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Twists of Obscenity Esoterica of The Baali
Twists of Obscenity Esoterica of The Baali
Special Thanks
Written By: Clinton J. Boomer & Joe Weinberg
Alice Liddell.
Developed By: Clinton J. Boomer & Joe Weinberg
Edited By: Owen Westcot & Sye Cole
Layout By: Josh Heath
Produced By: High Level Games
Art By: Luis Miquez, Jeff Preston, JE Shields,
White Wolf Art Packs
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Contents
The Dark Shape of the Universe 5
Demonic Bloodlines 21
Infernal Disciplines 31
Paths of Enlightenment 105
Merits & Flaws 117
Demonic Investments 131
Relics of the Unholy 149
Faces of the Wicked: NPCs among the Baali & the
Infernal 153
The Dark Shape
of the Universe
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] beneath the flesh of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved
over the face of these waters.
Genesis 1:1–2
In the beginning, they say, there was God: the ultimate asshole.
Alone in an empty universe, He crafted legions of angels and principalities, of spirits and seraphim, of
cherubs and celestials to serve Him, and to praise Him, and to sing ever & eternally of their adoration of Him, and
He was profoundly unsatisfied.
He vaulted the heavens over the world, hung the moon and the stars, called up the mountains from the seas,
separated day from night, laid field and forest upon the new-born earth … and He was, to a great extent, unsatisfied.
He created life in infinite variety and abundance: brought-forth every beast and insect, flower and tree,
filled the waters and the sky above and the earth beneath with all things that walk, and fly, and swim, and crawl,
each and every according to His desire.
Then, in His grandiose wisdom, He begat Adam Ha-Rishon: the second asshole, the first human, supreme
and mighty, made in His divine image. Man & woman together he made them: of two faces, joined at the spine, one
flesh and every soul; from dust he made them in the shape of gods, seeing all and knowing nothing, given dominion
over the Earth, capable of reason and of speech, of self-knowledge and creation.
From this, the ultimate error, of crafting sentient life to reflect His light and give Him worship, all other
conceivable horrors arise: the rebellion of Lucifer Morningstar and his Five Blessed Archdukes – and one third of
the angelic host along with them! – cast down in a roar of righteous fury to the depths of the Abyss. The late creation
And, of course, all the wicked acts invented & performed by that damnable Midnight Father’s multitudes
of thrice-cursed progeny.
Truly, this is a world grown so sinful within a mere handful of generations, just a paltry sixteen-hundred and
fifty-six years, that God Himself saw fit to literally wipe all earthly life – save for one family – from the surface of the
planet in a single forty-day sweep of shrieking, omnicidal mass-murder.
And heck, we’re barely into the first book of the Old Testament.
What’s that? Oh yes. I haven’t even mentioned the spawning of the Nephilim, nor addressed the construction
& shattering of the Tower of Babel, nor touched upon the wicked deeds of Lilith following her escape from Eden’s
chains.
Oh, don’t worry. It all gets much worse from here. Wait ‘til we get to Sodom and Gomorrah.
But all that misses the grand question: what came before God?
Upon completion of his holy works, it is said, the Creator saw that “every thing that He had made ... was
very good” (Genesis 1:31).
Which implies that the materials existing before Creation – tohu wa-bohu or tehom, here meaning ‘Darkness’
or ‘the Deep’ – were not, in fact, “very good.”
We – we, the blood of the Baali, the First People made immortal by the blood of Ashur who is called
Shaitan – know what dwelt in the unformed Abyss long before God moved upon the face of the waters. We know,
as through a mirror darkly, the titanic names and forms of the entities who dwelt there … and who dream, now, far
beneath the earth and waves, of returning the universe to that primordial state: to the long-abandoned shape of a
Fractured Tellurian, a universe reduced – in their ecstasy – to little more than a wasteland of corpse-pale skies lit
by rotting, pulsating black stars: a cold, howling infinity of creaking, twisted-iron atrocity-forests rising from endless
inky oceans of thick-clotted, pitch-dark blood, where chill wind caries only ash, aluminum, rust, and the agonized
echoes of one hundred billion restless and violated corpses, picked-at by swift, mindless predators shat-forth from
nightmare.
On the plus side, there won’t be many people around to see it.
The inhuman lords of that place are not dead, though the God of Heaven steamrolled an entire physical
universe over them while they slumbered. They still sleep, though fitfully.
Behind and beneath all matter and energy, they dream in their obscene palaces.
6 INTRODUCTION
Some mortals fear God. They are wise. Some fear Lucifer. Also wise. Others, cleverer still, fear the ancient
Crone; still others, evil spirits answering to no master but their own sick, inhuman hunger. The most brilliant of
mortals fear all of those entities, real & imagined … as well as the immortal, blood-drinking monsters who walk the
cold night, cursed and reviled by God, hungry corpses dancing a merry pantomime.
Yes, yes, even the very best & most “human” of us, those silly bastards.
In this abject, soul-scouring terror, there is wisdom. The panic-eyed wisdom of blind prey-animals, perhaps
… but wisdom, nonetheless.
But as to me and mine? We fear only what came before, and which will come again.
We placate the ancient Children of the Empty Darkness Predating Creation, committing atrocities for
their entertainment. We whisper to them, drawing delicately upon their power as they stir fitfully beneath the cities
of men & Kindred. With trembling hands, we trace out the letters of their names – jagged and qlippothic things,
appearing nowhere upon the holy Sefirot, each breathless syllable a coiling horror, dripping with the inverse of
meaning & hope – and we dedicate our immortalities to keeping them asleep.
In short, our goal is purely altruistic: we desire, quite simply, to keep the hibernating Children locked deep
within their happy, blood-sated sleep-state for as long as possible. The best way to keep them dozing gently is – and
this is not our fault – to perform bizarre acts of utter abomination and monstrosity. Particularly novel, complex, and
sickening acts of betrayal and brutality are – for obvious reasons – the most effective means of coaxing those silly,
softly-stirring Children back down into their sweet, senseless dreams of purest obscenity.
Okay, so some us take a bit of pride in our work; some of us genuinely enjoy waking up in the evening, a
smile on our face and a skip in our step, diving once more into the execution of our sacred labors. Where’s the harm
in that?
Because when they rise again, as they must, the first thing the Children are going to do is kill God. This
will remake reality in several ways, not all of them survivable by 99% of the planet’s population, and then – then,
motherfucker – all your precious “morals” and “decency laws” aren’t going to amount to a hill of shit.
Upon that onrushing night, we shall bow in reverence before the Children of the Outer Dark; we shall seek
to serve as their favored instruments and entertainers, their pages and lackeys, their seneschals and stewards.
