XIII. MYST APPLICATION.
APPLICATION
Last update 09th August '11.
GIOVANNI RAMMSTEINER
[ PLAYER INFORMATION ]
Player Name: Fal.
Timezone: GMT.
Contact Information:
Email: falsiloquence@gmail.com
Plurk: falsiloquence
AIM: war on horizon
[ CHARACTER INFORMATION ]
Name: Giovanni Rammsteiner.
OU or AU: OU.
Age: Undetermined; approximately 20-25.
Gender: Male/Masculine.
Fandom: Dogs: Bullets & Carnage.
Timeline: Chapter 50, although the application contains information up to his most recent relevant appearances. He might need a proper canon update when this arc is over in which case I'll get in touch with mods about it, but at the moment 50 is probably the safest point to take him from since he spends most of the remaining chapters foaming on the floor - or gagged, blindfolded and bound.
Wiki Link: Wikipedia entry & DOGs Wikia entry for Giovanni specifically, although neither source is particularly good.
History:
Giovanni is an artificially-created life, a "test tube baby" made by the Underground scientists when no other living human had been compatible with the spines they created. He was the 68th, cloned from the "original" Kerberos-1 - the very first success, worn by Neubauten - and his entire purpose in life was to be a specimen for the Kerberos project. He is specifically one of the "Rammsteiner" series from which his surname is derived, along with Lily, Heine, and many others. Lily and Heine would become particularly important to him later in his life.
Giovanni is absent of any early memories, and as far as he recalls his life began when he wasn't more than thirteen years of age, in a world of white cornerless walls, long empty passages, and children as lost as him: the Underground facility. They all awoke in the same way, wandering blearily into the circular room, discovering the heavy metal rings that hung around their throats, struggling to recall memories and finding nothing.
They soon met a woman who introduced herself as Professor Angelika Einstürzen, the head researcher of the Kerberos Project. A twisted, mad person, she fancied herself a mother figure to them all, their "maker", and the one whose love they were to earn. She unleashed Koenigs - huge, misshapen humanoid monsters, the previous failures of the experiment - on the children; she expected them to kill the monsters before the monsters killed them, and despite the seeming odds, despite a situation that terrified and traumatised them and should've called on their instincts to run, that's exactly what they did. They woke up with their arms caked in the blood of the Koenigs, shaken and scared and hardly remembering what had just happened to them.
That was the first of many tests performed on them, and Professor Einstürzen would soon become an all-too-familiar face, leaving a permanent scar on their memories long into adulthood. If they survived that long.
The project's intended purpose is unknown, but it is probable that it was part of a supersoldier project. The collar (or "spine") allows the owner to regenerate and survive incredible amounts of damage. It also creates within the subject a second psychotic and feral identity known colloquially as the "dog", which takes over at times of extreme duress or provocation. It acts almost as a second mind, a voice in the back of their head that taunts their humanity and encourages them towards violence, changing up their priorities and impulses and seemingly seeking opportunities to take control and go berserk.
Though Giovanni also possessed this capacity, as a quiet and withdrawn child, lost and weak and overwhelmed by the horrific gorings he was witness to, he couldn't even stand up. He was not an absolute success; his response level was substandard, and certain abilities that the spine should've given him were designated as "incomplete". It wasn't until much, much later that his own abilities could really awaken in full and he would start to achieve his potential. Thus, as the failure of the project, he is the opposite of Heine, who was one of the grand successes. Though he tagged on with Lily, Heine, Arthur and Lotto in a friendly group, he was always the "runt", perpetually stammering and unsure of himself. Heine had once been the model older brother, the one who defended him and tolerated his failings as his backup - and he was perfect in that respect, as well. Lily had once been like a sister to him, though he seemed to find her harder to connect to - she had always been quicker to enter berserker rage than the other children, and in that state she once almost killed Giovanni.
Despite being billed such a great success, Heine had no intention of sticking around - nor did Lotto, Arthur or Lily. Being something of a tagger-on, Giovanni was also partly involved with this himself, though he was terrified of the prospect of leaving the facility; despite being the child always drawing "flowers", things he had never seen but somehow knew existed, he was always doubting their chances of escape. He thought that up there, out there, there may not be anything else at all to welcome them. Or it might be worse.
