[OOC] II. APPLICATION ; GIOVANNI.
APPLICATION
Last update 26th August '10.
GIOVANNI RAMMSTEINER
[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 other Rammsteiner children 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.
Heine proved just how successful he really was when, during a routine test, he finally snapped. His Kerberos went out of control and he slaughtered his way through the entire Underground facility, killing the scientists and the other experiments of the project. Giovanni, along with Lily, was one of his victims.
Until then, Giovanni had been a meek and gentle child, but any semblance of that old self died the moment Heine 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.
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.
[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.
[ABILITIES]
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. Even a direct shot to the head won't take him down, unlike most of his other brethren. That's because, as Neubauten comments, he's a more current Rammsteiner model, and the issues of the previous series have since been corrected.
Giovanni shows several traits that characterise his skills as unique. He has some talents he can use against Heine in terms of psychological manipulation.
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.
[WEAKNESSES]
Due to Giovanni's body being impervious to most damage, the majority of his weaknesses are psychological. He has an obvious inferiority complex, and his flashbacks to the facility are reminiscent of PTSD. It's obvious from his behaviour and frequent thoughts of his past that the trauma is still very powerful in his mind.
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.
Einstürzen is something of a weakness, regarding her absolute control over him and his emotions. Given his passivity and compliance to she and Frühling, both of whom are extremely confident, controlled, powerful women who generally talk down to him about his competence, it's a safe bet that he will be passive around women who seem to be 'above' him in some way, by his perception.
Neubauten identifies himself as Giovanni's "father" of a sort, in much the same way as Einstürzen is to be considered his mother, and he is Giovanni's greatest visible weakness in the manga thus far when it comes to a more physical, tangible superiority - although even then, Neubauten doesn't conquer him through actual fighting. He freezes Giovanni in his tracks, even as Giovanni is trying to shoot him dead, and makes him get on his knees with the simple utterance of the word "down". He crushes his skull and Giovanni does nothing to defend himself; he just stays there obediently, but obviously involuntarily. Neubauten simply has that power over him, perhaps an ability of his Führer spine and its fatherhood over the Kerberos.
[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 or not 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.
ABSOLUTE THRESHOLD // PLAYER // MEMORIES
Last update 26th August '10.
GIOVANNI RAMMSTEINER
[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 other Rammsteiner children 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.
Heine proved just how successful he really was when, during a routine test, he finally snapped. His Kerberos went out of control and he slaughtered his way through the entire Underground facility, killing the scientists and the other experiments of the project. Giovanni, along with Lily, was one of his victims.
Until then, Giovanni had been a meek and gentle child, but any semblance of that old self died the moment Heine 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.
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.
[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.
[ABILITIES]
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. Even a direct shot to the head won't take him down, unlike most of his other brethren. That's because, as Neubauten comments, he's a more current Rammsteiner model, and the issues of the previous series have since been corrected.
Giovanni shows several traits that characterise his skills as unique. He has some talents he can use against Heine in terms of psychological manipulation.
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.
[WEAKNESSES]
Due to Giovanni's body being impervious to most damage, the majority of his weaknesses are psychological. He has an obvious inferiority complex, and his flashbacks to the facility are reminiscent of PTSD. It's obvious from his behaviour and frequent thoughts of his past that the trauma is still very powerful in his mind.
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.
Einstürzen is something of a weakness, regarding her absolute control over him and his emotions. Given his passivity and compliance to she and Frühling, both of whom are extremely confident, controlled, powerful women who generally talk down to him about his competence, it's a safe bet that he will be passive around women who seem to be 'above' him in some way, by his perception.
Neubauten identifies himself as Giovanni's "father" of a sort, in much the same way as Einstürzen is to be considered his mother, and he is Giovanni's greatest visible weakness in the manga thus far when it comes to a more physical, tangible superiority - although even then, Neubauten doesn't conquer him through actual fighting. He freezes Giovanni in his tracks, even as Giovanni is trying to shoot him dead, and makes him get on his knees with the simple utterance of the word "down". He crushes his skull and Giovanni does nothing to defend himself; he just stays there obediently, but obviously involuntarily. Neubauten simply has that power over him, perhaps an ability of his Führer spine and its fatherhood over the Kerberos.
[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 or not 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.
ABSOLUTE THRESHOLD // PLAYER // MEMORIES