Spoiler: Giovanni Auditore
Name: Giovanni Auditore
Age: 33
Gender: Male
Homeland: Firenze, Vodacce
Special skills (includes magic, specific fighting techniques, etc): Sceriffo: A term and skillset that means equal parts Upholder of Law...and Ender of Lives. Trained from childhood into drunken adulthood. To knows the laws of all lands, shoot guns and bows as well as swing a sword or his fist. As long as he was told it was "La Legge or the Law."
Strengths:
Giudice: In the Vodacce tongue it means Judge. When sober he has deep knowledge of laws. And not just Vodacce laws, but the laws of any country civilized enough to have an internalized Justice system. When drunk he knows it's bad in most place to kill or steal.
Giuria: In the Vodacce tongue it means Jury. When sober he has an impressive ability to look at a situation with an objectively open mind. Able to hear all sides and come to conclusions absent of bias or prejudice. When drunk he can...hear both sides of an argument... and say who is full of shit and who is...less full of shit.
Boia: In the Vodacce tongue it means Executioner. Sober or drunk Gio is a dangerous man from any distance. He's been trained in the use of firearms mostly pistols, but can use a musket if you shove one in his hands. And while his primary melee training is in Lucani he has skill in the rest of the traditional Vodacce Disciplines given the proper tools. And lastly he has skill in plain old kickboxing for when he doesn't have a weapon.
Weaknesses:
Branded: Whenever he is seen out of his great coat and mask his entire body is marked with the Vodacce tattoos that denote him a killer of men, unclean and exiled from society.
Drunkard: From a lifetime of horrors and soul burning stains, alcohol is his only escape.
Mistrust of Everyone: When you are born and raised in the blood soaked lands of Vodacce and then find yourself thrust to the front lines of the petty infighting among nobles being seen and used as a weapon more than listened to as a person you begin seeing the world through motives, gains, and ulterior remarks. Everyone is out for something and no one does anything out of the goodness of their heart.
Typical role within party (i.e. scout, fighter, supporter, etc): Drunk, Executioner, Spy. Whatever allows him to keep drinking.
Description:Spoiler: Giovanni
Above was Gio's uniform as a Sceriffo or a Sheriff for the House Auditore. His equipment was empowered with simple magics to glow menacingly. But those aside they were mundane garments made of the highest quality as befitting a servant of a powerful Vodacce family. Durable and comfortable, made to cut an imposing figure as much as protect the wearer from some harm.
And even after he was forced to leave that life and the glowing bits have stopped he keeps the outfit as no one wants to buy the tainted effects of the cursed profession of Sceriffo. They are his normal garbs in combat or at the bar. As dirty and blood stained as they are the mere sight has done wonders for both bringing trouble right up to him and keeping it at bay.
Underneath his greatcoat, boots, and hat though is a reviled and broken man in dire need of either a bath or a spiritual cleansing. Not unattractive as much as...marred by the nonsensical tattoos of his profession. Stocky build, average height, with blurry amber colored eyes and a disheveled mop of black curly hair, his face, while square and pleasant is plagued by a perpetually patchy beard that just can seem to grow under the riot of facial tattoos.
What skin that can be seen under his markings is mocha in color, but whether or not that is his natural tone or the result of not bathing frequently is up for debate. While his shoulders are broad and his back strong he carries himself like an old tired dog. Head down, shoulders slumped, feet shuffling along without purpose.
Spoiler: History
Like most of his life Giovanni drinks to forget his childhood. And after all these years it's succeeded pretty well in doing just that. But in the few instances where he is sober he remembers being pulled away from a beautiful dark skinned woman with curly hair, simple clothing, and screaming baby in her arms. He assumed his mother and younger sibling, but they could also just have been people he saw as he was being dragged away. He doesn't know and considering what happened next it hardly matters who they were.
He was taken the hilltop villa of the Auditore family. Among the richest and most powerful families in the city which was saying a lot. But considering it was built around a Merchant Prince that married a Sorte Witch that might be all that is needed to be said. Like every great house in Vodacce, the Auditores have a great deal of power and a great deal of enemies. As such they need a great deal of protection even with a Sorte Witch in their House so they created their own Forze di Polizia. A private security force tasked with upholding "The Law" in their fiefdoms and "The Law" was whatever the cutthroat and cruel family wished it to be at the time.
