Everything

– Darynda Jones, Second Grave on the Left

The Find

The torch rippled in the descent. Not from gusts of air - no living being could survive with the small amount of air in the catacomb - but with the brisk pace Rodrigo jogged down the once-hidden stairs. Tonight’s outcome would be the culmination of years of searching for the lost crypt of Laezar the Sleeper, a legendary creature powerful enough to put the world in an unending dream. Rodrigo and his coven could make that dream whatever they wanted. It was enough to make him shiver with anticipation at the thought.

He laid his torch down for a moment to push a coffin’s heavy stone lid to the side. Never before had Rodrigo wished the supreme might of the Brujah was within his purview. It eventually shifted enough to the side that he could reach his arm inside and feel for the thing he came for.

Bits of bone… cobwebs… insects… smooth metal. There it was. He pulled a beautifully crafted silver cup from the coffin and kissed it in his excitement, then spit the dirt out and wiped his mouth. “I’ve found you!” he yelled in delight.

“Put the cup down and back away with your hands up,” spoke a voice from behind Rodrigo. Rodrigo didn’t dare to turn around. The voice probably had a gun as well — other treasure hunters always had guns. He wished the extreme toughness he’d seen a Gangrel display was also something he had learned to harness within his undead form. “I’m not walking out of here without the cup,” Rodrigo responded.

He reached into the man’s deepest thoughts and sins and sensed that the stranger had not anticipated resistance. This particular subject suffered from an unspeakable guilt of letting down his family, giving up on them to become a bounty hunter. Rodrigo could use this.

“It doesn’t matter if you get this goblet or not. You probably don’t even know what it is. Just that someone paid you to get it. But this artifact will not bring you closer to your family.” Rodrigo slid his slippery aura to the man and twisted his victim’s consciousness.

A Truth You Can Trust

Everything you’re about to hear is the truth, unless it’s a lie. Only I know which is which, unless I was also lied to. Then we’re both up a creek. You’d better stop struggling and listen up, or I’ll tighten your bindings even more.

You’ve heard of the Baali, the demons and devils of the Kindred world, the antichrist split up into a million pieces. But you only think you know what we’re all about. I’m going to tell you how it really went down, and then you tell me whether you think the world is truly as you see it. If you interrupt me, you won’t like the outcome.

The First People

God is perfect, right? The man in the sky made the world in six days, then had to take a long nap. But that’s just the story. Have you ever thought about the things that came before humans? The Baali call them the First People. It took six days to perfect the specimen you see before you, but there were many botched creations prior to humanity. Their remains became part of the Earth, buried deep within the ground to hide God’s mistakes from the masses who worshipped him.

The story of the Baali begins with a pair of brothers. Caine and Abel? Ha! That story’s been told ad nauseum. It should be abandoned for how boring it is. No, we go back to the brothers Nergal and Moloch. Caine and Abel had already happened and Caine’s curse had taken thousands into the Embrace before these brothers were even born. Still, their choices would go on to found the Baali, and set in motion wars and other atrocities.

Nergal and Moloch were Embraced in their early adulthood and traveled the night in search of lost relics. They had an undying love of mysticism and the occult, leading them to excavate tombs and unearth the resting places of long-forgotten entities… the kinds of entities the world was better off never experiencing. They discovered the burial grounds of the First People, but more surprising was they weren’t dead. God had buried them alive, but had never given them the ability to die — a gift so many people today misunderstand.

While the brothers were greeted with only pleasant smiles and arms extended in brotherhood, Nergal was a power-hungry Cainite. He went about devouring the blood of the First People, one by one. Moloch had no choice but to join in or be pulled apart by the ones Nergal ignored during his feast. What was created that day were a pair of brothers who were now the two most powerful vampires the world had ever seen. You see, drinking the blood of these prototypes gave Nergal and Moloch a command over the True Names of other creatures in God’s creation, specifically some long-lost demons that slept just beyond the veil that separates our world from a thousand others.

Namtaru, Spreader of Plagues

Don’t die on me yet. That’s not the end of the story, and you’ll like this part. So, Nergal was an egotistical man with dreams of ruling the world. His body, and his brother’s, had been altered on a spiritual level by the blood of the First People, which attracted disease and vermin to them. The overriding theory among the Baali I’ve debated this with is that since the First People were God’s literal refuse, they

attracted the worst elements of the world. Even mortals began seeing them and their progeny as different from other Cainites, because the Baali now carried an aura of corrupted, tainted power.

