Character Name: Gratiano
Clan: Lasombra
Player Name: NPC
Email Address: Pending
Background Information:
Born into the prosperous de Veronese family of Italy, Gratiano knew all the advantages of noble birth and showed the requisite haughtiness and base cruelty at an early age. Indeed, his father's few attempts to curb the boy's arrogance and pride only led to more hostility and anger. Still, Gratiano's ambition and accomplishments pleased his father; he quickly distinguished himself in war, commerce and politics. Entering the priesthood as a teenager, he also wielded this power well, and sought a
bishopric while still in his early twenties.
The early part of the twelfth century was a curious age of Popes and Anti-Popes; of holy wars within Christendom; of the Italian nation trading happily with the German nation invading it. Gratiano battled with all his substantial might and power to keep Italy strong, knowing birth tied his
power to its. Thus he used treaties, trade agreements and troops as weapons against the Holy Roman Empire.
But it seemed nothing could stem the tide of endless invasions. As the armies of the Empire came closer to seizing the Papacy from Rome, the Italians desperately sought a new strategy. Amid high hopes for peace (and praise), the young Gratiano embarked on a series of diplomatic missions to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor to negotiate for greater autonomy. After months of futile bargaining,
however, her realized his countrymen's insincerity in the negotiations. That they sent him, him of all people, only to stall, was unbearable to the ambitious young man. His bitterness grew as he saw the dazzling wealth of the Emperor's court, and he slowly began adopting German customs. This, coupled with the lack of action on his investiture, began severing his ties to his homeland.
A German noble quickly noted Gratiano's dissatisfaction and began working on him. In short order, the Italian patriot agreed to betray his Pope and his people in return for a German estate and entry into the clergy of the Holy Roman Empire. He maneuvered the elderly patriarch of his family into signing away valuable territorial control to the Holy Roman Empire, and laid the groundwork for a siege of northern Italian cities.
His glee at how well the plan caught his family off guard knew no bounds, and his happiness would have been complete if not for the intervention of an ancient vampire.
His Death
Gratiano's base betrayal of his own family caught the eye of the founder of the Lasombra clan of vampires. Though long separate from the mortal world, the founder still covertly manipulated Italian politics. Gratiano's cunning and malice so impressed him that he decided to take the noble into
his vampiric family. Lasombra fervently believed his progeny should not be taken by force, but
instead Embraced only when they wanted a vampiric existence as passionately and as desperately as they desired their next breaths. He believed, as do many other Kindred, that ties of true loyalty are far stronger than the supernatural ties of the Blood.
So, before Gratiano could savor his German estate, Lasombra arranged for him to return to Verona to hammer out the agreement's fine details. The young man feared an eleventh-hour return to the people he was betraying, but knew all his work depended on it.
Upon his arrival, he found his family waiting with manacles. They ambushed him, beat him and placed him under house arrest. When the armies of the Holy Roman Empire did not come to release him, he began to despair that all his plans had come to nothing. Lasombra rose from his deep sleep to make a late-night visit to the imprisoned young man. Passing through the cell walls, the intimidating Antediluvian offered to intercede for the stunned youth in return for utter loyalty. To his surprise, Gratiano did not jump at the offer, and showed skepticism about joining the mysterious Lasombra. He already had plans for his own release, and felt confident his personal charm would win the day in
a battle against his weakened family.
Still, Gratiano's doubts were assuaged by the continued presence of the ancient vampire, and eventually Gratiano accepted, seeing a sure path to safety and power. As the Antediluvian congratulated himself on a fine addition to his line, Gratiano began looking for ways to take his sire's
place. He easily surmised that Lasombra was looking for an enthusiastic, eager son, so he put on a great display of enthusiasm and loyalty.
Gratiano's cleverness deceived the Antediluvian utterly, but the ancient vampire's elder childe, Montano, was not so easily duped. Montano, a powerful warrior and leader of Lasombra's elite Victory Corps, saw through the young man's duplicity. He warned his sire of his misgivings, but Lasombra scoffed, accusing the loyal Montano of rank jealousy towards his new brother.
For years Gratiano seemed to fulfill the Antediluvian's hopes. When the master was around, he was a loyal, fawning toady. When he was away from his sire, he constantly tested the practical limitations of his ties.
Lasombra felt refreshed after taking a new son, and never suspected Gratiano of disloyalty, especially after Montano convinced him to ensure the Italian's loyalty with a Blood Bond. He never guessed Gratiano was the last son he would ever take.
His Unlife
The young nobleman traded the precarious world of Italian intrigue for the ferocious world of vampire politics. During the following centuries, he learned the ways of the Kindred and became adept at the stratagems they used against one another. He also bridled at the rigid status system locking Montano and Lasombra's other songs above him in a fixed, immutable hierarchy.
His daring had rocketed him to power in the mortal world, but now he found himself in a cold world where lifespans were measured in millennia and rapid ascensions were impossible. He wanted immediate respect and hated the thought that high status would take centuries to earn. His hatred was
further fueled by the successes of Montano, who enjoyed great popularity in the Italian court and military victories abroad. Gratiano continued to do as he was told, but his heart burned once more with traitorous venom.
The anarch movement came to Italy on stealthy wings, in knowing winks and subtle intimations. Intolerant and fearful elders snuffed out the few angry young prophets preaching the anarch creed, but the movement burned brighter with each attempt to smother it. Under Montano's leadership, the
Lasombra clan proved especially adept at rooting out and crushing anarchs.
The only place they did not think to look was at home. When the anarchs made appeals to Lasombra's progeny, Montano and the other childer caught and killed them. Because Gratiano was the most recent of the Antediluvian's creations, the anarchs singled him out for special temptations. Publicly he battled them, but secretly he sought their attentions. When he learned they could break the compelling power of the Blood Bond, he agreed to join. In a secret midnight ritual, he shared the blood of twelve anarchs and shook off the ties to his master. The newly freed Gratiano hatched a sinister plot to kill his sire. He
brought special sacrificial anarchs before the Lasombra council in Sicily, claiming he caught them hiding in the Lasombra palace. The elders probed the minds of the anarchs and learned Montano, the eldest son of Lasombra, had brought them in to kill the other brothers. These images, planted in the anarchs' mind by Assamite allies, tore apart the court. Some of the Lasombra clamored for Montano's blood. Others called it a cheap anarch trick and insisted Montano was innocent. While their master slept, they
chose sides and fell to bloody squabbling. Only Montano refused to participate.
At the apex of the suspicion and chaos, the anarchs attacked. The weakened Lasombra clan reeled under the impact of the full fury of Europe's anarchs, aided by the Assamites and Lasombra anarchs like Gratiano. The clan fell like a house of cards, and a mighty anarch leader attacked, defeated and
drank the blood of the Lasombra founder. Only Montano and a handful of others survived utter destruction.
Gratiano predicted the other clans would fall as easily as his own, and helped mold the reckless energy of the anarchs into the Sabbat. Sobered by the destruction of Lasombra, however, the other elders banded their houses together into the Camarilla and presented a unified front against their
rebellious progeny. They defeated the Assamites, and fight the Sabbat to this day.
Gratiano, now an Archbishop of the Sabbat, works to undermine the Camarilla. Through political maneuvering, corruption of Camarilla neonates and outright violence, he and the other Sabbat leaders fight their ancient enemies from city to city. Though he has not attained more outright victories like the one over his sire, he is content to rule over an unruly force of anarchs.