They were working hard on their escape plan when Heine was called upon for a special experiment by the Professor: an attempt to synchronise him with the Führer, the original Spine that would give him absolute control over the other Kerberos children and allow them to move as a single, organised mind. That's what he was originally intended for, the only important, special child in a collection of worthless monsters, who would likely eventually become Koenigs themselves. That is, if he weren't to do this for her and make them strong.
Obviously, caring very much for the welfare and survival of his unit, thinking that if he didn't do this, it'd be all over for them, he accepted that it needed to be attempted. He told her she was ready.
However, Einstürzen betrayed him. The rest of the unit were brought into an empty room in the facility, where Einstürzen set up a video feed displaying Heineand explained that they would no longer be needed. Heine had successfully synchronised, and she had found her new "Master" child, so she'd be disposing of the rest of them. She activated something in their collars which caused them all to enter their berserker "dog" mode, driven mad by a mindless need for violence; all were driven to bloodlust, slaughtering each other, friends and enemies. Arthur, Lotto and Lily, once close friends, tried and destroy each other - Lily being the most terrible foe of all, unstable as she'd always been. It was carnage.
... Except for Giovanni. Giovanni was fully lucid while Lotto tried to crush Arthur's head. He was lucid when Lily slashed her way through Lotto's face and brain. And he jumped on Lily, who had become the most violent of all of them, in an attempt to restrain her, all the while asking why, why, why, why couldn't he become like them?
It's suggested that Lily gouged out Giovanni's eyes, though they have since regenerated or been repaired/upgraded, and while it seems she almost certainly killed him, she didn't successfully destroy Giovanni. Heine awake from his stupor and, realising what had happened, having watched it during his entire encounter with the Führer, he ran to find the children - and came onto a horrific scene of death. He was too late. All he found was Lily, the last remaining survive, elbow deep in blood.
But Heine wasn't himself any more, either. He had successfully synchronised with the Führer, and had taken the beast inside of it with him. He came to destroy Lily, and he succeeded - becoming himself only when he had killed her atop a pile of children's bodies.
Until then, Giovanni had been a meek and gentle child, but any semblance of that old self died the moment Lily tore into him. Though he was fortunate enough to survive the onslaught, his personality was twisted by the experience; the trauma of what happened in the facility would define him, warp him throughout his growth into adulthood and the acquisition of his own superhuman abilities. It's also greatly and repeatedly implied that Heine had some responsibility in "tearing into him" during this encounter, literally or metaphorically. Whatever the case, he blames Heine for everything that happened.
After the incident, the Kerberos project seems to have fallen apart; Einstürzen was presumed dead, perhaps another victim of Heine's, and Neubauten disappeared from the picture.
However, Einstürzen, with her legacy of cruelty and power, was far from done.
When Giovanni re-emerged, it was as part of Einstürzen's Underground army; for all that had happened, she continued to live. He didn't stand amongst the other dogs in their cloaked and masked uniforms, but acted as a general, a spy and an assassin; with his latent abilities fully-fledged or perhaps improved upon by Einstürzen, he became a very competent, nearly unkillable weapon.
Due to the facility incident, Giovanni became obsessed with Heine, and years later he would stalk him, tormenting him with memories of his past and the sister he killed. They have frequent gunfights, and Giovanni plainly delights in manipulating Heine in order to bring out the dog within him. Whether this is because he knows how much the dog torments Heine, or out of some twisted fixation with the beast that killed him has yet to be revealed.
At present, he's deferential to Fruhling within the army despite their apparently equal footing, takes his orders directly from Einstürzen, and works alongside fellow dogs Luki and Noki, who treat him as an older brother. Despite that he is generally heavily criticised by Einstürzen and Fruhling alike, who claim to expect little success of him, he has been assigned to lead significant missions within the army.
After sending the Carselino gang after Heine, as well as fighting him and assuring him of the impending battle, Giovanni was assigned to lead the dogs out as suicide bombers. There he met Heine again, and left him in a rage when he made his sudden exit during the chain of deadly explosions. The bombing created the perfect diversion, levelling a significant part of the city; immediately after, he made his way over with Richter Bernhardt, a fellow Kerberos, to attack their real target - the mysterious, near-anonymous mayor of the city. He is Chairman Neubauten - originally known to Giovanni as Professor Zollner Neubauten - and the bearer of the Kerberos-1, "Führer".