8 Lexicon
the Sabbat and Camarilla are near-exclusively Cainite organizations, rejecting other entities
from membership, the Baali are much more open-minded: a Choir may be assembled from
wide variety of blasphemous & demonic creatures including ghosts, spirits, demon-possessed
humans, sorcerers, cultists, Amkhat, ghouls, Wyrm-loyal werewolves, and other shapeshifters
(among others)
• Chorazin: a sepulcher of the ancient Baali hidden from sight by powerful spells, rumored to hold
the resting-place of Namtaru and guarded-over by the ascended Azaneal
• Corrupturum: a unique Discipline of the Yomonlik Bloodline focused upon the art of pulling
Hell to Earth; this art was thought to be utterly vanished following the destruction of Yomon-Li
and his childer at the conclusion of the Punic Wars, although lone practitioners remained active
until at least 756 CE (the end of the Devil-King Age)
• Daimonion: the traditional Discipline of the greater Baali Bloodline, a piecemeal “greatest hits”
of the lost Discipline now referred to only as Baali Sorcery
• The Damned: a catch-all term for those who practice the techniques of the Baali, including
Corrupturum & Jigoku; sometimes used to refer to any vampire or Infernalist (including mortal
Infernalists)
• Devil-King Age: the period from 100 CE to 756 CE when demon-worshipping mortal wizards
ruled openly over a Sultanate of thirteen great city-states, with a dominion stretching from the
Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf, centered upon the black-marble Oasis of Eternal Bliss; the
era of this dynasty is considered a Golden Age of the Baali, second only to the charnel-fields of
Carthage
• Earthbound: any of the six-hundred and sixty-six Fallen angels to have escaped the Abyss and
returned themselves to the world of the living in ancient days, often by the hand of mortal
occultists; frequent contacts of the Baali over the centuries
• First People: precursors of the Baali, a powerful tribe of mortal occultists predating the Second
City who – through complex blood-magic & ritual sacrifice – uncovered the true nature of the
titanic Children of Outer Darkness; the secret knowledge of this tribe was made immortal by
the actions of “Ashur,” and thus survives to the modern nights in the libraries & whispers of the
Baali
• Followers of Set: also called Setites, this clan of vampiric schemers and magicians is — alongside
the Assamites and Salubri – one of the three traditional blood-enemies of the Baali
• God: the so-called “Creator,” this entity is credited with building a false reality over the
unconscious forms of the Sleeping Children
• Hive: a collection of likeminded Baali and their allies who establish a permanent presence in
a single location (often beneath a city), occasionally centered around the traditional Organ Pit;
true Hives are exceedingly rare in the modern nights, as most Baali maintain only temporary
residences as Pilgrims or within Choirs
• Jigoku: a unique Discipline of the Akahaete Bloodline focused upon the art of awakening the
inner demon-form
10 Lexicon
slumber only once: in 636 CE, he tore the heart from the 4th-generation Salubri known as
Samiel, utterly destroying that Methuselah along with more than half of his forces. With that
same single strike, Namtaru snuffed-out the legendary Code of Samiel and instantly reduced the
total number of worldwide Warrior Salubri to a mere five neonates
• Nergal: one of the three original progenitors of the Baali bloodline, alongside Moloch & the
Nameless, known for his naked depravity and open obsession with service to the Sleeping
Children, including a mad plot to awaken Namtaru circa 1600 BCE; in modern nights, a ‘Nergal’
or ‘Nergali’ is any of the damned who needlessly draws attention to herself as a demon-worshiper,
often with disastrous results. Because whispers of the Baali indicate that the Methuselah escaped
destruction and currently slumbers beneath Mexico City, awaiting commands from the Children
of the Outer Dark, the term ‘Nergali’ can also be used as a back-handed compliment: begrudging
acknowledgment that the recipient of such an epithet has, at the very least, successfully survived
the disastrous fallout of her own foolhardy & ill-conceived plan
• Pilgrim: a lone Baali; one who travels the night quietly, performing the appointed tasks of
her faith in her own way and maintaining only minimal contact with Choirs, Hives, fellow
Pilgrims and other members of the greater Baali Faith. In modern nights, the majority of Baali
are Pilgrims, moving into and out of Choirs as desired
• Plague-Saint: the absolute highest rank of devotee within the Via Contagionis Path of
Enlightenment, a worshiper answering only to Namtaru himself
• Salubri: this clan of vampiric healers and paladins is — alongside the Assamites and Followers of
Set – one of the three traditional blood-enemies of the Baali
• Shaitan: in theory, the single highest position of authority among the Baali, unrivaled in power
and given authority to command all members of the Bloodline; in practice, this is a title – nearly
empty, in the modern nights – claimed over the centuries by any dozen Elders, Methuselah,
potent Infernalists, and other members of the bloodline, including (at one time) the 4th-
generation Bloodline-progenitor Nergal and the great Methuselah Azaneal. Referring to another
Baali as ‘Shaitan’ is a polite honorific – similar to ‘sir,’ ‘sempai’ or ‘my lord’ – that is occasionally
employed as a dire, mocking insult
• The Sleeping Children: an assortment of mysterious hyper-cosmic entities who ruled the universe
during a previous incarnation of reality, entities over-whom our current “bubble” of time-space
is overlaid; it is the central tenet of the greater Baali Faith that these entities will rise again to
reclaim our (their) reality from the usurper-god Yahweh.
Of them, it is said:
… they exist in a state of physical and psychic separation and imprisonment. Their flesh exists in the
material realm, embedded in the substance of the Earth itself; in “tombs” that show no sign of construction
and that have walls etched with the scars of their thrashing. Their minds, however, exist somewhere else, in
a sea of tormented horror that is to them sweetest bliss. Should some event encourage one of the Children
to awaken, their minds and bodies come closer to union, their unclean knowledge is released into the world
around them, the essence of their nature spills over into all sapient minds in the vicinity, driving them to
greater and greater acts of depravity, and reality warps and twists to a breaking point.
Namtaru the Spreader of Plagues is the only Child of the Outer Dark to be positively and
12 Lexicon
The Flood: A Detailed Have you heard the phrase “cruising altitude of
thirty-thousand feet” in reference to a commercial
Crime-Scene Analysis aircraft? That’s roughly the boundary of the upper
troposphere with the lower stratosphere; planes
fly there because – in the region above that line
Technically, it wasn’t a “forty-day event”. – there’s no clouds. There’s no weather. No water
And that’s important, because if one is to vapor, no nothing. Just cold, dry ozone.
accurately profile the single greatest spree-killer in On the fortieth day of the Deluge, the floodwaters
our time-space continuum’s fascinating and gore- capped at twenty-nine thousand, fifty-two feet
spattered history, one ought – at the very least – to across the entire planet. Right there at the edge.
get one’s facts straight.
To give a comparison on that “four and a half
Leave the oh-so-shocking, dumbed-down billion cubic kilometers of water” figure, by the
headline scandals and sordid, titillated gossip- way, that’s 3.25 times the total amount of water on
column handwringing to the rubes and the the planet. If every river, sea, and ocean tripled in
rubberneckers. We are Baali. We demand rigor. size overnight, it wouldn’t match what we got hit
In point of actual fact, the Earth continued with. And you wanna talk sheer weight? A single
flooding for one hundred and fifty days before the cubic kilometer of water, on the US short scale,
floodwaters began to recede; the first, infamous weighs 1.1023 billion tons.
forty days and forty nights were simply the most We got hit with somewhere in the range of four
intense. In total, Noah and his family – the and a half billion of those.
absolute last mortals on the planet – were trapped
on their Ark for precisely 371 days: just over a year. And it all came down at a rate of about nine
meters – just under 30 feet! – an hour.