Such groups weren't uncommon among the Vodaccen nobility, but every single one was used in the exact same way...as the family's own personal goon squad. Many poor men and women threw themselves at the chance to be gainfully employed and have a powerful family behind them. But the money and food came at a tremendous cost, the humanity and future of each Sceriffo and Sceriffa that put on the signature coat. Once you are known for being the hammer which the nobles use to play their Game you better die in that life or hope you never lose the favor of your Master or Mistress, because once that happens you are considered worse than any breed of criminal short of genocidal murderers. This was young Giovanni's future he just didn't know it yet.
Many Polizia forces are conscripted individuals and many of those conscripts were kids stolen by or sold to the rich families to pay off some debt or earn some favor. Giovanni hoped he was of the former case rather than the latter. Being sold out of desperation makes the sting of being sold at all slightly less painful than being sold for a pat on the head. But like most everything else it doesn't matter now. He and a group of six other kids two more boys and three girls were lumped into a unit of sorts called Classe Sei or Class Six. The Matrons and Patrons called them his brothers and sisters only, he doesn't even recall if he ever learned the names of his new "siblings" they were always "tall brother" or "soft-skinned sister" when they talked with each other. Giovanni was "Amber-eyed brother" for most of his childhood and his closest sibling was "heart-faced sister" that much he does remember.
From that point on Giovanni's life was one of pain and training. Half of his class was wiped out before they completed training, only himself, white-haired brother, and one-eyed sister survived to adulthood. Heart-faced sister was killed around his thirteenth birthday by a runaway horse cart. That was the last time he ever cried, he might've cried one last time after graduation when he was drugged and tied down by his arms and legs as the villa's ink master carved the Marchi della Legge the "Brands of Law" upon his body, but he was quite out of sorts then and couldn't remember. They had no rhyme or reason as far as he could tell, but whatever they were meant to be, they were viewed as a death sentence both for his victims and himself. As long as he worked for his Lord and Lady he was nigh untouchable aside from rival Sceriffi. But as soon as they lost power or he lost their favor he would be tossed to the wolves.
That happened at age twenty-five. A conscience is fickle and dangerous thing, in training they try to beat it out of you. If that doesn't work you are either enchanted or drugged into forgetting you have one, that usually works. But in the rarest of cases even that wears off and much to Giovanni's dismay he was one of those cases. The drugging did work wonders for years though, he lived by the book of the Auditore, knew every law, every punishment. And he carried out this brand of "justice" with cold professionalism. A beggar loitering around the villa gates? Foot broken and imprisonment for two years. A small time crook swindling peasants without paying his dues to the Auditore? Both arms broken and his belongings confiscated as recompense and imprisoned for five years...a hungry little kid caught stealing bread from a stall owned by the Auditore? Her dominate hand was chopped off and she was sold into slavery. There are monsters that slink around and hide within the deadlands of Eisen, but they are merely animals ignorant in all forms of good and evil. Giovanni and his Squadrismo? They were the real monsters in need of slaying, but no one could do it.
The day of his twenty-fifth was like any other. He woke up, washed, got dressed, ate his morning meal, and went on patrol. Once you live long enough in this life your birthday becomes just another day, an inconvenience at best as you must update your file being kept by the family's Impiegati. But on his way to the Clerical building a law was being broken in the Auditore Quarter of Firenze. Moving like a puppet on a string he ran towards the sounds of crime. A young boy was being held down by a group of large drunken men in fine clothes. Usually he was instructed to ignore crimes committed by men and women in finery. But this group didn't have anything making them as aligned with the Auditore, and he was already annoyed with being late to his meeting with the clerks, so Giovanni intervened. The first man was brought down by a pistol shot to his knee, the next was dropped by Giovanni's large metal plated gauntlet knocking him off his feet. The third man; the one on the ground with the boy was committing the actual crime. And judging by the blood and half dressed nature of both participants, the large man was violating the boy. A harsh and punishable crime even for Nobles, but where a Peasant committing such a heinous crime would be killed on the spot and his family branded for harboring such a sick individual. A Noble would simply be pulled away and the pinkie of both his hands chopped off. Painful and disfiguring yes, but he still lived and his family could maintain honor and ranking. Such is the law of the Auditore Quarter.
