The Baali: History

                  By Eric S. Bertish (bertishg@db.erau.edu)

In the beginning was Caine.

And Caine wandered throughout the Land of Nod, and was alone in his
sorrow.After the passing of an age, Caine returned to to the children of
Seth, so that his exile would come to an end.

All who saw him were awed by his power, for they saw his mark but did not
know what it meant. They took him in and made him ruler of the First City,
and they were his loyal subjects.

But depite this, Caine grew lonely. He was different from all those in the
city. He was a god among men, power surrounded by passivity. He ruled wisely
and well, taking upon himself the role as proctector of the First City and
the guardian of its peoples. Yet though he was honored and worshipped, he
was also feared by the people, and they did not understand his sorrow.

And this darkness that was inside Caine began to grow and fester. He forbade
worship of the One Above. He reveled in his darkness, casting aside the
restraints he had made for himself. His hunger grew, and his subjects' blood
sated it through orgies of feeding. His people began to fear him and their
supplications to him ceased, for they did not wish to attract the attention
of their mad god.

Caine's lonliness grew.

Delving into dark and forbidden arts, Caine sought the answer to his
dilemma.

The answer appeared to him one night as he consorted with demons.
Nn'theraq'pss, a great Lord of Hell, appeared before him. He offered to give
Caine the secret knowledge he needed to end his solitude.

"What would you ask in return?" asked Caine. "I know from my studies that
your kind does not do these things for free."

"I desire very little," Nn'theraq'pss replied. "I do not wish your soul, for
you not have one." Caine's heart became heavy at those words.

"Instead, all I ask is that a line of your children become my priests, as
the Levites are for the Children of Israel. I want to be worshipped on
Earth, as a mockery to the One Above."

Caine agreed.

Six nights hence, the secrets of the Embrace were revealed to Caine. And on
the seventh night, the night he prepared to create his first childe, an
angel appeared before him. Uriel, the angel of Death, spoke to him and said:

"Caine, though powerful you are, and marked of God, know you this: that any
Childe you make will bear your curse, that any of your progeny will forever
walk in the Land of Nod, and fear flame and sun, drinking blood only and
eating ashes only.

And since they will carry their father's jealous seed, they will forever
plot and fight amongst themselves. Doom not those of Adam's grandchildren
who seek to walk in righteousness, Caine! Stay your dread embrace!"

But Caine did not heed these words of God, and on that night he created his
first Childe, Enoch. Caine made Enoch the ruler of the First City, and
enjoyed the company of his Childe, reveling in the pleasure it could bring.

Yet Enoch was lonely, and he begged Caine for a brother and sister, and
Caine begat Zillah and Irad. And Zillah and Irad begat Childer of their own.

And Caine looked upon the City he had created for the good of Seth's kin,
and saw with fresh eyes how the evil and decadence festered within it. And
for the first time in an age, Caine felt sorrow for all he had done.

The great Deluge came, and Caine felt it was just punishment from the One
Above for all the evil he had caused. So Caine wandered the Land of Nod once
more, leaving his Childer to their own consciences, his only valediction
that they would create no more of his line.

Enoch followed Caine, begging him to return, but his pleas fell on deaf
ears. Enoch returned to his brother and sister, who sought to create a
Second City.

Yet Enoch was still lonely, for he did not desire the company of his
siblings and greatly missed his father. And in his lonileness, he created
his own childer. He embraced two twins, a brother and a sister, and their
names were Arikel and Malkav. And Enoch felt joy in what they did, for
Arikel was a sculptress and Malkav was a performer.

Years passed, and Enoch's joy faded. He saw his childer slipping into evil
and decadence, like he and his siblings had, and he knew how Caine had felt.
Seeking answers to his own existence, he left his kindred and followed in
his father's footsteps, wandering the Land of Nod. And it was in the Land of
Nod that Enoch made his greatest mistake, the one that would fulfill the
contract made by Caine so long ago.

In his weakness, Enoch had done that which he had sworn he would never do
again.

Long had he wandered the burning wastes of the Land of Nod, fleeing from the
rays of the sun like the other serpents, burrowing deep into the earth until
night. Long had he subsisted only on the blood of animals, for he had sworn
never to consume the blood of Seth's kin again.

But his many years in the desert were his undoing, for his hunger grew
greater the more he denied it. And so it happened that, during the course of
his wanderings, he came upon a mortal sitting beside an oasis. And Enoch's
hunger came upon him like a great flood, and he was carried away by it,
attacking the mortal and draining his life's blood until the last of it
adorned Enoch's lips. And as the hunger abated, Enoch saw the man's face for
the first time.

