To my Revered and Illustrious Friends.
Dearest Cousins,
Confidants and Collaborating Cainites,
Many of you have been undeservedly absent of my company these last forty years. I, therefore, who have always prized virtue, having put my private concerns aside, will polish and weary my pen now to illuminate you as to why.
It is with great excitement that I hereby announce - and personally invite you to - the event of an era: my mortal auction, to take place on the week welcoming in the Florentinan new year, as read on the stylus Florentinus, in the spring of 1454. Feeding and haven provided.
This event will lie as a lozenge upon the tongue of every Cainite extant today, for these are not just any mortals, my august friends. You might remember the day the earth stood still; the day when the sun rose black as night, and we Cainites were free to hunt and walk, without any chains of Torpor to bind our limbs.
What you might not yet know, is that to mark the event fate brought into the world an entire generation of impossible children.
Indeed! Children I say, though now adults, all blessed with a supernatural gift, each of their powers unique and - as you will see for yourselves - disturbingly, excitingly close in nature to our own blood's phenomena. Some of these mortals, my dear cousins, bear the hallmark of Caine. It is as though the dread feather himself sat upon that eclipse. Their abilities smack of our Disciplines, they even resemble the coveted gifts of those things greatest among us: I speak of our elder powers.
They are otherwise human in all ways. They have been in exile from their own kind, my noble fellowship. Unloved, cast out, in some cases loathed, in many cases feared and in most cases killed. Few of these mortals have lived to adulthood unscathed.
I have come with the survivors to this secluded property in the countryside beyond the city of Florence, in the rolling Tuscan hills (to which you are cordially invited), with only my most loyal ghouled servants and a humble array of apparatus. I have removed myself from my own kind, excommunicated myself while I work tirelessly for our society, in isolation among all the mortals I have collected. Since these poor, unfortunate souls were all born under the eclipse of their birth, I call them, collectively: “The Children of the Black Sun”.
But how is it that I alone have to unearth the secret of their state? Let us not stumble half-blind with envy on my family’s immeasurable gain. The lie buried, the truth, dear to God, always emerges. I believe that we have all suffered some unfair obfuscation, a dark design which has cloaked our world and our scrying senses, through which I have now pierced and though it is not synonymous with the name 'Giovanni', of all the virtues available to me, it is altruism I have in spades.
Therefore I, Claudius, offer to you the mortals I have not already welcomed into my own family. I am a giving man, a family man, and I do not wish to stretch my purse too thin, nor overtax my means. Daughters and sons are terribly expensive as we all know, and let me be frank: I have already removed the necromantically-inclined powers from the lineup, and taken those humans myself. What a chance therefore, to now offer to the Cainite world my windfall of excess.
On the health of the Black Sun mortal
These humans do not age like mortals age. Some look today as they did fifty years ago. Others have aged rapidly and stopped, while a few look as they should do for their age, but they bear no mark of the eldery and infirm. They do not labour and tire of breath. They do not, even, seem capable of catching disease.
I have cared for these aching souls, nurtured them, raised them as my own. You can be sure, ladies and gentlemen - and other forms of unlife - that your future purchase is free of anything except the greatest clinical depths of my love. They will be entirely unharmed when they reach you, I assure you.
(As will assure you, apparently, an unnecessary amount of cross-clan elders, see letter attached from Hardestadt.)
The mortals are all fit and nourished by the dark phenomena that blessed us on that eclipse day, and ripe for your embrace.
Ah, but embrace you say? Forgive my slip: you are purchasing the rights to embrace and take full accounting of your mortal. I have hereby gained permission from Prince Anicius “the Golden” of Florence - and the warmth and support of Clan Lasombra, who will be in attendance - to extend this permission to all prospective sires at this auction.
I have discovered in a few trial runs that their powers are unusually amplified in a willing embrace, so I implore buyers to communicate with their protégées and childer to be; it behoves the wise sire well in this case, to have an eager receptee. It is not mandatory, but the warning or disclaimer is now provided, and I absolve myself of the heady weight of guilt.
I do not want a bloodbath, cousins, nor the responsibility of post-sale management, I cannot offer return or refund requests after they have departed with you; therefore you must embrace your mortal before you leave, so they are yours in truth.
Please find attached the catalogue of individuals and their individual powers, as determined by yours truly through painstaking inquiry. Please also familiarise yourself with the details of haven and hunt provided at the document’s rear...
I have included also, for the discerning buyer, copies of the witness statements from reputable elders to whom I have exhibited previously embraced Black Sun childer. Further viewings of my fledglings may be arranged for elders of good repute, and provided under Giovanni escort, in Florence for even the most doubting of Thomases.
Lastly find attached the cross-clan countersignature that yours truly did, in fact, submit to a full Dominate read in witness of the listed elders present.
I remean, bright and eager.
Claudius Giovanni