And how intense were those first 40 days of global
rainstorm? Well, the entire surface of the planet So: if you’re a seven-foot-tall, thousand-year-old
was drowned beneath a single nameless new ocean demon-blooded war-engine who punches five-foot-
with a depth slightly exceeding 8.86 kilometers thick tempered-clay city walls in half for shits &
above current sea-level – that is, enough to cover giggles, please understand that the water – planet
Mount Everest by about twenty feet – which works wide – is solidly above your head after just 15
out to four and a half billion cubic kilometers of water minutes. About a week and a half later, you’ve got
dropped on us. a mile of water standing on the exact same spot you
were at, with just 781 hours of rainfall left to go.
Note that the so-called “Death Zone” – the Not that you’d survive half that long, of course:
elevation-level where atmospheric oxygen- individual raindrops, at the time of the Deluge, had
concentration drops to 34% of sea-level, insufficient the impact-velocity of a 9 mm bullet – enough to
to sustain human life – is at just 8,000 kilometers. shatter concrete – and the basic friction of ripping
The current average depth of the Pacific Ocean is through normal atmospheric air-resistance at that
just four kilometers. Denver, Colorado – current speed means they were boiling when they hit.
elevation: 1.6 kilometers above sea level – was, at
the time of the Flood, therefore submerged beneath And every square inch of the planet was violated
7.2 kilometers of globe-spanning ocean; at the surface simultaneously by buckets upon buckets upon
of the ocean, high above, the air was so thin that buckets of this shit, slamming into the earth more
the human brain starts to swell, leading to nausea like a “flesh-rending, solid, scalding-hot sheet of
and psychosis, before simply breaking down and firehose blast” than a mere “rainstorm,” as we
allowing the body to die. would understand it … and then we just kept
getting ass-pounded, in a literally constant barrage,
22 Demonic Bloodlines
The Yomonlik their own unique discipline focused upon the art
of bringing Hell to Earth. A Choir of Baali and
Akahaete joined by even a single Yomonlik is a
The Yomonlik are an ancient bloodline of the devastating force, often capable of threatening an
demonic, long thought to be extinct. It is believed entire Camarilla city.
that most of these reality-violating Archfiends
were wiped-out completely in the second century Nickname: Archfiends
BC, favored targets of Rome during the third Weakness: It is said that Embrace as a Yomonlik
Punic War; what few of the Bloodline survived is particularly terrifying, as the soul of the would-be
were extinguished utterly by the 9th century CE, Childer is first thrust deep into Hell before being
following the end of the Devil-King Age. They dragged back and compelled to inhabit her own
and all their servants were hunted to extinction, corpse by the crimson chains of Caine’s curse.
their very names stricken from history so that none
might rediscover their terrifying abilities. In addition to the weakness of their parent clan
regarding sacred symbols and True Faith, the
But evil does not lay dormant forever. Yomonlik must continue to fight the pull of Hell:
In the early 1940s, towards the end of the echoes of Oblivion shade every moment of their
Second World War, the desperate Nazi party waking nights, and draw them far deeper into sleep
sought-out any forbidden occult knowledge they than other Kindred. All Yomonlik suffer the effects
could claim, unearthing hundreds of lost tombs of the Deep Sleeper (V20 485) and Deathsight
and unwholesome temples in their panicked Flaws (V20 pg. 494), though they receive no points
attempts to turn the tide of the war. Some of these for these drawbacks. The obscene visions inflicted
experiments bore dark, gleaming fruit. In their upon those of this Bloodline – waking or asleep
excitement and ignorance, a secret Nazi occult- – would be considered utterly nightmarish by
science division opened a door to something evil. anyone else … but many Yomonlik embrace these
Something long dormant. They awoke Yomon-Li, horrific visions as a source of artistic inspiration,
the originator of the bloodline, somehow bringing at least publicly. Whenever a Yomonlik has a total
the 5th-generation Methuselah back from not just number of blood points in her Blood Pool greater
the depths of torpor, but from Hell itself. than her temporary Willpower, these Flaws fade
into the background and the Yomonlik is able
Those few Nazi dimensional engineers and to behold the world untainted; some Yomonlik
atrocity-technicians fortunate enough to survive grow addicted to this reprieve, and go to elaborate
Yomon-Li’s immediate arrival to the mortal realm lengths to maintain their clarity of vision: gorging
became the first of his new brood, Embraced themselves on blood and exhausting themselves in
alongside a handful of those they meant to sacrifice elaborate orgies of self-mutilation.
to the demon-in-undead-flesh.
For complex reasons, the Abyssal-Bound Vitae
Since then, the bloodline has been very slowly Flaw (below) is especially common among the
growing, embracing in secret and keeping their Yomonlik: even at the height of their numbers,
moves subtle and secret. Masters of manipulation, during the Age of Devil-Kings, their population
the Yomonlik have been practicing their horrid was a fraction of a fraction of the total worldwide
craft for nearly a century now, slowly making Baali numbers.
their way to the halls of power around the world;
many of their goals seek to return ancient, fallen Disciplines: Auspex, Presence, Corrupturum
Yomonlik of elder ages to new bodies, throwing (detailed below). Yomonlik are often cross-trained
wide the gates of the Abyss. in Daimonion by their brethren, and many simply
possess an intuitive knowledge of that dark gift,
They remain a very small synod within the Baali, selecting the Additional Discipline Merit (V20,
24 Demonic Bloodlines
Other Splinter- to distant Voivodes enduring the Thirst of Ages,
superstitious villagers, panicked soldiers, Siberkah,
Bloodlines and even the titanic Zmei (WTA: Rage Across Russia
pg. 84-89). And the Baali, for their own part, have
welcomed such creatures with open arms and
The secretive Choirs & sprawling Hives of shining smiles. Members of this splinter-Bloodline
the Baali are a colossal, twisting patchwork Embrace true: the childe of a Chernobog is, in
of intermingled lineages, ancestries, and nearly all instances, a Chernobog; in this way, the
deviations – folded into the Bloodline vast majority have left the Curse of Absimilard far
through the darkest of sorceries – and ex- behind, sullied now – for the most part – only by
members of nearly every Clan & Bloodline the weakness of their parent clan regarding sacred
can be found among those ten-thousand symbols and True Faith. In exchange for this
faithful who dance & deceive, corrupt & release from Caine’s Vengeance, however, the Kiss
kill, slaughter & sing praise for the eternal of the Chernobog drains beauty from her mortal
joy of the Sleeping Children. victim alongside the lifeforce she drinks: for each
The Ivoriyx are a Bloodline drawn – according to blood point consumed by the Chernobog when
knowledgeable occultists – from the pale veins of she feeds, the victim’s Appearance drops by one
a single powerful Ventrue Elder adopted into the for the remainder of the night. Careless feeding is,
Akahaete during (or immediately after) the collapse obviously, likely to lead inexorably to a Masquerade
of Rome; creatures of this august lineage may – if breach. Any creature killed via exsanguination
they choose – substitute the Presence Discipline by a Chernobog leaves a particularly horrid and
for Obfuscate and/or gain the Fortitude Discipline terrifying corpse, a scene of nightmare. Members
in place of Celerity. Many also learn Dominate of this Bloodline retain the Potence and Obfuscate
as an Additional Discipline. As bodyguards to Disciplines of the Nosferatu, usually replacing
Elder Baali and – more rarely – infiltrators to Animalism with Daimonion and often gaining
the Camarilla, Ivoriyx are more likely than others access to Presence in the bargain.
