his family into a frenzy so long as they hold the Giovanni name or blood. He can sway humans and other creatures alike in the same manner. He appears as a creature with absolute control and authority.

History;

Augustus’ story begins at the dawn of creation when he was born as Erebus. The Primordial gods that existed at that point needed a personification of darkness that wasn’t linked to night. He was birthed from Chaos himself. Later on when the humans were created, he personally saw them as abominations meant to be rid from the earth and was knighted by his father to do such. The other primordial gods who were against the primordial chaos sought to end the terror Erebus and Chaos represented and Erebus was trapped, killed and inevitably cursed to be reborn time after time again, in different circumstances.

Fast forward another thousand years, Augustus was once more resurrected and born through the body of Adonis, birthed by Myrrha and her own father, King Cinyras of Cyprus. Not much is known of Adonis during this time period other than what is written and passed on by word of mouth and drawing at the time. He became the lover of Aphrodite and was raised by Persephone who inevitably came to favor him as Aphrodite did. In retaliation for Adonis’ stake with Persephone and Aphrodite, he was further cursed in this existence to spend a third of the year with Persephone who like a mother to him, a third of the year with Aphrodite who spoiled him with pleasures, and a third of the year with whomever he chose. Being a virile man, he chose Aphrodite.

One day, he was gored and killed by a bore he was hunting and when his blood mixed with the tears of Aphrodite, it sprang forth the flower Anemone. He was resurrected as a God due to his good life. Adonis became known to philosophers as the dying-and-rising god.

At some point between the birth of Adonis and the birth of Gaiaus Octavian, something happened to kill him off once more. He was born into a family closely linked to Julius Caesar, his uncle on his mother’s side. Little to anyone’s knowledge, his mother was an incarnation of Aphrodite who had promised to be with him in another life time. However, as his mother there were social standards and she treated him and the rest of his family harshly. He learned the values of being a Roman watching his sister and siblings being abused on a daily basis by the woman they were supposed to be cared for.

Eventually, when he was old enough, he learned the trials of combat and set off on his own to make a name for himself where he did his best to rise to his uncle’s example. His mother in the mean time stayed behind, scheming ways to grow more powerful herself. After Julius Caesar adopted him and he became emperor, he immediately set forth to the battle field. It was on one of these campaigns that he met Jaelle Admeta, the daughter of a gypsy people in the outlining German cities on the outskirts of Rome.

He was pushed to marry her as was seen fit by her cultures and she was made his temporary queen. Alongside his brother and friend, later known as Tyson Myres, he fought his way across the battle field on more than one occasion becoming renown for his battle wit and when he finally met the blunt edge of a spear, a Ventrue vampire saw fit to initiate him as a ghoul. Unfortunately, he still had ties to Rome and he did not want to leave his life behind so he was later abandoned by the Ventrue clan who sought to see him murdered. He had several children with his wife before she too, died, leaving him along with her sister and their children whom he adopted out before he finally followed the path set in history.

Several years later when his body was showing no signs of aging, Augustus Octavian faked his death and sent his mother and sister to die with those cursed by death’s touch. He started a new family on the outskirts of Rome that reveled in the study of negromancy, a study of death as it was called during that time that later became the foundation along with occult teachings of the Cappadocian that led to his rise in power.

In 1005, in the hollows of Erciyes and under the shadow of Cappadocius’s torpid form, Augustus 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’s plan to diablerize the Almighty. However, lacking knowledge about the soul (the Cappadocians’ use of Necromancy focused more on the act of dying than the events afterwards), the Founder began to shop for experts.

Enter the Giovani — “the young ones” — 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 Giovani had been studying the clans and entertaining offers from various vampiric elders for the Embrace. The Cappadocian offer was the most attractive, providing the lowest generation (as well as the most manipulable clan).

As a result, and despite the protests of Cappadocius’s 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’s donated blood into the throat of a drained Giovanni (The remainder was hidden by Japheth, the True Vessel becoming a major element Giovani rumor).