From this, they also learned the name of Namtaru, Spreader of Plagues. Namtaru was a demon that the brothers believed held the key to masking this mantle of power, so we… they… could be just as sneaky and secretive as other Cainites. Summoning such an entity would spell death to anyone who got in the brothers’ way — and to most of the world. Namtaru wasn’t a demon known for understanding the difference between friend or foe — only who he served and those there as sacrifices to his power. This frightened even Moloch, and he decided to betray his brother, turning to the other Clans for help in taking down the now power-drunk Nergal.

Even with the combined might of the Lasombra, Nosferatu, and Toreador working together, Nergal and his followers stood their own and could have been victorious had Moloch not given the Lasombra the location of important relics needed for the summoning ritual and how to destroy them. This was the only way to win, as the brothers had

spent a considerable amount of time Embracing an army to ward off such attacks. In the end, Nergal was slain. Sadly, so was Namtaru, the creature’s head severed while attempting to break through to this world. That’s why we can say his name, you understand. I’d never utter a “living” demon’s name so casually; names have power.

What Moloch had not anticipated was the other Clans’ intense hatred for the Baali and the power we had at our disposal. Most of our bloodline was slain during the battle, and not just those who followed Nergal. This forced us into hiding for the most part, where we went to lick our wounds and plot our revenge.

In the Shadows

With the death of his brother, Moloch was now the only Baali with powers akin to a god. He became Ba’al-Hammon, which inspired our bloodline’s name. He had the mind of an expert strategist, and stayed in the shadows waiting for the right time to call upon demons for aid. The end will be here soon enough without our intervention, but it doesn’t hurt to help it along now and again.

Long ago, we were painted as abominations — the boogeymen who lived in the woods, snatching up children and summoning demons to slaughter those Cainites who would dare track us down. To the Greeks, we were creatures from Hades, and when the monotheistic religions took root, we became followers of the Devil. Rumors aside, we were at the fall of Rome. We saw the fires of Pompeii, and we’ve witnessed genocides from Cambodia to Germany. The fact that we are there whenever something cataclysmic has occurred could just be coincidence, but the Baali believe our very presence brings with it the end of the world and a possible return of the First People. Holy symbols work on us because we are not like other Cainites. We are worlds apart.

Now, I’ve been talking about God, but the truth is that no one really knows where vampires are from. Caine could have been one of the First People for all we know, and the Embrace is but one of a thousand possible versions. History is written by the victors, after all. All of that illustrates my point: the Baali have never been the devils that everyone thinks we are. Our bloodline is a lot more anti-God than it is pro-Devil, especially since the idea of the Devil is preposterous. We control demons and devils, and never have we even heard of one like what has been described in the Bible.

But I know more than your average Baali, since I’ve heard voices from beyond the veil. Only a few of us have. The ignorant say there was a third original Baali besides Nergal and Moloch, and that the fall of our bloodline had to do with sibling rivalry instead of Moloch’s cowardice. Some say God personally reached down and cursed the Baali twice what other Cainites suffer. I believe it is what makes us truly unique. We suffer the most, and still reject God’s authority.

Swallowing Up the Weak

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention our revenant family, the D’Habi. They were instrumental to the Baali’s continued existence through much of the Dark Ages. Turns out, it becomes even harder to survive when the world blames you for causing the Black Plague. The D’Habi aren’t really one family, but are instead scattered from shore to shore and cultivated by individual Baali circles to serve in whatever manner they choose. It is said that some of them were originally fed droplets of Nergal’s blood, making them intensely loyal to the Baali bloodline. Nergal’s vitae was so potent that even the humans’ offspring were willing to serve before taking they own taste. Coupled with the fact that the families have instituted their own measures to keep each other in line and loyal to the Baali, we know the D’Habi won’t stray any time soon.

Of course, what were once humans that helped us to blend into the world are now just as corrupted as we are. Stand a D’Habi next to your average everyday person and you can instantly tell the difference. Our revenants are often sniveling, crawling beings. That is as we like it, since we do not make any illusions to keeping those close to us away from our darkness or the truth about the world’s utter spiral into chaos and destruction. You can imagine what that can do to a weak mind, right? This makes them less useful for espionage, since cracking under pressure doesn’t make one a great spy. However, we have many, many other spies.