It was a gentle face, a face full of compassion and gentleness. And Enoch
felt a deep shame for what he had done, and in his weakness he shared his
blood with his victim, and made him his childe. In this manner did Enoch
beget Saulot.

Enoch spent an age with Saulot, talking of a great many things not as a
parent would to a child, but as a brother to a brother. Saulot was a man of
learning and discernment, and possessed a wisdom beyond his years. He was a
great comfort to Enoch, until the Beast which slept within him began to
awaken.

At this Enoch fell into despair. Saulot, his greatest childe. Saulot, the
most moral of his kind. Saulot, the one whom Enoch had groomed to be his
successor. Saulot, the Beast. And in his despair, Enoch fled once more into
the Land of Nod, never to return.

Saulot created many childer in the absence of his Sire. These he chose in
his own image, and were scholars, philosphers, and priests. And though they
were all his line, they battled each other like enemies. Saulot was saddened
by this, and saw the harm and evil his actions had caused. And like his
Sire, and Caine before him, Saulot fled east into the Land of Nod to find
purpose in his life.

It was there, in the Land of Nod, that Saulot changed. He regretted his
actions, and was determined to make right that which he had made wrong. He
desired forgiveness for his actions, a way to conquer the Beast. As he lay
sleeping, an angel of the Lord appeared to him. "Saulot," it said to him,
"you alone of all your brethren have asked for forgiveness. Know you that
the Lord is a just God, and that by your supplication forgiveness is
granted. Return to your people, and spread to them the doctrine of
salvation, that those who seek the place of Golconda shall find it." Saulot
awoke, and named the place where he had slept Golconda. He then returned to
the world of his Kindred, that he might tell them of his peace, and the mark
that had been placed upon him as a sign of his forgiveness. For a third eye
had appeared on his forehead while he slept, signifying his redemption.

Those that Saulot embraced after that day were those whose lives were filled
with sin and predation. By embracing them, their consuming nature was
brought to the attention of their souls so that they might be redeemed.
Saulot redeemed many in his travels.

Saulot's greatest failing, however, had occurred long before his redemption.
His first childe never sought the redemption he offered, and rebuked the
forgiveness offered by the One Above. Instead, he cursed the One for the
mark that had been put upon all his kind, and conspired with infernal
powers.

Thus began the Baali, the evilest of Caine's line, the cursed seed of Enoch,
the fulfillment of the controct made so long ago.

-- Excerpt from the _Book of Nod_, as told to all Salubri upon their
embrace.

The Beginnings Of The Line

The "modern" history of the Baali begins thousands of years ago, with Saulot
embracing his first childer. His name was Shaitan, and he was a philospher
like Saulot, though dark and brooding in contrast to Saulot's optimism and
hope. Shaitan had beeen embraced for much the same reason Enoch had given
Saulot eternal life -- he desired someone to talk to, a companion for the
endless nights. Their differing attitudes sparked many heated debates, some
of which ended with the loser, unable to counter a particular philosophical
riposte, stalking off into the night in a frenzy.

Both were highly intelligent, and more importantly, highly stubborn. Each
refused to give an inch. However, Shaitan's constant fault-finding with the
universe began gnaw away at Saulot's resolve. While he felt that vampirism
was merely another obstacle in humanity's quest toward perfection, Shaitan
considered it both a gift and a curse. His main point, reiterated over
hundreds of years, was this: God turned Caine into a vampire as a
punishment, and that punishment was levied across countless years and
generations. Why would God do this to Caine? The answer was seductively
simple.

God feared Caine. It was the only answer. Caine was the first to show
creativity and intelligence. Adam and Eve were little more than animals, who
needed prompting by the serpent before they rebelled, and even then they
didn't know why they did it. But Caine...Caine _knew_ what he was doing, and
it was his own idea. He showed independent thought, not mindless,
animalistic obedience like Adam, or the easy gullibility of Eve. He was the
first to challenge God at his own game. And God wouldn't stand for it.
Fearful of what might happen, Caine was cursed. A powerful curse for a
powerful man.

Shaitan reasoned that he would not calmly accept his curse like a docile
cow, as Saulot and the others had done. If he was to be cursed, then he
would _earn_ that curse, using all the powers that had foolishly been given
along with it. He would exact his vengeance upon God.

Shaitan's tongue was both serpentine and silver, and with this philosphy he
brought many of Saulot's childer to his way of thinking. The rift between
Sire and Childe grew and festered. Shaitan and his 12 followers began to
wrest control of the Mesopotamian city of Kala-At-Sherghat from its rightful
rulers, and twisted the city and its inhabitants to their own deviant ends.
Humans were cattle, they said, and thus our property to do with as we wish.
Did not even favored Abel slaughter his sheep in sacrifice to the Lord? If
humans were the rulers of animals, and thus placed above them, then vampires
were placed above humans by none other than God himself. The kine were
theirs to raise and slaughter at their whim.