of the Bloodline to learn the Horror known as House Barlowe, Dhjaani, & Cross is
Cape of Pretty, Pretty Skin (below), and their unapologetically a former coven of the Tremere
Wicked Corpse forms often appear to be carved Antitribu, a lost Chantry who cast-off the shackles
of ash-white, onyx-veined marble. In addition of the Sabbat and House Goratrix alike with darkest
to the weakness of their parent-clan regarding glee when granted the slightest opportunity to
sacred symbols and True Faith, members of this betray both of those over-stifling organizations in
splinter Bloodline cannot use their blood to create a single night of arcane terror, esoteric psychosis,
a ghoul, or maintain a ghoul, nor to Embrace a unnatural bloodshed, and good old-fashioned
childe unless they have completely exsanguinated a diablerie. Headed by a maniacal trio of mutually-
mortal in the same night. blood-bound lovers and gifted with the Clan
Chernobog are a dangerous and paranoid Disciplines of Auspex, Dominate, and Daimonion,
lineage, drawn primamrily from the ranks of House Barlowe, Dhjaani, & Cross is the foremost
Central and Eastern European ex-Nosferatu – – perhaps only – organization in the world
many said to trace their clotted, odorous black dedicated exclusively to the research, exploration,
blood directly back to the veins of Baba Yaga – and development of Dark Thaumaturgy. The
who have fled their nests over the centuries in a stated goal of the House is nothing less than full
series of desperate bids to escape the attentions resurrection of the lost art of Baali Sorcery, a grail-
of the Niktuku, Silver Fangs, Brujah loyalists, quest to reinstate the web of corpse-bridges that
mortal witch-hunters, szlachta and zozhd in service once – according to legend – linked the Organ Pits
26 Demonic Bloodlines
Blasphemous Legends of Loz
Contagion-Bearers of Loz claim – as might well be expected – to be the descendants of “Loz”; further, however, they
claim that their actual progenitor (not Loz) was, in fact, one of five 4th-generation Baali to have crawled from the great
organ-pit of the First People: a nameless, beautiful singing-boy stolen from the Second City, an innocent kidnapped and
befouled, destined for sacrifice in the organ pit, made immortal by the sinister blood of Ashur.
When the boy pulled himself from the gore-streaked depths, it is said, his flesh had been twisted into ruin and his angelic
voice had been torn from his still-weeping throat.
The bizarre legend states that the boy passed into the Realms of the Dead following his suicide; once there, he wandered
far from the grey-lit shores of the lost Living World into the far darkness beneath the Labyrinth, past the edge of the Void.
There, according to these tales, the shuddering and near-crippled shadow of the boy was drawn by the wicked vitae still
burning in his long-dead veins to the vast carapace of a slumbering, insectoid leviathan: a true Child of the Outer Dark.
Beyond the depths, it stretched and roiled: a titan scarcely-contained by the infinities of cold and empty blackness gaping
forever downward, far beneath the Land of the Dead.
In rapt adoration of this slumbering thing, of an entity larger and older than worlds, the awestruck boy laid one lacerated
finger upon the chitinous plate of this incalculable monstrosity … and at this touch he was instantly transformed: he
became something new, neither mortal nor ghost, yet not the Cainite he had once been, a soul inverted, given mastery
over his own newly-reborn flesh.
And over the flesh of others, he learned, as he walked back to the world of the living.
Once his angelic features & voice had been remade, shaped by blood & will alone, the boy beheld a ghost-city surrounding
the sarcophagus of something called Loz.
He entered the city and walked the empty streets, the name of Loz trembling on his lips. Before the shrine of Loz, the
boy sang once more. And the entity in the sepulcher, that alien and unknowable thing, sang with him.
They sang together for 1,001 nights, it is said, beneath a sky with no sun in a city forged brick-by-brick from the memory
of carnage & the ripples of long-silenced screams; they sang together then of Gehenna and Enoch, and of Lilith and
Lucifer, and – most of all – of the Sleeping Children and the final fate of God.
After this time, the phantom known as Loz sent the boy away: a single word whispered in his ear.
Upon his return to the mortal realm, the boy brought the song & word of Loz with him to the Second City; by the echo
of his reforged voice, that place was undone, and certain plans were set in motion.
Plans that will culminate in a dark future yet to be born, called-forth in horror and nightmare, say the legends.
If any of this is even remotely true, it presents significantly more questions than it does answers, chief among them
where this theoretical 4th-generation “Singing-Boy of Loz” – and his blood-sibling, the fifth Baali progenitor – might
be found in the modern nights.
Most scholars of the Baali scoff at these tales as demented ramblings born from a drug-addled Iron Age mind; more-likely,
it is presumed, this “Bloodline of Loz” is drawn from the veins of some insignificant Tzimisce poet – in all probability
an Elder, but perhaps a true Methuselah sired by the Ancient himself – re-Embraced by Nergal during the heights of his
whoredom and long-ago discarded to the drifting ash of centuries.
The chittering Choirs of ancient Contagion-Bearers, many of them millennia old, simply blink their thousands of eyes
and hum together as one, tending their vast blind herd-pits far beneath the daylit world, keeping their own eerie council
28 Demonic Bloodlines
TWISTS OF OBSCENITY: ESOTERICA OF THE BAALI 29
Infernal
Disciplines
The devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape.
William Shakespeare, “Hamlet”, Act 2 scene 2
32 Infernal Disciplines
Terrors creature she can see that is not already bound by
use of this ability, and rolls Wits + Occult (difficulty
7); a supernatural target may attempt to resist with
Aegis of Obscene Laughter: The damned cannot a Willpower roll (difficulty 7). If the damned
activate this Terror while on consecrated earth or wins this contested roll, her target is wrapped in
holy ground of any kind (see the Trespasser Upon supernatural chains, webs, or hideous coils of
Sacred Ground Flaw, below). thorny branches drawn-forth from the Outer Dark;
while her target is bound in this way, he cannot
The damned spends a point of blood or Willpower
move from his current position and suffers a one-
and rolls Wits + Occult, difficulty 7; on a success,
die penalty on all Physical-based rolls for every two
the damned begins to chuckle with the pure, cold,
successes (rounded down) achieved by the damned.
grotesque joy of the Sleeping Children themselves,
These bindings cause her victim excruciating
infecting the area immediately surrounding her:
agony: a creature bound in this way must succeed
this small circle has a radius in yards equal to her
at a Willpower roll, difficulty 6, before she may
temporary Willpower plus the number of successes
use any ability requiring concentration (usually
rolled to activate this power. The damned and all
meaning any ability that cannot be used in Frenzy).