The Baali eventually gained fellow infernalists among the rest of the Cainites. Azaneal was a powerful Baali who infiltrated the intricacies of the Catholic Church, eventually gaining the highest authority he could without becoming the pope himself. Along the way he corrupted and converted several with the Baali bloodline into his own heresy, believing that vampires were the tools of Satan against the world. It became his responsibility to play out his role until judgement day arrived, and he brought hundreds of Baali (called Azaneali) and Lasombra (called Angellis Ater) together under one banner. These half-Baali, these Angellis Ater, manipulated the shadows, as obsessed with the idea of darkness and the abyss as they were with the infernal.

When the Baali rose recently from their hiding (just as Moloch said they would), their first order was to absorb this group into the bloodline once more. It took a number of calculated strikes against the Inquisition to do so, but only a handful of anything but pure Baali exist now.

You seem confused. How do we re-Embrace other vampires, you ask? Well, unlike other Clans, our blood runs with the power of the First People, allowing us to Embrace with our own vitae which can override another’s weak blood. The process is the same, however; we drain the initiate of their blood, cut our wrists, and feed them our own. Our vitae rewrites their supernatural makeup, thus re-Embracing them into our bloodline. It is rumored that lower Generation Baali actually have pieces of the First People’s flesh they can feed to an initiate that causes the change instantly without the exchange of fluids. This is the real reason other vampires fear us. Because they know, with little more than a choice, they can be us.

Modern Devils

For the longest time, the Baali stayed hidden in the shadows, hiding from the likes of other Kindred looking to take us out. To them, we’re irredeemable beings who are out to destroy the world with demonic legions we have at our beck and call. Let me tell you how it really is.

Are We Without Hearts?

Honestly, it hurts my feelings that you think I’m a lost cause. Other Kindred like to congratulate themselves for resisting their dark sides and flagellate themselves if they step out of line. Why is this the best way to live? Why does the Beast have to be this thing vampires fight against? If you make a deal with your Beast and tell it “I’ll give you something else to torment besides me,” it can become quite the comrade. That is one of our tricks, by the way. Demons listen to us because they fear the thing we have inside of us. Our bloodline is potent enough to browbeat even the strongest demon into a cage of our design, one we have control over.

“But you worship evil,” you think. Yes and no. Certain rituals need to be put into place for us to summon the correct demons and get what we need from them. We worship those demons like a cat worships their human owner. We’re smart enough to do just enough to get what we need without too much involvement. If you do it right, the demon starts to feed you without you even asking, in the hopes of future affection.

Of course there are those Baali who go overboard. Everyone’s got to have their rotten apple. Thing is, we like to have some of our apples are rotten as possible. Every coven of Baali has one or two fools among them who are carefully groomed into the icon of what other Kindred see us as. They dress the part, talk the part, they are the part because that’s what we’ve painted them to be. We call them our Nergals, the boisterous ones among the Baali that the rest of us put up as sacrifice. Once the Nergal is killed by the Camarilla, the White Tower can pat themselves on the back for ridding the world of another horrible creature, and the search for the rest of us eases for a time. Gives us a chance to pay attention to what is truly important.

Every death is precious, as I said before. This is just one example of how the death of a Baali can have meaning beyond what is obvious. The same is true of the sacrifices we offer in the demon rituals. We are giving them the chance to be part of something larger than themselves. Does this make us cruel? I’d argue that it makes us as pragmatic as any other vampire who bites into a victim’s neck. The Baali just take it a step further and fully commit to our monstrous nature, and we are vilified for this fact. Sad, isn’t it?

How We Are Viewed

The Nergals aren’t the only ones who bear the markings of the obscenely anti-religious. If you call a group of people

evil and abominations and heathens for so long, that’s exactly what they’ll become. It’s basic human nature, and we still contain at least small traces of humanity, don’t we?

They call us infernalists. This is true, but I know many Baali who wish they could be open about their demon cavorting. The Gangrel are left to their animalistic devices and aren’t chastised for it. The Nosferatu wear their sin on their face, and yet some still look at them, and even get used to them along the way. Even the Tremere have a seat at the Kindred table, and look at some of the sick shit they’ve done. Vampires create their own hierarchy and worship of themselves, and yet they dare to look down on us for our practices, calling us weak-willed or instruments of evil. We are not weak. Consorting with demons is not without risk, and I’ve seen more than one Baali lose the test of bravery at a crucial time and be devoured in an instant. Anyone who thinks what we do is without merit and lacks strength, like it’s some coward’s path, has never come face to face with a filth demon or a revenge devil.