Saulot wept at this, seeing all the evil and sorrow he had brought about
through the wrongful embrace of Shaitan. He left his home to wander the Land
of Nod as his Sire and his Sire's Sire had done. And it was there that
Saulot was the first vampire to find redemption.

Shaitan and his followers transformed Kala-At-Sherghat into a pit of
despair, hatred and pain. It was there, amidst the charnel house that had
once been a great city, that Nn'theraq'pss appeared to Shaitan.

Nn'theraq'pss approved of Shaitan's philosophy and methods. He offered
Shaitan the one thing he craved most: power. Power enough to bring down even
the One Most High. All that was needed was eternal servitude and Shaitan's
dark, twisted soul. Shaitan agreed instantly.

Under the guidance of Nn'theraq'pss, which is the True Name of the demon
Ba'al, Shaitan's dark empire flourished. Nations were conquered within the
space of a night, their inhabitants offered up to the great hunger of the
Dark Lord. With Ba'al tutelage, Shaitan mastered the arts of Daimonon and
Dark Thaumaturgy, as well as refining the philosophy which became the Path
of Evil Revelations.

At the height of power, however, disaster struck. Civil war wracked the
Second City as those of the thrid and fourth generation rebelled against the
second. Zillah and Irad were destroyed; Brujah diablerized by his Childe,
Troile. But these victories were costly, and the Second City was demolished
in the process. Left homeless and hungry after their phyrric victory, the
surviving kindred migrated toward the great empire that lay to the east --
the empire of Shaitan.

Shaitan did not welcome these intruders in his realm, and destroyed all he
could find. Angered by the rejection of one of their own kind, the leaders
of the clans united for the second and last time in history. They destroyed
Shaitan's legions like a flash fire sweeping across the plains. They stormed
the walls and razed the great towers of the city. Within a night, the city
of Kala-At-Sherghat was burning.

The Baali had been easily defeated. They numbered only 13, and had held the
city so tightly in their grip that they refused to allow any other of their
kind to be created, fearful of a threat to their power. Those that were
embraced were created as victims, a powerful sacrifice to their twisted
master, ritually slaughtered for their heart's blood. As such, their limited
ranks of schemers and evil preists were easy prey for the threshing machines
of the Brujah, Assamites and Gangrel. They were all destroyed -- save one.

Shaitan escaped the carnage by dint of his unswerving loyalty to Ba'al.
Warned of the impending attack, he left under cover of daylight a full two
days before the assault of the city. He alone was spared, he alone was
worthy to survive. All his brethren were weak and had not served their Lord
Ba'al with all their souls. They deserved to die.

Shaitan traveled east yet again, where he came to rule the Indian tribes of
Central America under the name of Huitzilopoctli. See _The Chaos Factor_ for
more information regarding his activities there, as well as his stats.

The Modern Era

With the departure of Shaitan to parts unknown, after the razing of Kala-At-
Sherghat he was numbered among those destroyed by the fire and forgotten.
The city was rebuilt, and its demonic past was carried off along with its
former masters to the oblivion of Final Death. Or was it?

It was not. Shortly after fleeing the doomed city, Shaitan embraced his
faithful ghouls who had made his escape possible. In serving as his servants
and assistants, they had learned the arts of the Baali as well as, or
better, than Shaitan's brethren had. Before his arduous trek to the New
World, where Ba'al commanded him to, Shaitan gave his minions one final
mission:

Make them pay.

And so, the Baali of the 5th generation slowly returned to Kala-At-Sherghat,
posing as the childer of Saulot's line. They arrived singly, over the course
of years. Using their intimate knowledge of the city, they found the
bolt-holes Shaitan had created to store the valubles he could not bring with
him. And as they slowly gathered, the corruption began.

It was at this time that Saulot returned from the Land of Nod. He had found
redemption, he said, at a place called Golconda. Salvation could be had by
_all_ vampires, if they sought it sincerely. The forgiveness of God could be
theirs. He was both a prophet and a healer, for a third eye had mysteriously
appeared upon his forehead, and with it came the ability to heal not just
body and mind, but soul as well. Even the soul of a vampire.

Saulot acquired a following of those who believed his teachings. Many of
them were those who had been healed of the Wassail, saved from the Beast. It
is even rumored that Saulot restored the face of a repentant Nosferatu. He
embraced only a few, and those he did were embraces of kindness: those who
regarded life as curse rather than a blessing; those who were unable to live
a normal life; those who wished for the ability to help others. They
regarded him with reverence, and those who followed him, regardless of
whether they were his childer or not, considered him their Sire.
Collectively, they were known as the Salubri.

