Shug Dunsirn
- Giovanni -x- Sizwe Ghiberti -x- Beirut
Sobriquet: The Voice (as in the voice of reason - respectful). Salt, a reference to his partnership with Sizwe Ghiberti (rude).
Appearance: Shug is a skinny little man. If he stood up straight, he would stand about five-foot-five inches tall. He leans forward in a persistent slouch and ducks his head, both of which are now centuries deep bad habits. Shug came to the proxy kiss and the Embrace later in life. His unkempt ginger hair is heavily shot with gray and still shows the signs of his last haircut in the latter seventeenth century, for it appears as if a bowl was applied to his head (which it was) and all the hair that stuck out beneath was trimmed away, but not with any real skill or enthusiasm. His eyes are a watery blue-gray, like an overcast sky reflected in a highland loch. The other prominent feature of his face is his nose, which splits his face in half, almost like a beak. His lips are thin and he rarely smiles, as that would show off his stained and crooked teeth. Shug looks like nothing so much as a hungover drunk after an all-night bender. He was Embraced with a couple days worth of stubble on his cheeks and chin and he cultivates a layer of thin hair on his upper lip that he calls a mustache. If given the choice, he dresses in denim work pants, an undershirt covered by a flannel cardigan with his clan designed worked into the pattern and good leather boots. When pressed, he will shave and go to mortal hair-stylists, who he dominates to compliment him on how he looks in the latest style applied to his ginger-gray mess of hair. And if he must go to Elysium, he will wear the best off-the-rack suits available and grit his teeth for hours over their cost. In short, Shug would not stand out to the mortals that saw him, an older Caucasian man with fading red hair and a sad air about him, there are literally millions of men like him walking the grimier streets of the western world.
Behavior: Shug is a difficult man to get to know, partially because he travel's so much, but more so because he trusts only his partner Sizwe. Threats and violence are part and parcel of the bounty hunter's trade, but Shug uses them with a tactical finesse that has made his team the number one retrieval service of Clan Giovanni for the last two centuries. Shug is best known for critical thinking and tactical assessment of targets. His modus operandi is simple: show the mark what he or she expects to see and come at them from an oblique angle. He doesn't enjoy making threats, inflicting pain or physical violence; they are just tools in his toolbox and in his business, its good to have a big toolbox. Rather, he always has three primary goals when carrying out a job: take the fewest risks possible, capture the target quickly and ensure swift, but appropriate compensation. From Shug's point of view commerce is the single most enlightened activity that man or vampire can take up, because it forces those who wish to make a profit to live by a contract. Whether a social contract or a business contract, Shug has the highest respect for the law and he does his best to uphold the laws of men and vampires as he goes about his business. Its ironic that a bounty hunter should have these points of view, but because of his unique stance on these subjects, Shug has a good reputation with vampiric princes the world over and there are even a couple of Camarilla justicar's with his number in their Rolodex. Abundans cautela non nocet.
History: They say that it is lucky to be the seventh son of a seventh son, they lied.
Recent Events: When Shug received the summons to Venice, he knew better than to speculate upon whom or what the contract would consist of or even who might be offering a contract. Neither he or Sizwe were prepared to meet Augustus Giovanni, the thousand year old progenitor of the family and Clan Giovanni. It was an evening of firsts for Shug and his partner. Augustus revealed the presence of a now defunct soul vault in Cagliari, confirming some of Shug's theories and revealed that an unlikely coterie was responsible. The contract was simple, find and capture Baldesar Rosselini and a previously unknown woman of whom Augustus had a sketch, and return them to Venice alive; the other members of the coterie were peripheral, but bonuses would be offered for all of them.
Lastly, those who had intimate conversations with the coterie members on the issue of Cagliari and the soul vault needed to be silenced by whatever means necessary. When the issue of available resources was broached by Shug, Augustus wrote out a letter of marque and reprisal, granting Shug and Sizwe the authority to requisition whatever Giovanni resources might be available during their journey and granting the bounty hunters the right to negotiate with other clans or sects in the course of their hunt. Lastly, on the matter of payment, Augustus granted the partners a carte blanche for their services in successfully recovering the targets of this hunt. Augustus' never offered a caveat against failure, his reputation for punishing failure was well know and well earned; but he did offer that all the resources of heaven and earth would be moved to aid the bounty hunters in their hunt. Shug pushed his fear of the old man down with all his will and thanked the ancient for such a lucrative contract while promising results quickly.
The partners started at the beginning by making their way to Cagliari, now quarantined by a patchwork conglomeration of different mortal authorities and more than one vampiric sect. The Shadowlands were far calmer than Shug would have thought and the city was largely empty, only the most insane or desperate wraiths or spectres remained within its confines. The partners made their way to the Palazzo Rosselini and searched it top to bottom. They found a surprising amount of evidence proving that the coterie had stayed with Baldesar Rosselini and his sister Rosaura. Of the latter, no sign was found and her rooms had already been ransacked of valuables. In the guest quarters, they found numerous items of sympathy tied to the coterie; Auspex and investigation revealed a significant amount.
That evidence along with other sources of information led the partners to Tunis only hours after their target's departure for Beirut. The vampires of Tunis offered no assistance, but didn't interfere in the Giovanni investigation of the coterie from Rio de Janeiro. Unfortunately, it was in Tunis that the partners fell afoul of agents of Count Jocalo, the infamous Setite agent provocateur. They barely escaped with their lives and spent much of their voyage to Beirut licking their wounds and preparing for their hunt in the Paris of the Middle East.