Following his ascent into the blood, Augustus Giovani immediately began Embracing his own family. In the course of doing so, the Giovani became something between a bloodline and a cult within the Cappadocian clan. Acknowledged as the experts on Necromancy (and rapidly expanding the field), the Giovani maintained themselves slightly separate from the mother clan. This, as the Giovani 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’s 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 were completed, with Japheth and Cappadocius dead and both leading Giovanni lowered a generation. The betrayal of Cappadocius and his childer was later called “the Bite” among Giovanni family members.

In 1500, Augustus met two of the loves of his life, Leila Marie Carter and Delilah Rousseau. Without knowing it, he had stumbled upon the paths of one of the reincarnations of his first love, the reincarnation of Jaelle in Leila but the two were not yet meant to be together. They broke apart and Augustus instead ended up meeting Delilah Rousseau who became his wife for several centuries. Unfortunately, the spirit and wraith of Cappadocius and Japeth kept them apart for the greater part of six or seven hundred years.

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, also known as the Promise of 1528. The Giovanni were left alone and left the Camarilla alone, exactly as the Giovanni wanted it.

The ultimate goal of the clan was outlined by Augustus Giovanni after reviewing Cappadocius’s original plan. Clan Giovanni acquired the bulk of its power by the hold it maintained over wraiths, so by tearing down the Shroud, the clan of Death would be able to increase its power beyond conception. Giovanni outlined plans to do so, with the most difficult goal being the acquisition of vast numbers of souls to enact the necromantic rituals necessary.

From 1528 onwards, the Giovanni were basically left alone to pursue their goals. By opting out from the increasingly hot Camarilla/Sabbat wars, their resources were devoted to three goals: increasing necromantic knowledge, acquiring additional financial clout, and eliminating the remaining Cappadocians and Lamia. Each of these goals tied back into their eventual plan to tear down the Shroud: Necromantic knowledge to acquire the souls, finance to increase the soul supply by buying slaves and engineering economic disasters, and eliminating Cappadocians to keep the only possible squealers tightly shut.

During this period, the Giovanni involved themselves in a variety of occult activities, primary through the clan’s notorious scholar Ambrogino Giovanni. At the same time, the Giovanni made bargains with entities like The Capuchin to acquire Necromantic information.

The Giovanni used the age of discovery and colonialism to gain footholds within new states like the United States through their mortal merchant relatives. As trade got more and more important for the wealth and influence of a nation, many Giovanni were able to accumulate large financial reserves for themselves. It was during this time, that the Giovanni, despite being reviled as incestuous graverobbers, proved themselves to be one of the most influential kindred clans within mortal society and often this gave them the upper edge in Kindred politics.

The Giovanni managed to control nearly every Camarilla and Sabbat city in Italy with their vast financial resources and their wraiths servants (except for the Vatican and Malta, as both are claimed by other powerful forces). Many especially young Giovanni traveled in other states during this time in order to further the influence and finding new financial sources and some families who can expand the clans necromantic knowledge, like the Pisanob that were recruited during the seventeenth century.

During the two World Wars, the plans of Augustus Giovanni were set back, because the two Maelstroms damaged the infrastructure of the Shadowlands and cost them many of their wraith servants.

In the beginning of the twentieth century, the Giovanni were riding high. They expanded the clan into other families (notably the Milliners, della Passaglia, Pisanob and Ghiberti), seemingly wiped out the last of the Cappadocians and their Lamia protectors, and prepared to rend the Shroud and bring the dead to the living.

By the end of the century, things had gone pear shaped. Mysterious vampires, the Harbingers of Skulls, claimed vengeance on the clan for reasons unknown; the Sixth Great Maelstrom shredded the wraiths’ society; and the apocalyptic events of the Week of Nightmares destroyed their spiritual assets.

Enter the Giovanni into Hellifyno. Months, perhaps years before, Augustus sent a member of the Giovanni scouts to Hellifyno to judge whether it was worth considering a clan presence on the planet. When she sent news, she later disappeared and after a while, Augustus followed by several of his children made a claim on the planet where they were met with the forces protecting it, the Silverhides, Romulus and a Silent Strider garou by the name of Aiden.

TBC