Baali within the area – including members of Baali-
A creature bound in this way can burst free by
associated Bloodlines and those bearing the blood
acquiring a total number of successes on Strength
of a Baali, such as the ghoul of a Baali and those
checks (difficulty 6) equal to the Willpower of the
blood-bound to a Baali – immediately regenerate
damned; checks of this type are not subject to the
one Health Level of bashing or lethal damage.
penalty on Physical-based rolls noted above.
Immediately upon channeling this hideous,
Black-Hearted Devotion: The damned gains
inhuman pleasure, the damned is struck mute
access to three additional points of Willpower;
(V20 pg. 483) until the end of the scene or for one
these special “Dark Willpower” points are tracked
hour, whichever is long; this special Terror cannot
separately, in their own pool, and may only be
be activated by a mute character.
used to activate Blood Sorcery, Corrupturum,
Bedeviled Treasure: The damned spends one Daimonion, and Jigoku abilities. Points of Dark
point of blood or Willpower and touches one Willpower are replenished according to the normal
object; no roll is required. Any creature attempting rules (V20 pg. 267).
to touch, move or take the object without the
Bless the Mortal Servitor: As the Sleeping
express permission of the damned must succeed at
Children are to the most potent of demonic entities,
a Willpower roll (difficulty equal to the Willpower
the Baali are to their living vassals. The damned
of the damned) or recoil from the object at the last
spends one point of blood or Willpower and a full
second. The damned may have a total number of
hour in unholy communion with her willing ghoul
objects marked in this way equal to her Willpower.
or human retainer, reshaping the creature as she
The damned may dismiss any mark she has created
desires … often, but not always, in accordance with
in this way at any time, from any location, without
the stated wishes of her servitor. When this ability is
effort; the effect otherwise has a permanent
used, the damned gains access to 10 Freebie Points
duration. If the damned also possesses the Name
that she may apply to her “worshiper”: the damned
of the Devil Combination Discipline, below, a
might choose to increase her ghoul’s Appearance
creature successfully touching her marked object is
by 2, to increase her ghoul’s Strength and Stamina
treated as if she had just spoken the name & title
by 1 apiece, increase her ghoul’s Willpower by 7
of the damned.
and Resources by 3, or even to buy-off her ghoul’s
Bindings of Iron & Screams: The damned Flaws of Blind, Lame, and Short.
spends one point of blood or Willpower, selects one
At will, the damned may choose to revoke her
34 Infernal Disciplines
Not “true from a certain point of view”.
Actually true.
It is by use of this ability that rival Baali Choirs,
in ancient nights, were occasionally able make
parlay rather than simply tear each other apart.
Not to get too Baali here, but … like, what precisely, is,
technically, “the truth”?
The big limitation on Cold Hammer of Truth is, annoyingly, that you can’t actually use it to do too much
in the way of weaseling.
In a lot of ways, it’s the “I take off my NPC hat for a second and tell you something, very specifically, as the
Storyteller” power.
“Real quick, out of character? You somehow know that the Baali is definitely not lying about this. He’s lied
about a lot of stuff, for sure, but this one statement somehow hits you square. He just said something 100%
factual; I’ll even write it down for you. And if he’s lying about this, I as your Storyteller owe each of you 100
XP. No bullshit.”
You can use this ability to state an opinion, for example, but all that doing-so can accomplish is to utterly &
irrevocably convince whoever hears you that you really truly believe what you just said:
Truth-hammer the statement “Chicago-style hot dogs are the best,” for example, and the ‘thing no one who
hears you can deny’ is “damn, this dude really really likes him some Chicago-style dogs”.
If you truth-hammer the statement “I swear I’ll take you to the Prince’s secret hideout if you let me go,”
your audience is convinced that (a) you totally know where the Prince’s hideout is located, and that (b) you
don’t currently plan to betray them.
Use of this power will not make people take stupid risks just because they’re convinced that what you said
is true.
“I believe you,” the Templar says, frowning. He looks to his Pack, nods, then stares at you. “God help me,
I fucking believe you. Looks like you got yourself a deal, shit-stain. But … eh, just in case, yes? Let’s get you
chained-up in my trunk before we go for our little ride. I’m sure you won’t mind, right? Right.”
More concretely, this Terror cannot be combined with the four-point Dark Miracle Investment (below) that
causes “mystical truths to become malleable”: this Terror isn’t about letting a lie slip-through undetected.
It’s about magnifying the power of an oh-so-rare TRULY TRUTHFUL statement into something all-but-
physically-solid.
36 Infernal Disciplines
the mortal saw or heard a moment to construct, and no roll is required: the
damned must touch an open, bounded doorway
• Hands & Tongue: One point in an Ability or archway of any kind – such as a torii gate or a
possessed by the victim, up to one dot closet door in the home of her ghoul – and expend
above normal generational limits both a point of blood and a point of permanent
• Internal Organs: One point in a Physical Willpower. The damned may always choose to exit
Attribute, up to one dot above normal her domain through this doorway, rather than
generational limits returning to the world at the spot she entered her
private hell (or at a point in space within line of
• Brain: One point in a Mental Attribute, sight, if she also possesses the Dance of Twisting
up to one dot above normal generational Nightmares Combination Discipline).
limits
This doorway may not be used to enter the
• Heart: One point in a Social Attribute, personal hell of the damned, only to exit.
up to one dot above normal generational
limits The damned may possess a total number of
doorways of this type equal to her Willpower. The
For each additional success on the roll above, damned may dismiss any doorway she has created
the damned retains the benefits of this ritual at any time, from any location, without effort.
cannibalism for one additional night. An
individual mortal may only provide a single benefit This ensorcelled doorway leaks hideous drifts
listed above: the damned cannot consume the of matter & energy from the depths of the
brain and heart of the same mortal, for example, practitioner’s personal hell; this miasma marks the
nor both the eyes and the tongue. The damned area directly around the doorway, twisting the local
may possess a total number of benefits from use environment into something eerie, nightmarish
of this ability at any given time equal to one half and haunted. Any living creature that dwells within
of her Willpower, rounded down; additional uses the area surrounding the doorway must succeed at
of this ritual are wasted: if the damned is a 13th- a Willpower roll (difficulty 7) at the end of each
ganeration Baali who possesses a Willpower of 24-hour period or gain a temporary Derangement;
eight, for example, she may invade a coma ward these Derangements stack, although creatures in
and then spend four hours performing this ritual the area can only gain a number of Derangements
four times on four helpless mortals, eating the equal to one-half of the Willpower of the damned,
brain of each and gaining up to +4 total in her rounded down. All Derangements gained in this
Metal Attributes, up to a maximum of dot 6. If she way fade completely when the mortal spends at least
eats the internal organs of a security guard an hour 24 hours outside of the environment surrounding
later, she gains one point in a Physical Attribute the doorway. If this Willpower roll is botched, the
only if she willingly loses one of her bonus dots to Derangement is permanent.