They call us antichrists. It is true that we use the whole satanic thing to great effect. Dressing in lots of black clothing and demonic imagery evokes a strong reaction, and it’s often how we get our kicks. I know a Baali who has an upside-down cross tattooed on his forehead. Certain people are drawn to that kind of acting out everyday, but it can even just be fun for a night of rabble rousing and painting the town red when in the mood. It also acts as a serious “fuck you” to the establishment and the others who hunt us down. They believe in all this Caine, curse, God bullshit, and we like to let them know we’re not having any of it.

They call us boogeymen, and this one is the clearest. Remember that whole re-Embracing the Baali are capable of doing? This is the reason why we are feared so much. We speak the unapologetic truth of the world, of the universe, of the death of all things, and convince others to join our bloodline — to become one of us. Other groups may work together for a time, but they simply become a gang of Kindred who eventually tear each other apart despite their blood bonds and supernatural leashes on each other. The Baali assimilate other vampires into our numbers and make them like we are. What most don’t understand is this must be a voluntary choice. Accepting Baali blood only overrides one’s original vitae if they wish it so. So, who are the real monsters: those who offer others the truth — and the choice to become what they see fit? Or the ones who would keep each other blind with lies, and rob each other of their free will?

Excavations

While the Nergals are out there hamming it up for everyone to gasp at, there are a fair number of us who have more important business to handle. Summoning demons, especially the more powerful entities, requires a lot of preparation. This can include collecting the right sacrifices, obtaining magical relics, and the tracking down the locations of several types of remains. We are swimming in remains a lot of the time.

This sends the Baali on dangerous voyages around the world in search of these items and places. Not only do we find the mausoleums and artifacts we seek, but we often find ones we never dreamed of encountering. In just the last three years, the Baali have unearthed two separate tombs containing ancient mummified sarcophagi of “cursed ones.” That’s a fancy term for husks that contain fragments of a demon’s soul. It is believed that finding just one more will mean the summoning of a certain demon of lies (of which I will not say the name). Just imagine what treasures could be garnered with that kind of power in our clutches.

Of course, I’ve been speaking of the Baali in general terms, but not every Baali is on the same team. In fact, each coven of Baali consists of thirteen members who all answer to a higher lord, most likely their collective sire, who is themselves one of thirteen, and so on and so on. That means we don’t all work together all the time. We are quite aggressive against other Baali, as a matter of fact. This has led to many small civil wars that our numbers simply can’t support. Making sure any uncovered relics do not end up in the wrong hands is important; the wrong hands being any hands that don’t belong to my coven alone. If another coven nabs it, then they grow more powerful, and even non-petty Baali have a way of taking out the competition — often preemptively.

All of this goes to illustrate that we’re not all the monsters other Clans make us out to be. We are archeologists and researchers, always looking for the next prize. Of course, the things we unearth are quite evil, but what isn’t, in this world of vampires?

The End is Nigh

Stop squirming. We’re almost to the end.

Let’s talk about the nature of death. I’ve mentioned it a few times, but I don’t know if you’ve truly comprehended my words. The world is doomed. All anyone needs to do is look around to see the depravity that dilutes the spirit of the Earth and all its inhabitants. Some outright blame the

Baali for where the world has gone, but it began its slow march to death long before we drank our first drop of blood.

Gehenna is only one theory on how the world will end. The Antediluvians haven’t been very active in these modern nights, at least as far as I’ve seen. Demons, on the other hand, are constantly reaching out and looking for a way to cross over into this world. For every demon a Baali summons forth with so-called “evil” blood rituals, there are another two who slip in through the cracks created from a world on the verge of collapse.

With that in mind, could you blame the Baali for wanting something out of this whole thing? If the end is nigh, why not make your final days a conflagration of fire and blood and death and power? All Baali know this, and profiting from whatever you can take from the world in the meantime is a foundation upon which the bloodline is built. Every demon we let into this world hastens the clock toward the ultimate midnight where the Earth splits in two. And some of the other vampires are starting to catch onto the truth.

