Languages: Italian(native), Tamazight (Berber), Arabic, English, Swahili, French, Afrikaans, Bantu, Yorùbá Igbo, Khoisan, Kordofanian, Mandeka, Fulani, Hausa,

And he curses his mother
And he curses his father
And he curses his virtue like an unclean thing

So what are my chances of honest advances
I'd say, though
Better to win by admitting my sin, than to lose
With a halo

They say that 'evil prevails when good men fail to act.' It ought to be 'evil prevails.'"
-Yuri Orlov, Lord of War

Born in Libya to a Amazigh mother and a father of Italian descent, Giancarlo was brought up into a profession that might've been more fitting in the pages of colonial history, yet still practiced in the 20th century. Since the 1600s, the Ghiberti family served as Clan Giovanni's African interests, trafficking in many things across the so-called Dark Continent

Like guns. And slaves. And souls.

From the time he was tall enough to reach the pedals on a Land Rover, he was pulled out of school and tutored privately, so he could ferry his older (and largely nocturnal) relations in and out of African war zones. He shot and killed his first man when he was 13 during a sunset border crossing, and watched an 'uncle' pull the ghost from the corpse. Before he was 18, he knew how to tape a pretty girl's legs and arms and mouth so there wouldn't be tape marks when she was dropped off at a prospective 'buyer's'. Never to unload more than a four-round burst from an AK-47 at any one time or you'd wind up shooting the air. And someday, maybe, if he impressed enough people, he might wind up 'apprenticed' to one of the family's Black Magicians, mastering the powers of death, and what lay beyond. Noone ever used words like 'vampire' and 'Embrace,' but it was hard not to drive one of the Magicians in a sealed compartment in a truck without knowing there was something different. The name 'Giovanni' only meant some distant Venetian relatives to Giancarlo, along with a handful of other branches - Rosselini, some far-flung cousins in South America

He didn't become anyone's apprentice, though. Even when he grew into adulthood (though such things were relative) and he was competent enough to negotiate on his own or alongside his eldest (and family favorite) -brother- crates of rifles to a besieged village, in exchange for ten strong children for a mining company's off-the-books, in exchange for a tidy profit. Backing one military coup or the other - whichever would guarantee the greatest bloodshed and most casualties. A little mercenary work of his own, occaisionally, when subtletyl didn't produce results; supressing 'civilian unrest' in showers of gunfire at the direction of men in uniforms and berets.

More than occaisionally, a sharp stab of conscience in hindsight would have him puking his guts out in the bushes after gunning down a small farming community, or waking up in the middle of the night with cold sweats. He perpetually tried to put these behind him, be more like his relatives who never flinched. He never fully could, but it didn't stop him from getting up every day to do it all over again.

Things went well for several years, until a deal in some turbulent, poverty-ridden African nation went terribly sour and Giancarlo and his older (and Proxy Kissed) brother were caught in the crossfire. Angelo,despite his hardy ghoul constitution, died before he could be resuccitated with the Embrace. Giancarlo, by some quirk of fate, managed to pull through, albeit after hovering in a coma for nearly six weeks in a backwater hospital. When he came back, he blamed himself for the failure. And he could tell that maybe he wasn't the only one.

He threw himself back into the business, trying to save some face, but the uncle who'd taken Angelo beneath his wing found it increasingly more difficult to look Giancarlo in the face. After a few horribly suspicious 'incidents,' another relative arranged a few lengthy errands for him to leave the continent for the Americas - expanding the Ghiberti's forbidden commodity business, maintaining relations with the Pisanob and maybe establishing a few with their even more far-flung American relations.

Wishlist:
Subterfuge, Expression, Indimitation, Mentals, Manipulation, Occult, Academics, Leadership, Law, Investigation, Finance