her Mental Attributes. In general, the miasma leaking from the
This special Terror is said to have been taught, in doorway affects the occupants of a small building:
far-ancient days, to Yomon-Li by the Apepnu-entity the entirety of a suburban house, dive bar or 24-
known as Hemhemti the Roaring One. hour convenience store, but only a few floors of
a skyscraper or up to a single block surrounding
Doorway Out of Oblivion: By use of this Terror, an abandoned alleyway. The Storyteller is the final
the damned may fashion a permanent physical exit arbiter of the range of this miasma.
from the domain she has established via use of
Step into the Hellish Rift (below) into the living Echo of the Beast’s Tongue: The damned may
world, usable only by her. This portal requires only activate this ability at-will; it does not require
an action, nor the expenditure of blood or
38 Infernal Disciplines
If this roll is successful, all creatures within line of psychics, mystics, hedge-witches, sorcerers, and
sight to the damned reduce their Self-Control to spiritualists. The damned loses one Humanity
zero and shift their Nature to Monster; victims act upon completion of the ritual; damned who walk
with drunken, lust-wracked passion and may engage a Path of Enlightenment are – in most instances –
in any manner of atrocities including cannibalism not subject to this loss.
and mindless, self-indulgent violence. Mundane
humans (not including ghouls, sorcerers, or other Fiend-Father: The damned may cause a fresh,
supernatural mortals) exposed to a successful use strange monstrosity to erupt from the newly fallen
of this ability have no resistance to the power; such corpse of her victim. The damned spends one
creatures shake off and forget their exposure to the point of blood or Willpower to enhance the oily
power of the damned within 1d10 hours and wake blackness dripping from her fangs (and claws, if
in a shameful, terrified stupor. Kindred and other she possesses them): if the damned kills a living
supernatural entities can obviate use of this ability creature with her bare teeth or hands within the
with a successful Willpower roll (difficulty 7) or the next minute, an animal-like creature bursts-forth
simple expenditure of a point of Willpower. from the corpse of the fallen mortal, instantly
shredding the body to ruin. The damned chooses
Fail, the Tools of Men: The damned spends one one beast (V20, pg. 388-391); this beast emerges
point of blood or Willpower and rolls Manipulation from the victim’s mouth, from his wounds, or from
+ Occult (difficulty 8); all technological devices another orifice of the victim. No one would ever
within 50 feet (15 yards) cease to function for one mistake a beast created in this way for a natural
minute per success. Lightbulbs, computers, car creature: these are the things nightmares are made
engines, cell phones, flashlights and even firearms of. The creature has minimal intelligence but is
all fail. These devices are undamaged but cannot consumed with the most perverse of hungers. This
be forced to work for the duration of this effect. creature has no loyalty to the damned but cannot
In general, “technological objects” invented before be forced to attack or harm – in any way – the
the 1700s continue to function as normal: wagons, damned who created it. Feeding upon this creature
pitchforks, torches, and swords are unaffected. The provides no nourishment of any kind. The creature
damned may cancel this ability at any time. dies at sunrise, collapsing into a liquescent, rotting
pile of cancerous, failed pseudo-organs. It is known
Feast of Utmost Depravity: The damned that some creatures of this type have survived, free
requires one hour of uninterrupted, unfettered willed, growing ever larger in the urban wilds as they
access to a helpless mortal. This mortal will not prey upon humanity; how, precisely, this survival is
survive the experience. The damned spends one accomplished is not known.
point of blood or Willpower and rolls Perception
+ Occult (difficulty 6); if this roll is successful, the Fleshy Jar of the Tempest-Soul: The damned
damned regains one point of Willpower, stripped chooses one beneficiary of Bless the Mortal
from the mortal as it dies. For each additional two Servitor, above. This must be a mortal creature
successes the damned achieves on this roll, the capable of being Embraced. If the damned suffers
damned regains one additional point of Willpower: Final Death without being diablerized, the soul
with five successes in this roll, for example, she of the damned automatically moves to the chosen
regains three points of Willpower. The maximum mortal’s shell as per the Level 5 Dominate ability
amount of Willpower that may be gained by use Possession and is fully anchored there; she may
of this ability is equal to the permanent Willpower then be freely Embraced by any Baali (or member of
of the victim, plus one for each dot of Numina, any Baali-associated Bloodline) with a Generation
True Faith, or other supernatural ability the equal-to or higher than her original generation.
mortal possesses; for this reason, damned wielding Contacting an allied Baali to perform this Embrace
this Terror are particularly attracted to mortal is a task left to the damned. Once she has regained
40 Infernal Disciplines
As to whom, precisely, this ability is most
efficacious against? Well, modern-era secular
progressive humanists are the primary targets of
this ability: if the first reaction of a mortal victim,
upon seeing the damned first unsheathe her gore-
dripping fangs, is anything short of begging God
for wisdom & protection, pleading His divine
guidance and intervention, then the victim doesn’t
truly recognize the unholy power of what she faces
… and, as such, she suffers extra damage from this
ability. Similarly, vampires who pretend overmuch
at humanity – or who reject the authority of a
guiding religious institution – are easy targets for
this ability: failure to accept that you are a monster
cursed by god is kind of the definition of “denial of
evil’s power,” after all.
In general, this ability inflicts extra damage on
basically everyone except the deeply religious, the
very good, and the very bad: nuns and saints grasp
the sheer hideous enormity of the Adversary, and
of his dark workings in the world; similarly, it is the
rare serial killer indeed who does not comprehend
that there truly is manifest evil walking the streets in
human guise.
Your fellow damned – including Baali, Infernalists,
and all those who serve the Sleeping Children, a
representative of those entities, or a reasonable
facsimile thereof – are, of course, immune to this
effect. We know that evil exists.
Multiple simultaneous uses of this ability do not
stack.
Imperious Mein of the Eternal: Those glorious,
impossible entities whom the damned serves
– body, mind and soul – exist outside of mere
human concepts of time, as do all those touched
by the curse of Caine.
The damned spends one point of blood or
Willpower and rolls Wits + Occult (difficulty 8);
on a success, all supernatural creatures – including
the damned and all of her non-mortal opponents
– within the scene step out of linear “mortal” time
for a number of turns equal to the number of
successes rolled.
42 Infernal Disciplines
The Limits Of Demonic Knowledge
The devoted student of Corrupturum who selects the Iniquitous Tutelage Terror – or the Demon Sorcery
Horror, below – gains access to a shocking variety of bizarre, deadly, and otherwise unattainable mystical
powers. Limited though it might be to a mere smattering of dots in these carefully-guarded esoteric traditions,
this power genuinely breaks all the rules: a character with no ties or debts to any magic-practicing Clan, Sect
or Bloodline of any kind can – with her Storyteller’s permission – begin play already gifted with full mastery
of the Path of Mars (V20, pg. 224), if she so desires.
This is the advantage of bargaining at a spiritual level with dark supernatural entities literally composed of
otherworldly magic who also happen to be older than the empty darkness which coils between the stars.
And who – lest we forget – also happen to get a sick, visceral thrill out of handing loaded shotguns to children.