Wasting no time Giovanni did just that, gripping the lout by the back of his flabby neck he was roughly yanked off the boy and before he could announce himself the Sceriffo took out his stiletto and quickly cut off both the man's pinkes before kicking him roughly down the street. The bluecoat watched the tub of lard scuttle away cursing Giovanni's name and house. Definitely not aligned with the Auditore; he was well gone before the Sceriffo turned to address the ravaged boy, but the victim was gone only a puddle of blood and a decreasing trail of it down into the slums of the city quarter to show his passing. Usually reparations of some kind would be granted the victim of a crime if they lived, but there was nothing saying they need to be given nor that Giovanni had to pursue the victim once they are freed from the crime itself. With a shrug he returned to his original task of updating his file.
The rest of his day carried on as normal, minimal crimes, minimal punishments. He had his mid-day and evening meal then after some physical training, was on his way to bed. This was his life every day so as he entered his small cell he was not expecting the loud and furious summons that caused him to drop his coat before he could hang it up. Once he heard it though he quickly pulled his coat back on and rushed towards the Guardiano's or Warden's Office. The Warden is generally considered the leader of an individual Squadrismo, though he is often just a veteran Sceriffo who has become too old or injured to roam the streets any longer. It is very rare a patrolling Sheriff is ever called to the Warden's Office, Giovanni had never been summoned there before.
As he approached though, he began to piece together why he was being summoned. A young boy's cries were reverberating down the corridors as he approached and once his pushed open the door to the Warden's Office and saw both the men and the boy from earlier he knew what was about to happen. The boy had gone to take his own revenge on his ravager and failed, his small broken body and bloody face attested to that. The men had drug the child here and demanded that Giovanni punish the boy, and the punishment for attacking a noble? Death...unfortunately Giovanni had forgotten his sword, dagger, and pistol back in his room. All he had on were his heavy metal boots, but they would do just fine.
The boy was held down by the rapist and his fellows while the Warden passed judgement on the boy...no jury...just an execution. Still under the effects of the drugs from his evening meal he quickly and coldly stomped his heavy boot upon the boy's skull until it popped like an overripe grape. Then as the men laughed and collected their recompense from the Warden Giovanni fetched a serf to clean up the mess. That night Giovanni could not sleep, the drugs the Auditore put into his food to keep him without conscience wore off a few hours into the night once his was supposed to be asleep, and never had he stayed up to face the demons waiting for him beyond the miasmic cloud of the drugs. Tonight he did...and tonight...he finally realized all that he had done! He was a monster as black and evil as any bastardly creature of the night! He had ruined countless lives, killed dozens of innocent people..all for what?! For some encompassing entity of law?! This wasn't law and what he did tonight was not justice! The faces of his victims...the screams of their family's it!.... all ripped what frail structure of his mind there was. They needed to be stopped, first he broke into the kitchen and tried to find the drugs he was usually given to forget, but he couldn't find them! Next he rushed to the Infirmary and tried to batter the door down, but it was made of stronger stuff than him! So in a last ditch effort Giovanni found the family wine cellar and emptied shelf after shelf, breaking open bottles choking down wine and bits of glass to try and quiet the screams of those he had damned! But it was all too weak! He stumbled back to his room and quickly dressed this time remembering to strap on his sword, dagger, pistol, and grab whatever small pile of powder and shot he had in his room at the time.
Drunk now, but still the lives he ruined continued to torment him. He had only one plan left...true justice. He would find the men who had ruined the young boy and show them how little their money and fine clothes protected them from someone not of this world... how much their silk sheets and goose down comforters would shield them from a monster! Finding the men was easy follow the sounds of lives destroyed. The hitch was that each man had a residence in one of the three other quarters of Firenze. And each quarter was ruled over by a separate family as powerful and corrupt as the Auditore. Sceriffi did cross over jurisdictions from time to time, but were hardly allowed free reign outside of their quarters. Luckily as long as Giovanni could keep himself walking he wouldn't be stopped. He found the first man, the one he had shot in the knee, feasting on his balcony with his bandaged leg propped up on a gold pillow. Giovanni took another shot, this time blowing the man's fat head over the railing peppering the cobbled courtyard below with blood, bits of skull, and brain matter.