The Baali immediately saw him as a threat. Posing as Salubri, they committed
atrocities in his name. For each act of kindness Saulot made, the Baali
killed and maimed threefold. Such was their destruction that the Salubri
were driven from the city under a blood hunt. Saulot was branded as a
criminal, and his followers were hunted in every city they came to. Only
those Saulot rescued chose to follow him.

Their job complete, the Baali dispersed throughout the world. For in damning
Saulot, they exposed themselves for what they were. So they hid among
vampiric society, corrupting those they could. The bloodline lay forgotten
until 1640.

The Renaissance had just ended, and Europe was just beginning to accept all
that had happened as part of its everyday existence. Study of obscure texts
was commonplace among scholars and academics, and John Dee's Order of the
Golden Dawn, as well as other occultic organizations, were well-established.
It was out of this era that the seminal work of the Baali was created, a
perfect summation of all they beleived in and held dear. Ironically, they
didn't write it.

_The Delicate Maul of Bright Shadows_, as it was called, was written by a
Brujah scholar whose obsession with the occult rivaled that of the Tremere
-- the clan that had replaced the Salubri through the diablerie of Saulot.
In the course of his studies, the Brujah stumbled upon some of the works of
Shaitan. Voracious for knowledge, he studied them ravenously, only to lose
his mind in the process. Driven to madness, his mind liberated from the
binding constraints of reality, all was made clear. His personality
fragmented, and he adopted a feminine identity. Calling himself Hecate, he
penned the _Delicate Maul_, a work that would later become as a bible to the
Baali. Some excerpts:

"On -- on -- to the meat of the matter, or rather, to the maggots of the
matter -- to the source of life shunned and derided as unclean..."

"Such hypocrisy, such mealy-mouthed absurdity. Our race is destined to tame
our world, to bind nature to our bidding. We can and we must -- for to shirk
is to squander our potentials -- though demons roll and heaven shakes. "

"Yet still we make distinctions and false comparisons, saying "yes, this
part of nature you must tame, but this is holy and apart and not for us to
touch." Absurdity, hypocrisy, gullible slander! It is not apart -- look, see
how my Art reaches out to it, makes the transcendent the mundane -- and holy
is just a sound in your mouth, real only in your mind."

"Unclean! Unclean! they cry. Blasphemy! Blasphemy!"

"Fie on you all. Your words are wind."

"First -- unlearn your language! Know that "sin" and "crime" are merely
words, just sounds forged into steel form to chain you! Unlearn those empty
syllables and free your mind -- so reveling in all joyous depravity and
forbidden pleasure -- holding bloody hands aloft, shreiking like lions into
the night, to know that in the butchered forms before you you have found
Truth -- and to Hell with them!"

"Second -- burn and topple, shatter and rend -- for it is a lie that only in
creation is there worthy purpose. Understand the value in destruction --
realize the fulfillment of desolation."

"Third -- know thine enemy! For it is not enough to merely know the enemy,
but one must know _of_ the enemy, its weaknesses and vulnerabilities."

"She hopes you might see clearly your own destiny -- whoever you might be --
see how we might slam fast our jailers' doors upon them and grasp our own
potentials as we should. She expects that you see how the common mortal
flails in self-delusion -- see how heaven's puppets demand obedience. "

"It is our duty and fate to master and destroy these empty husks, as with
every other form of nature -- to make ourselves supreme above all, supremely
served by all -- and to crush beneath us all that comes before or falls
below us, all who cannot see their destiny, and all who hold us back from
reaching ours."

"May these words fuel the fires in your hearts, give form to your hate, your
loathing and your other higher emotions -- so that with us -- with her, or
me -- you might stride onwards, crushing all beneath your heel."

These powerful words were dismissed by a great majority of vampires as
simply the fanatical rantings of an occultic anarch, but those with the
proper knowledge knew better. They could see the message hidden deep within
the madness, and within the space of weeks Hecate was "invited" to join a
society of like-minded individuals. The Baali had found a figurehead.

And thus the Baali have continued to this day. They occupy positions of
power both in the Sabbat and in the Camarilla. They are an infection in
vampiric society, preparing for the day when they can make the earth ready
for their Master's arrival.

--------- Legal Stufff -------------
The following creative material (That is, ideas not published by WWGS in any of
their products) are copyright 1994 by Eric S. Bertish. Everything else is
pretty much already owned by White Wolf, and shouldn't be taken as a challenge
because WW is a big company with a nice legal budget and I'm just a poor college
student with no money to speak of in the first place. They could squash me like
a bug in an instant and so I'm not challenging anything, okay? :)
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