But a demon, no matter how well-learned or powerful, cannot teach what no creature born of Hell could
ever master: although any number of infernal entities are most certainly familiar with the blasphemous
art of Kraina of the Well (The Black Hand: A Guide to the Tal’Mahe’Ra, pg. 172), for example – at least
on the receiving end! – it is vanishingly unlikely that any demon could begin to instruct a Cainite in the
techniques of calling-forth or manipulating such an ability … and even less likely that a demon so-gifted
would be willing to do so.
And so it goes: no demon is going to hand-over a power that could harm the demon to a demon-summoner,
no matter how nicely or politely the insignificant little insect asks.
Remember: demons with any actual power – which is usually synonymous with substantial age, cunning and
experience, specifically gained in the notoriously cutthroat environment of THE FUCKING ABYSS – are
famously slippery, stingy and hyper-paranoid. Who knows, after all, what some asshole ex-mortal blood-
drinking corpse might get up to with even the paltriest of access to a fistful of Dark Thaumaturgy, a mean
streak, and pretensions of power?
Best not to gift them with anything too dangerous, after all, for fear they’ll try storming the palaces of Oblivion
with Level 5 Blowshitupis swinging, trying to dick-whip their own demon-masters into submission & steal
their grubby little souls back.
You wanna learn what? No no, so sorry, demons can’t teach you that. Would sir care to sample a choice
morsel of Movement of the Mind, perchance? It comes most highly recommended.
In short, the Storyteller is free to nix access to any Path or ability she thinks might be detrimental to her
Chronicle, even if only for reasons of style or flavor … or for no reason at all. Every participant in a successful,
satisfying shared narrative-experience needs to be on the same page in terms of theme, atmosphere & mood,
and this power is most-definitely NOT meant to supplant or circumvent that obligation.
not be used to manipulate an abandoned church- using this ability, though she can use it to fly.
pew covered in Satanic graffiti … but it could move
the same object if it was also covered in fresh “bodily This ability can only affect matter within a number
fluids”. This ability cannot affect animate creatures of yards equal to the 5 x the temporary Willpower
– other than the damned herself – directly: the of the damned. This ability moves objects as if with
damned cannot throw another Baali or Infernalist a Strength and Dexterity equal to the temporary
Willpower of the damned: the damned may puppet
44 Infernal Disciplines
Flaw and cannot use any Discipline above dot 3. If In addition, all of her difficulties to activate
the damned would increase her generation to 16th Corrupturum, Daimonion, and Jigoku abilities are
or higher, she becomes a revenant (V20, pg. 496) reduced by 2.
of the D’habi family and cannot use any Discipline
above a single dot. Baali, members of Baali-associated Bloodlines,
and those bearing the blood of Baali – such as the
The damned cannot become a true human by use ghouls of Baali and those blood-bound to a Baali
of this ability: the Curse of Caine may be twisted – likewise gain these benefits while standing on
and stretched-thin, but it may not be escaped ground transformed by use of this Terror; for that
entirely by any gift born of hell. reason, this effect is often evoked immediately prior
to the meeting of two or more powerful Methuselah
Oblivion is Here: The damned cannot activate of the Bloodline: even the most psychopathic and
this Terror while on consecrated earth or holy self-obsessed of demon worshipers are more likely
ground of any kind (see the Trespasser Upon Sacred to parlay than to try shredding one another into
Ground Flaw, below). ash and blood-splatters if both parties know that
The damned spends a point of blood or neither can actually score a one-hit kill.
Willpower and rolls Wits + Occult, difficult 8; Phantom of Sinful Echoes: The damned spends
this roll is instead difficulty 7 if used in a decaying one point of blood or Willpower and rolls Wits
urban environment or out in the eerie wilds, and + Occult, difficulty 7. On a success, she gains all
difficulty 6 if used in a specifically “haunted” or the benefits (and restrictions) of the Becoming the
desecrated area (such as the basement of a serial Demon-in-Spirit Merit, below, for a number of
killer, a crack den where a killing-spree began, or an hours equal to her total number of successes on
abandoned insane asylum that has been dedicated this roll. She may dismiss this effect at any time as
to Satan or another embodiment of spiritual evil). a free action.
On a success, the damned infects the area Roar of Desecrated Earth: The damned screams,
immediately surrounding her, marking the ground and all present feel the firmament of the earth itself
directly beneath her feet and just beyond: this small shudder in revulsion; these tremors may knock
circle has a radius in yards equal to her temporary prone anyone within ten yards, open up tunnels or
Willpower plus the number of successes rolled to sinkholes, or even collapse part of a building. The
activate this power. This ground is transformed to damned spends one point of blood or Willpower
shattered, steaming crimson stone, smooth black and rolls Manipulation + Occult (difficulty 6); one
glass suspended above an infinite pit, or a carpet of success causes a minor tremor; anyone in the area
squirming, infected corpses with broken backs; it who scores less than three successes on a Dexterity
seethes with barely-contained malice and inhuman + Athletics roll is thrown to the ground. Three
bloodlust. This section of marked ground is not successes also collapses underground tunnels,
mobile and does not move with the damned; this knocks down trees, and opens sinkholes. Five
unholy transformation lasts until the end of the successes causes structural damage to a building,
scene or for one hour, whichever comes first. collapsing walls on anyone within several feet of it
While standing on this ground or directly above (for five dice of damage); victims can roll Dexterity
it, the damned gains one automatic success on all + Athletics to dodge out of the way (but not to
soak die rolls, she ignores all damage that would parry or block.)
normally be dealt as bashing, she suffers bashing Servant of the Outer Dark: The damned spends
damage instead of lethal whenever she would five blood points, then reduces her permanent
normally suffer lethal damage, and she suffers Blood Pool by five (but see below) and rolls
lethal damage instead of aggravated whenever she Manipulation + Occult (difficulty 8). If this roll is
would normally suffer aggravated damage.
46 Infernal Disciplines
damned, rising from the earth, but she may direct naked violation, appearing directly below the target;
this spectral fog as she desires so long as it does not on a success, this blade pierces & impales the target,
leave her line of sight; the wall of fog may move dealing a number of dice of Lethal damage equal to
at a rate of approximately 15 yards per turn. The one half the temporary Willpower of the damned
difficulties of all Perception rolls made by creatures (rounded down). Airborne creatures cannot be
in the area are increased by two, and creatures are struck by this attack. Alongside this single “main”
blinded beyond a range of [10 yards – one yard for blade, the earth vomits-forth a tangle of blood-
each success achieved by the damned on her roll to drenched roses, mangled-limb flower blossoms,
manifest this Horror]; these penalties do not affect coils of festering gore-thick feces, disemboweled
the damned nor any creature with supernatural corpse remains, and similarly grotesque reflections
senses (such as Auspex or Protean 1, for example). of whatever atrocities have been performed at that
While within her shroud, the damned adds a site. The blade crumbles to ash at the end of the
number of dice to all of her Stealth dice-pools equal round, and all substances brought-forth alongside
to the number of successes she achieved to manifest the blade disintegrate over the next hour.
this Terror.