This is why some are so intent on hunting and killing us. Kindred fear the inevitable, and especially hate what they cannot control. They cling to their existence in a way that might convince you they weren’t half-dead. The Baali, however, have reconciled with the destruction that is to come. No one will make it out alive, so why even try? Why not bring the end about sooner — and on our own terms?

In short: We’re here to bring death to everyone. Before you die, though, would you like to join us?

Character and Traits

Concepts

Entrepreneur

You’ve always been a people person.

When it came to grade school, you

were always picked first and never

disparaged any opportunity to get

up in front of the class and give a speech. After graduation, you were on the fast track to success,

always the talk of the town. And then, you were chosen by the Baali to become their face to the masses.

It’s not as public as you’d like it to be, but you still get to speak to crowds of people looking for direction in their lives. And you’re here to give it to them with a “You can do it” or a “You

know you’re better than that!” From the masses, you pick one of two lucky people per month to join your own coven or help them make their own, with you as their mentor. They make sacrifices to you for your mentorship, and you in turn give them the encouragement to keep on doing so. Not everyone is cracked up to be a Baali, and the weak get fed to

the strong (sometimes quite literally), but it makes you lots of money, and all the blood you can drink isn’t bad. All and all, it’s one of the best pyramid schemes.

Demon Magnet

Not only are you a demon whisperer like other Baali, you seem to always become caught in the machinations of some demonic plot. This can be a good thing or a very bad thing. Sometimes the demon needs your help specifically to become free, luring you to secret locations and communicating the instructions

to set them loose on the world through cracked

mirrors and whispered messages. The

subtlety they display can be sobering, and

you help to summon them in exchange for their assistance in whatever web you’ve spun yourself.

Then there are the demons who come to you at all hours of the night, while you are trying to relax, while you are trying to hide from the Sabbat attack squad, while you are trying to do anything other than deal with a demon. You help these creatures in exchange for them leaving you the hell alone. Sometimes you wonder which is the better deal: power or solitude. Regardless of what the answer truly is, demons infest your haven, your coven ritual room, your car, and every other aspect of your life.

Relic Hunter

Some would say you watched way too many Indiana Jones movies when you were a kid, but they didn’t realize what kind of future you were going to embark upon. Being Embraced by the Baali was ironically a godsend, fulfilling your destiny of becoming an adventurer looking to find lost treasures and tombs. The bloodline doesn’t pay for your gallivanting, of course, but you’ve had a pretty penny stored up since you were little. It is more than enough to keep up this life style for a few years at least, as you chase one lead after another in the hopes of uncovering something your coven can use to strengthen their power.

Your time is spent jumping on high-speed planes to travel during the day and spending entire nights digging holes to find hidden secrets. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t, but this is certainly the “life” you’ve always wanted. You’ll only hand up your battered fedora when the money’s gone or you’ve completed your journey to death.

Alternate Daimoinon Disciplines

••••• •• The Re-Embrace

While most Baali are Embraced in the traditional fashion, at other times, it is the choice of a vampire who wants to leave their blood-tied clan for the Baali’s greener pastures. The ritual of Re-Embracing is not a complicated one, but does require a willingness to endure a tortuous realignment of one’s soul, or whatever Kindred have left of one.

When The Re-Embrace is invoked, the sire takes their would-be childer by the throat and bleeds them into four bowls inscribed with ancient and demonic runes. This is to remove that which dictates their current state of being, very similar to a normal Embrace. The sire then fills another four bowls with his own blood, surrounding the childer with them in alternating order. At the initiate lies on the ground, bleeding and reaching ever closer to their final death, the sire calls forth a soul fragment of the bloodlines’ most powerful demon, Namtaru, and combines it with the childer’s soul to corrupt it and draw their spirit closer to that of a Baali. This process can take hours to complete.

If this part of the ritual is completed with finesse and meticulous attention, the childer may just make it out alive. All of the blood in the surrounding bowls flies into the air, entering the childer’s mouth, mixing and merging with their new soul in an explosion of dark energy. When they awake, they are now of the Baali bloodline, blasphemous in their glory.

System: The player spends 2 Willpower, and then rolls Manipulation + Occult (difficulty 8) against the target’s Willpower (difficulty 7). If the childer is of a lower Generation than the new sire, they receive a +1 dice bonus, as their soul is extra resistant to the change. Leftover successes are then compared to the effects above.

Re-Embrace Effects