It's at this point, on the verge of trying to assassinate him, that Giovanni is pulled from.
Character Personality:
Giovanni is one very disturbed individual. He's psychotic, obsessive, and fixated on the will of Professer Einstürzen. He speaks of the manipulative scientist fondly as his "mother", and makes it clear that he would do anything she wills him to, regardless of his personal feelings. It's this attribute that leads Heine to label Giovanni her faithful errand-dog.
Although serving Einstürzen is his main purpose, in some ways Giovanni seems to be quite conflicted and perhaps have mixed feelings about his involvement with the Underground, particularly in his quieter moments when he's alone; the memories of the past still haunt him, and his memories of Einstürzen and her psychological abuse are particularly unsettling. Even in adulthood, the Professor doesn't entirely reciprocate his adoration. Her love remains as conditional and contradictory as ever, and Giovanni endeavours to please her despite her seeming scepticism of his abilities. She tells him that she expects limited use of him and treats him always like a disappointment, leaving him somewhat tongue-tied and listless. However, she has also spoken of him with seeming fondness when he's out of earshot, referring to him affectionately and possessively as her Giovanni.
One of Giovanni's more obvious interests is Heine, and he has stated that his personal agenda is to bring him "home", back into the Underground as a loyal dog to Einstürzen. Though there's no clear evidence of jealousy, he acknowledges that this is because Heine is the most successful experiment from the Kerberos project, as well as having a significant connection to his past with him. Einstürzen does grant him some freedom to pursue this playtime with Heine - provided it doesn't detract from the "main course", the Army's collective primary goal. Giovanni has taken on the assistance of outside gangs to test and provoke Heine; if anyone has an exploitable grudge, he'll provide information to make their attack easier. Except the Kerberos isn't a secret he cares to divulge, because the goal isn't to defeat Heine. He just wants his reactions. He wants the dog.
As much as he lures him out, he has some restraint regarding just how much he's willing to do. After his first fight after reuniting with Heine, he ends it by cheerfully announcing that he's going home and makes his escape. He always holds back, just a little bit. Even when Heine kills him at last, shooting him directly in the head with every belief that it ought to kill him, Giovanni still avoids repaying the favour.
Despite his strange obsession, despite Heine nearly killing him when he was child, there's nothing about his fixation that really clearly declares a sense of "hate". On the contrary. Though he has only contempt for the way Heine has severed himself from the Underground and suppressed his true nature, with the way he tries to lure out his Kerberos tendencies, there's a sense of reverence to the "dog" inside him, the monster he really should fear. Perhaps because that impulsive, violent dog is everything he should be, or everything he should have been. Perhaps because history keeps repeating on him, and he's looking for something in his battles with Heine to help him overcome those horrific memories. Perhaps because he knows that Heine remains Einstürzen's "favourite", and he feels like if he can bring the dog out, if he can fight it and perhaps overcome it, he might be worthy of her acceptance and love.
Overall, Giovanni is quite a tormented character, for all his power and posturing. He shows different faces to different people - his psychotic, sadomasochistic dog side to Heine, his doting and passive servant side to Einstürzen, and he tends to internalise his emotions when he's off the battlefield. His confidence is a shell that protects something damaged; he might have the abilities he never had as a child, but the mental damage has already been done, and there isn't anything that'll bring him back from that. His polite composure conceals a crude violence and instability that only comes to the fore in Heine's presence, and his cheerfulness is the heat of the moment - once the bullets and carnage and violence are all stripped from him, Giovanni is stripped of most of his identity as well, and becomes quite blank. In a way, his obsession with Heine and his obedience to Einstürzen are all he has to make him feel something.
[ MYST SPECIFICS ]
Mode of Entrance: Portal.
Items: Two Walther P38 guns with no ammunition (the Walther is a 1938 weapon and thus will be unique to the world, but the 9×19mm Parabellum cartridges it uses have been in development since 1902, having originally been intended for the Luger), Sexy Glasses.
