Bio page

[peaceful_shadows]

Stats: 

Age:  500 years old
Height: 6'4
Hair: Dark brown
Eyes: Blue


Brief Background:

Nikola Giovanni is the only son of one  Lord Augustus Giovanni and Lady Victoria Tzimisce. As a child, his father doted on him when his mother wished for nothing to do with him because he wasn't what she wanted in a child. Victoria Tzimisce desired a daughter to carry on her legacy and unfortunately, had a son. Augustus disliked the way his mate treated his only son and so they parted ways with Nikola going to live with his father when he was still a young child.

For the next few centuries, Nikola lived a peaceful life on his father's land, tending to the grape crops in the vineyard. Growing up he had lessons on politics and attended parties as the Giovanni heir seeing as he was his father's only son out of 13 children with Nikola being the youngest while he had been Victoria's second child. 

Over the years, he witnessed some of the atrocities the ruling noble class committed on both the lower classes and the humans who were kept little more than cattle considering they were the primary food source for most nobility. His father attempted to nudge the other nobility into giving humans better rights and living conditions, or at least better treatment only to be opposed by the Emperor that ruled their society, a man named Mercury Faust who had become emperor through brutal and merciless tactics. 

Because no one dared to oppose Faust head on, changes were minimal for human's rights, leaving it up to the individual owners in how to treat the humans that belonged to them. Nikola learned from his father than all life should be valued and there were ways to co-exist with the humans despite being both Nobility, and a vampire. 

These are belief's Nikola keeps well guarded, choosing to put on a carefully crafted indifferent persona when he was out in public, attending parties put on by other nobility or the Emperor himself. Where Nikola does carefully represent his family's ideals, he also understands there is a very fine line between appearing loyal to the Emperor and being deemed a traitor and having everything stripped from his family.

Not even being part of one of the founding Noble families could save him if the Emperor felt the Giovanni were a threat to his power, so, Nikola very carefully treads that line to protect his family and their property, vineyards and humans included. 


Personality:

Nikola is a very quiet and observant person. He tends to take all the facts into consideration before he speaks, knowing words can have power whether one realizes it or not. He's also slightly cautious when dealing with political adversaries knowing full well how cutthroat his world can be.

However, one someone gets to know him better, they find out he is a kind and compassionate person. He can be thoughtful of others... and also very stubborn like his mother. Nikola rarely ever gives up when he sets his mind to something and will keep striving to complete his goals no matter what it takes. His stubborn streak is sometimes what gets him into trouble. 

Family:

His parents are Augustus Giovanni and Victoria Tzimisce, as such, Nikola is the product of two very powerful noble bloodlines.  Because of this, his name tends to be linked with his parents and the Emperor tends to watch him closely.  As for siblings, he has twelve older sisters on his father's side from Augustus's previous mate who died years before Nikola was born. 

On his mother's side, Nikola has one older sister, Veronica who has cut ties with her mother and family due to difference in opinions and now lives as a pirate, opposing the Emperor and the Nobility, fighting to free humans and other creatures that have been enslaved.  He also has a younger sister, Valencia who is his mother's chosen heir and pride and joy. His sister also just happens to be the daughter of the Emperor as well. Victoria had agreed to a union with Faust to produce her own potential heir and to further link the two noble houses for the safety of her own lands and people.

As such, Nikola  is on shaky terms with Veronica due to their varying opinion on just how to handle freeing humans from vampire oppression and he rarely gets to see his younger sister considering Victoria tends to keep Valencia close to her side at all times. 

His world:

Nikola comes from a world where vampires are a separate species from humans and evolved along side of them in a symbiotic relationship. Originally, vampires depended on humans for food and nourishment with  human blood being the only thing to sustain them. In return, vampires protected humans from other predators... other creatures such as werewolves or fae creatures that also inhabited their world.

However, things changed when a plague ravished the human population, destroying the vampire's food supply down to just a few thousand when there used to be billions....Because of this, the vampire clans got together and decided to take a more involved approach to protecting their food source which resulted in them enslaving humans and treating them more like livestock than equals like they had been. 

From this banning together of the clans, four of the more prominent clans became the foundation of what would be the Higher Nobility, renaming themselves Noble Houses. The four houses were House Faust, House Giovanni, House Tzimisce and House Tempest. Each of the Prominent clans could trace themselves back to The First and his mate as direct descendants  where as many of the lesser clans evolved as off shoots of the four major clans. 

These four clans were given tasks by The First, to guide and protect their brethren and the humans... over time those tasks were either lost or corrupted in some way. House Giovanni was tasked with protecting the world from the shadows, observing and keeping back the nightmares that lurk within.  House Tempest was tasked to protect the world from the creatures of the deep, granting them dominion over water. House Faust was tasked with protecting the land and to make sure it always flourished, giving them control over the very ground. House Tzimsce was tasked with protecting and healing their fellow kindred, only to have the path corrupted into manipulating flesh and bones instead, twisting and warping it in inhuman and alien ways.  Harming instead of healing.

For a century or two, the four houses worked in harmony. Things began to change when the head of House Tzimisce, Deacon ,disappeared, leaving his eldest daughter Sasha in check. During her reign, corruption began to spread through the house, twisting and corrupting the once noble Tzimisce though no one knew why this happened. House Tzmisce started to withdraw from the world, becoming more engrossed in their own lands and creating vicious monsters with their abilities.  As the House withdrew, the head of the House still took part in meetings and gatherings, becoming the sole face of the reclusive clan.

Not long after the corruption of House Tzimisce, an argument broke out between Mercury Faust, head of House Faust and  Thorne Tempest, the head of House Tempest. The two had been like brothers at one point despite being polar opposites. The argument was over the humans. Now that the plague was no longer a threat and they had recovered, Thorne felt it was time to free them and let them evolve and become their own people again. Faust disagreed stating that the control over the humans is what allowed their people to flourish in the last hundred years. The argument came to blows with neither being able to best the other. In the end, Tempest retreated to the seas, becoming the world's first pirate and set up his own loose nation of sea fairing people with occasional raids on port towns to free what humans he could and take them back with him to live freely again, even if it was on islands. 

With the withdraw of the Tzimisce and the Tempest House breaking away, House Giovanni took the middle road, declaring themselves neutral and remained neutral and peaceful relations with the others and the lesser houses. With all the upheaval, Faust took the opportunity to declare himself Emperor and since no one dared to oppose him, he kept an iron grip on their society, warping things to his ideals. 


Abilities: 

Each Noble house has it's own special abilities. House Giovanni can manipulate and control shadows at will. As for Nikola, he can travel through shadows as long as it's over land, create shadows bubbles with a ten foot radius that can blind and suffocate his targets, create weaponry out of hardened shadows and spy through shadows, both seeing and hearing if he chooses. He can even stay in the shadow realm for long periods of time, hiding there when he needs to. However, he is not at the same level of his father and cannot go further into the darker aspects of the world that they are supposed to protect others against. 

There are also abilities that are basic to kindred of his world. Of them, Nikola has a rather high fortitude which only grows stronger with age. At his current age, he can be out in the sun for a small period of time though he still can burn if he stays too long and can take one hell of a hit.  He may get bruised, but, it takes a fair amount of damage to take him down. 

He is also graced with Potence, the ability to hit really hard. Something else that gradually gets stronger with age. Currently, he can hit one hard enough to send them through walls if he puts enough effort into it.

And he has some resemblance of speed, though despite that also getting more with age, Nikola's not too versed in it. He can move faster than a human but compared to other's his age, he's slow and tends to rely more on his shadow abilities to get around and confuse his enemies.