The Giovanni are both a clan and a family. They are so unified in their pursuit of money and necromantic power that they are almost a sect themselves. The Giovanni of York have made the graveyards and battlefields of Gettysburg their home.

The Giovanni relationship to the spirit world means that they have a very casual attitude towards such things as torture, dismemberment, and death. After all, if your victim dies in the chair, you can always yank his spirit back from Hell and get information out of him another way. What the Giovanni are really focused on is efficiency: bribery, seduction, and all other sorts of under-handed means are taught to new members of the Clan as a matter of course. If all other methods fail, then killing off the competition becomes a very viable alternative.