Powers: Like the other test subjects, Giovanni has a "spine" that allows him to regenerate and spares him from sickness. There's seemingly no amount of damage his body can't take, and no matter how much blood he loses he remains lucid and rational. He won't pass out from blood loss, though he may from suffocation, and his stamina is far above human standard. A direct shot to the head may kill him, but unlike most of his other brethren, he won't stay dead. That's because, as Neubauten comments, he's a more current Rammsteiner model, and the issues of the previous series have since been corrected.
Reductions: I think it'd be best if his regenerative powers were overall slowed down, consistent with the Heine already in the game - where recovery from mild wounds would take a day or two instead of seconds or minutes, and severe wounds would take up to a week. In regard to his specific ability to recover from fatal headwounds, I would like it if he could keep that, but with the amount of time spent "dead" being extended similarly - where a clean shot or blow to the head kills him for 2-3 hours, and severe damage - crushing the head, for example - has him out for a day or more.
[ NOTES ]
Einstürzen is referred to in the singular, but there's plenty of canon support that there might be many more versions of her of slightly varying appearance. However, whether or not Giovanni is aware of that is arguable; in Chapter 34 he is shown speaking to what appear to be various clones of Einstürzen, but Chapter 51's translation makes it slightly less clear. Neubauten may be referring to him "probably faintly realising" there are clones, or his words may be referring to something else entirely. For now, I'm erring on the side of caution and not making any point of Giovanni knowing about the other Einstürzens.
Something has been alluded to in the form of progressive mental degeneration - possibly the loss or distortion of memories, and it may stem from direct damage to the head. At the moment there has been no clear explanation, but this will be incorporated when there's more details to go by.
In addition to listen powers, he is also shown multiple times as vanishing or disintegrating before Heine's eyes. Though they could well be tricks of Heine's imagination, the visions have left messages about matters that Heine couldn't have known on his own - that the Professor still lives, and that the dogs will come. It could be that Giovanni possesses some ability to create illusions due to his spine, in much the same way Richter does. However, since canon has only alluded to this and hasn't said anything explicit, I won't be referencing it in game.
MYSTERIUM // PLAYER // MEMORIES
Last update 09th August '11.
GIOVANNI RAMMSTEINER
[ PLAYER INFORMATION ]
Player Name: Fal.
Timezone: GMT.
Contact Information:
Email: falsiloquence@gmail.com
Plurk: falsiloquence
AIM: war on horizon
[ CHARACTER INFORMATION ]
Name: Giovanni Rammsteiner.
OU or AU: OU.
Age: Undetermined; approximately 20-25.
Gender: Male/Masculine.
Fandom: Dogs: Bullets & Carnage.
Timeline: Chapter 50, although the application contains information up to his most recent relevant appearances. He might need a proper canon update when this arc is over in which case I'll get in touch with mods about it, but at the moment 50 is probably the safest point to take him from since he spends most of the remaining chapters foaming on the floor - or gagged, blindfolded and bound.
Wiki Link: Wikipedia entry & DOGs Wikia entry for Giovanni specifically, although neither source is particularly good.
History:
Giovanni is an artificially-created life, a "test tube baby" made by the Underground scientists when no other living human had been compatible with the spines they created. He was the 68th, cloned from the "original" Kerberos-1 - the very first success, worn by Neubauten - and his entire purpose in life was to be a specimen for the Kerberos project. He is specifically one of the "Rammsteiner" series from which his surname is derived, along with Lily, Heine, and many others. Lily and Heine would become particularly important to him later in his life.
Giovanni is absent of any early memories, and as far as he recalls his life began when he wasn't more than thirteen years of age, in a world of white cornerless walls, long empty passages, and children as lost as him: the Underground facility. They all awoke in the same way, wandering blearily into the circular room, discovering the heavy metal rings that hung around their throats, struggling to recall memories and finding nothing.
They soon met a woman who introduced herself as Professor Angelika Einstürzen, the head researcher of the Kerberos Project. A twisted, mad person, she fancied herself a mother figure to them all, their "maker", and the one whose love they were to earn. She unleashed Koenigs - huge, misshapen humanoid monsters, the previous failures of the experiment - on the children; she expected them to kill the monsters before the monsters killed them, and despite the seeming odds, despite a situation that terrified and traumatised them and should've called on their instincts to run, that's exactly what they did. They woke up with their arms caked in the blood of the Koenigs, shaken and scared and hardly remembering what had just happened to them.