He was gone to the next house before anyone even responded to the gunshot. His next target, the man he punched in the face was found in the company of gamblers in a richly furnished tavern. Not caring what happens to him or the House Auditore, Giovanni stormed through the front door of the gambler's den, and hefted the man up by his throat before crashing him through the very gaming table he had been sitting at. Giovanni smashed his heavy mailed fist into the man's face until there was nothing put bloody paste and bone marring the once perfectly polished cherry wood floor. Once again he was gone before anyone moved a muscle towards alerting a nearby patroller. His last target was the rapist himself and he was at the furthest end of the city just before the gates that lead into the Vodacce wilderness. This was the man Giovanni was most eager to end, he now saw that just cutting off the beast's pinkies was too light a punishment. Like his peasant brethren, death would be the only recourse, but this one's death would different from the other two. This one would bleed out through the night and be a spectacle for the morning commuters to gawk at.
Giovanni found the bastard rutting his way through a brothel. The place was packed, but this Sheriff was on a mission. Brushing through the front door the people scattered like roaches as his heavy bloody boots hit the hard wood floors and rang like a death bell throughout the entire whore house. No words were spoken as he marched up the steps his sword drawn and ready. Moving without missing a beat he kicked in the door of each room searching for his last victim. The debauchery he witnessed in some of those rooms joined the faces of the innocent in his mind's eye as he cleaved the heads of men and women alike who he believed were breaking the law...his law. No less than ten bodies were pulled out of that brothel before the sickly fingers of the winter dawn clawed over the rooftops of Firenze. In the last room he found his original goal. Huddled naked in a corner with the limp body of a young girl stretched out upon the bed, blood staining the sheets like it stained the street before it.
Recognizing Giovanni the man stood up and shouted at him that he would have his head before days was out. And for a few seconds it stopped Giovanni's conquest, but just long enough for the girl upon the bed to wake up and cry weakly in pain. The dead yellow eyes of the Sceriffo's mask burned brighter as Giovanni lunged forward and planted his boot firmly on the Noble's chest kicking him bodily out the third story window and into a blubbery heap on the street below. Following suit the rogue cop slid down a street lamp and landed with a heavy clank before walking to the crying man as he began to plead for his life. Giovanni had heard it all before but this...thing's cries were the mewling of a piglet against the cacophony ripping through the officer's mind. With one swing of his sword he cut off the noble's manhood, with another he took his right hand, and with a final swing he took the man's left arm.
But even as his sword and coat were being stained with blood he was not done handing out justice. Dragging the unconscious man across the street he dropped him at the base of a street light and found a long length of rope. He tied a series of intricate knots around the rapist's remaining limbs then strung him up high to the cross beams of the post. He tied one final knot to a sewer grate and with that...finished his chore. The shocked onlookers stood dumbly as the monster sheathed his sword and vanished into the night. The precision and brutality of the crimes became known as La Notte della Giustizia Rossa , The Night of the Red Justice as retelling of the story to other Sceriffi said Giovanni wasn't wearing the blue coat of the Auditore nor the colors of any other Vodacce House. His coat was blood red and his black mask emitted smoke and fire like that of a demon. That story spread and allowed Giovanni to run into a bottle and stay there for many years.
It wasn't until three years ago that he saw the light of a sober day, and that was only after he got into a fight with a Cathay Qi master by the name of Zhao Jin. While the drunken former lawman held his own the cool precision of Zhao Jin put him firmly on his ass, the fight leaving him entirely as soon as his head hit the dirty wood of the dive bar they had been brawling in. When Giovanni next awoke he was on a ship for the first time in his life and was so overcome with wonder that he threw up all over the deck and promptly passed out for a further three days. Now, a thirty-three year old man with nothing to show for his years of experiences or value, he is slowly climbing his way out of the bottle with the help of a cranky old man who still sees some value behind the blurry eyes of a lifelong killer and perpetual drunk.
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