That was the first of many tests performed on them, and Professor Einstürzen would soon become an all-too-familiar face, leaving a permanent scar on their memories long into adulthood. If they survived that long.
The project's intended purpose is unknown, but it is probable that it was part of a supersoldier project. The collar (or "spine") allows the owner to regenerate and survive incredible amounts of damage. It also creates within the subject a second psychotic and feral identity known colloquially as the "dog", which takes over at times of extreme duress or provocation. It acts almost as a second mind, a voice in the back of their head that taunts their humanity and encourages them towards violence, changing up their priorities and impulses and seemingly seeking opportunities to take control and go berserk.
Though Giovanni also possessed this capacity, as a quiet and withdrawn child, lost and weak and overwhelmed by the horrific gorings he was witness to, he couldn't even stand up. He was not an absolute success; his response level was substandard, and certain abilities that the spine should've given him were designated as "incomplete". It wasn't until much, much later that his own abilities could really awaken in full and he would start to achieve his potential. Thus, as the failure of the project, he is the opposite of Heine, who was one of the grand successes. Though he tagged on with Lily, Heine, Arthur and Lotto in a friendly group, he was always the "runt", perpetually stammering and unsure of himself. Heine had once been the model older brother, the one who defended him and tolerated his failings as his backup - and he was perfect in that respect, as well. Lily had once been like a sister to him, though he seemed to find her harder to connect to - she had always been quicker to enter berserker rage than the other children, and in that state she once almost killed Giovanni.
Despite being billed such a great success, Heine had no intention of sticking around - nor did Lotto, Arthur or Lily. Being something of a tagger-on, Giovanni was also partly involved with this himself, though he was terrified of the prospect of leaving the facility; despite being the child always drawing "flowers", things he had never seen but somehow knew existed, he was always doubting their chances of escape. He thought that up there, out there, there may not be anything else at all to welcome them. Or it might be worse.
They were working hard on their escape plan when Heine was called upon for a special experiment by the Professor: an attempt to synchronise him with the Führer, the original Spine that would give him absolute control over the other Kerberos children and allow them to move as a single, organised mind. That's what he was originally intended for, the only important, special child in a collection of worthless monsters, who would likely eventually become Koenigs themselves. That is, if he weren't to do this for her and make them strong.
Obviously, caring very much for the welfare and survival of his unit, thinking that if he didn't do this, it'd be all over for them, he accepted that it needed to be attempted. He told her she was ready.
However, Einstürzen betrayed him. The rest of the unit were brought into an empty room in the facility, where Einstürzen set up a video feed displaying Heineand explained that they would no longer be needed. Heine had successfully synchronised, and she had found her new "Master" child, so she'd be disposing of the rest of them. She activated something in their collars which caused them all to enter their berserker "dog" mode, driven mad by a mindless need for violence; all were driven to bloodlust, slaughtering each other, friends and enemies. Arthur, Lotto and Lily, once close friends, tried and destroy each other - Lily being the most terrible foe of all, unstable as she'd always been. It was carnage.
... Except for Giovanni. Giovanni was fully lucid while Lotto tried to crush Arthur's head. He was lucid when Lily slashed her way through Lotto's face and brain. And he jumped on Lily, who had become the most violent of all of them, in an attempt to restrain her, all the while asking why, why, why, why couldn't he become like them?
It's suggested that Lily gouged out Giovanni's eyes, though they have since regenerated or been repaired/upgraded, and while it seems she almost certainly killed him, she didn't successfully destroy Giovanni. Heine awake from his stupor and, realising what had happened, having watched it during his entire encounter with the Führer, he ran to find the children - and came onto a horrific scene of death. He was too late. All he found was Lily, the last remaining survive, elbow deep in blood.
But Heine wasn't himself any more, either. He had successfully synchronised with the Führer, and had taken the beast inside of it with him. He came to destroy Lily, and he succeeded - becoming himself only when he had killed her atop a pile of children's bodies.
Until then, Giovanni had been a meek and gentle child, but any semblance of that old self died the moment Lily tore into him. Though he was fortunate enough to survive the onslaught, his personality was twisted by the experience; the trauma of what happened in the facility would define him, warp him throughout his growth into adulthood and the acquisition of his own superhuman abilities. It's also greatly and repeatedly implied that Heine had some responsibility in "tearing into him" during this encounter, literally or metaphorically. Whatever the case, he blames Heine for everything that happened.
After the incident, the Kerberos project seems to have fallen apart; Einstürzen was presumed dead, perhaps another victim of Heine's, and Neubauten disappeared from the picture.
However, Einstürzen, with her legacy of cruelty and power, was far from done.
When Giovanni re-emerged, it was as part of Einstürzen's Underground army; for all that had happened, she continued to live. He didn't stand amongst the other dogs in their cloaked and masked uniforms, but acted as a general, a spy and an assassin; with his latent abilities fully-fledged or perhaps improved upon by Einstürzen, he became a very competent, nearly unkillable weapon.
Due to the facility incident, Giovanni became obsessed with Heine, and years later he would stalk him, tormenting him with memories of his past and the sister he killed. They have frequent gunfights, and Giovanni plainly delights in manipulating Heine in order to bring out the dog within him. Whether this is because he knows how much the dog torments Heine, or out of some twisted fixation with the beast that killed him has yet to be revealed.
At present, he's deferential to Fruhling within the army despite their apparently equal footing, takes his orders directly from Einstürzen, and works alongside fellow dogs Luki and Noki, who treat him as an older brother. Despite that he is generally heavily criticised by Einstürzen and Fruhling alike, who claim to expect little success of him, he has been assigned to lead significant missions within the army.
After sending the Carselino gang after Heine, as well as fighting him and assuring him of the impending battle, Giovanni was assigned to lead the dogs out as suicide bombers. There he met Heine again, and left him in a rage when he made his sudden exit during the chain of deadly explosions. The bombing created the perfect diversion, levelling a significant part of the city; immediately after, he made his way over with Richter Bernhardt, a fellow Kerberos, to attack their real target - the mysterious, near-anonymous mayor of the city. He is Chairman Neubauten - originally known to Giovanni as Professor Zollner Neubauten - and the bearer of the Kerberos-1, "Führer".
It's at this point, on the verge of trying to assassinate him, that Giovanni is pulled from.
Character Personality:
Giovanni is one very disturbed individual. He's psychotic, obsessive, and fixated on the will of Professer Einstürzen. He speaks of the manipulative scientist fondly as his "mother", and makes it clear that he would do anything she wills him to, regardless of his personal feelings. It's this attribute that leads Heine to label Giovanni her faithful errand-dog.
Although serving Einstürzen is his main purpose, in some ways Giovanni seems to be quite conflicted and perhaps have mixed feelings about his involvement with the Underground, particularly in his quieter moments when he's alone; the memories of the past still haunt him, and his memories of Einstürzen and her psychological abuse are particularly unsettling. Even in adulthood, the Professor doesn't entirely reciprocate his adoration. Her love remains as conditional and contradictory as ever, and Giovanni endeavours to please her despite her seeming scepticism of his abilities. She tells him that she expects limited use of him and treats him always like a disappointment, leaving him somewhat tongue-tied and listless. However, she has also spoken of him with seeming fondness when he's out of earshot, referring to him affectionately and possessively as her Giovanni.
One of Giovanni's more obvious interests is Heine, and he has stated that his personal agenda is to bring him "home", back into the Underground as a loyal dog to Einstürzen. Though there's no clear evidence of jealousy, he acknowledges that this is because Heine is the most successful experiment from the Kerberos project, as well as having a significant connection to his past with him. Einstürzen does grant him some freedom to pursue this playtime with Heine - provided it doesn't detract from the "main course", the Army's collective primary goal. Giovanni has taken on the assistance of outside gangs to test and provoke Heine; if anyone has an exploitable grudge, he'll provide information to make their attack easier. Except the Kerberos isn't a secret he cares to divulge, because the goal isn't to defeat Heine. He just wants his reactions. He wants the dog.
As much as he lures him out, he has some restraint regarding just how much he's willing to do. After his first fight after reuniting with Heine, he ends it by cheerfully announcing that he's going home and makes his escape. He always holds back, just a little bit. Even when Heine kills him at last, shooting him directly in the head with every belief that it ought to kill him, Giovanni still avoids repaying the favour.
Despite his strange obsession, despite Heine nearly killing him when he was child, there's nothing about his fixation that really clearly declares a sense of "hate". On the contrary. Though he has only contempt for the way Heine has severed himself from the Underground and suppressed his true nature, with the way he tries to lure out his Kerberos tendencies, there's a sense of reverence to the "dog" inside him, the monster he really should fear. Perhaps because that impulsive, violent dog is everything he should be, or everything he should have been. Perhaps because history keeps repeating on him, and he's looking for something in his battles with Heine to help him overcome those horrific memories. Perhaps because he knows that Heine remains Einstürzen's "favourite", and he feels like if he can bring the dog out, if he can fight it and perhaps overcome it, he might be worthy of her acceptance and love.
Overall, Giovanni is quite a tormented character, for all his power and posturing. He shows different faces to different people - his psychotic, sadomasochistic dog side to Heine, his doting and passive servant side to Einstürzen, and he tends to internalise his emotions when he's off the battlefield. His confidence is a shell that protects something damaged; he might have the abilities he never had as a child, but the mental damage has already been done, and there isn't anything that'll bring him back from that. His polite composure conceals a crude violence and instability that only comes to the fore in Heine's presence, and his cheerfulness is the heat of the moment - once the bullets and carnage and violence are all stripped from him, Giovanni is stripped of most of his identity as well, and becomes quite blank. In a way, his obsession with Heine and his obedience to Einstürzen are all he has to make him feel something.
[ MYST SPECIFICS ]
Mode of Entrance: Portal.
Items: Two Walther P38 guns with no ammunition (the Walther is a 1938 weapon and thus will be unique to the world, but the 9×19mm Parabellum cartridges it uses have been in development since 1902, having originally been intended for the Luger), Sexy Glasses.
Powers: Like the other test subjects, Giovanni has a "spine" that allows him to regenerate and spares him from sickness. There's seemingly no amount of damage his body can't take, and no matter how much blood he loses he remains lucid and rational. He won't pass out from blood loss, though he may from suffocation, and his stamina is far above human standard. A direct shot to the head may kill him, but unlike most of his other brethren, he won't stay dead. That's because, as Neubauten comments, he's a more current Rammsteiner model, and the issues of the previous series have since been corrected.
Reductions: I think it'd be best if his regenerative powers were overall slowed down, consistent with the Heine already in the game - where recovery from mild wounds would take a day or two instead of seconds or minutes, and severe wounds would take up to a week. In regard to his specific ability to recover from fatal headwounds, I would like it if he could keep that, but with the amount of time spent "dead" being extended similarly - where a clean shot or blow to the head kills him for 2-3 hours, and severe damage - crushing the head, for example - has him out for a day or more.
[ NOTES ]
Einstürzen is referred to in the singular, but there's plenty of canon support that there might be many more versions of her of slightly varying appearance. However, whether or not Giovanni is aware of that is arguable; in Chapter 34 he is shown speaking to what appear to be various clones of Einstürzen, but Chapter 51's translation makes it slightly less clear. Neubauten may be referring to him "probably faintly realising" there are clones, or his words may be referring to something else entirely. For now, I'm erring on the side of caution and not making any point of Giovanni knowing about the other Einstürzens.
Something has been alluded to in the form of progressive mental degeneration - possibly the loss or distortion of memories, and it may stem from direct damage to the head. At the moment there has been no clear explanation, but this will be incorporated when there's more details to go by.
In addition to listen powers, he is also shown multiple times as vanishing or disintegrating before Heine's eyes. Though they could well be tricks of Heine's imagination, the visions have left messages about matters that Heine couldn't have known on his own - that the Professor still lives, and that the dogs will come. It could be that Giovanni possesses some ability to create illusions due to his spine, in much the same way Richter does. However, since canon has only alluded to this and hasn't said anything explicit, I won't be referencing it in game.
MYSTERIUM // PLAYER // MEMORIES