Shudder of Foulness: The damned spends a
Storyteller’s Note: Damned gifted with this point of blood or Willpower and rolls Wits +
Terror often also gain the Nightmare Rain Occult (difficulty 6). On a success, she vanishes
Combination Discipline (see below). and reappears immediately in another place of her
choice; this new location must be within a number
If she chooses, the unholy fog called-up of yards equal to her temporary Willpower plus the
by the damned may snuff-out technology, number of successes rolled to activate this power.
causing electrical malfunctions within The damned must possess line-of-sight to this new
the area of the mist: lights flicker, screens location – and thus could not use this ability to
seize & show static, automatic doors fail appear on the other side of a locked bank-vault
to open, magnetic locks glitch, ATMs and door, for example – but she does not need to be
vending machines flash error messages, looking directly at the space in which she desires
cars stall, phones restart and lose internet to reappear.
connection, and computers crash. This
effect does not hinder firearms with When the damned vanishes, she may choose
electronic components, and is a significantly to simply teleport; alternatively, the damned may
less-powerful, less-focused effect than the choose to remain in her original location, invisibly:
Terror of Fail, the Tools of Men (above). in this instance, the version of her that appears a
few yards away is an illusory duplicate, identical
Shards of Dripping-Razor Eternity: The damned to her in all ways. This illusion is half-sentient, a
cannot activate this Terror while on consecrated pseudo-creature crafted of Abyssal shadows, guided
earth or holy ground of any kind (see the Trespasser by a basic psychic impression of the damned: the
Upon Sacred Ground Flaw, below). damned cannot control her illusion directly, but
The damned spends a point of blood or the false image independently performs whatever
Willpower, chooses a single target she can see, actions it thinks the damned would want it to do.
and rolls Wits + Occult, difficulty 8, to aim; in an When the damned is made invisible in this way,
abandoned or isolated area, far from the sight of she is truly invisible: this is not an Obfuscate effect
civilization & church, this is difficulty 7. In a place and is not overcome by Auspex. Because this is
bathed in true depravity, it is difficulty 6. A thin, actual invisibility, however, it is subject to all the
eight-foot tall, three-inch wide, impossibly-edged normal limits thereof, to which Obfuscate is largely
blade of obsidian, compressed corpses and steaming immune: if an opponent throws a can of paint
brimstone erupts from the earth in a shower of at an area containing the damned, the paint will
48 Infernal Disciplines
first. For each additional success on the roll, the the victim into a thousand screaming fragments
damned summons one additional hunting-hound. over and over and over again, until the stars burn
low and red and cold. The Beast is what drives the
Speak to the Beast: The damned spends a single undead in her most honest moments – the blind,
point of blood or Willpower, chooses one creature murderous, self-absorbed panic of Frenzy – and it is
with whom she maintains communication via the what awaits the victim in the lonely dark, at the end
Terror of Echo of the Beast’s Tongue (above) and of every blood-slick night of empty cruelty.
rolls Manipulation + Occult, difficulty equal to the
Willpower of the target + 2. On a successful roll, Most especially, it is the thing waiting with a sharp
the damned calls up the bottomless self-destructive smile at the final, jagged end of her squandered
blackness dwelling in the secret heart of her target immortality.
and compels it to answer one question truthfully;
each additional success on this roll compels an This creature will gladly betray the confidence of
additional truth from the Beast, to a maximum the pathetic corpse it inhabits. But – defiant to the
number of fully honest answers from that unholy last – it will also twist any truthful answer it gives,
entity equal to the Willpower of the damned. as much as it is able, purely to spite the inquisitor.
While the Beast speaks in this way, the target Interestingly, the Beast is oftentimes immune to
cannot choose to disconnect. the ravages of memory-alteration magic: its Kindred
host may have been re-written by the Dominate
Few abilities, even those of the most potent power of an Elder, but the Beast remembers every
vampires, allow the Beast Within to be drawn up slight and injustice it has ever endured and cannot
and given literal voice; it is a ravening creature, be swayed nor placated by any sorcery.
incapable of anything even approaching something
like “intelligible speech” under any normal For this reason, this Terror is occasionally
circumstances. employed by practitioners of Corrupturum on
their fellows; many Choirs are bound-together by
Yet here we are. mutual knowledge of one another’s Beasts and
their most disturbing secrets, and interrogating the
Note, then, that the entity contacted by the Beast of your ally can reveal all manner of curious
damned is not the same creature as the victim manipulations applied-to (and forgotten by) the
herself … though it knows what the victim knows, damned.
for the most part … and knows a few things the
victim doesn’t know, as well. Above all, the Beast On a failed roll, the victim identifies the intent
fucking hates the fool to which it is chained. The of the damned and may choose to disconnect
Beast wishes, for the most part, nothing more than from telepathic communication early as a free
to fall into Final Frenzy and become a Wight (Sins of reaction; the victim may then always automatically
the Blood, p. 9, 17-24), pulling the entire screaming disconnect whenever she is psychically contacted by
shitty universe down into the Abyss with it in a the damned in the future.
final orgy of raw, hideous mutilation and wasteful,
petty blood-letting. The Beast feeds with savage Once these truths have been forced from the
delight on the subconscious desire of the victim Beast, it falls into deep slumber until the next
to be punished for her ten-thousand sins: watering sundown: the target is immune to Frenzy for the
this garden with tears and spatters of crimson, rest of the night and cannot be contacted again via
allowing the dark & tangled forest of self-hatred Echo of the Beast’s Tongue until she arises from
to grow wild, poisonous & unchecked. When the slumber once more.
victim finally accepts her own damnation and the
personal hell that comes with it, the Beast will gladly
rise – wrought in a storm of ash & flame – to tear
50 Infernal Disciplines
If she already had two dots in the Ability, her brought-forth in this way is affected by fire, holy
Pilot: Helicopters rating would sit at 5. objects, True Faith, and sunlight as if it were a Baali.
A botch on the roll while activating this Terror The unclean cloud and wave of grotesque flesh
allows the victim of diablerie to assert full control moves at a rate of approximately 15 yards per turn.
over the damned until the next time the damned The difficulties of all rolls made by creatures in the
awakens from slumber. area are increased by two; this penalty does not
affect the damned.
Tear the Mind: With a gentle caress, the damned
may shred the intellect of her victim as easily as her The effects of this Terror last for ten minutes per
talons might rip apart his soft flesh. The damned success rolled by the damned to activate this ability
must first touch the target; this requires a Dexterity or until she dismisses the effect (a free action).
+ Athletics roll. If the roll succeeds, the damned may
spend one point of blood or Willpower, then rolls This special Horror may be selected up to three
Manipulation + Occult (difficulty 6); the target may times. If it is selected a second time, insects created
attempt to resist with a Willpower roll (difficulty 6). by the damned feed on creatures in the area of the
A successful attack means the damned temporarily swarm: all creatures (other than the damned) lose
removes one point from one of the victim’s Mental 1 point of blood each round; this drain generally
Attributes (selected by the damned when the ability kills a mortal creature trapped in the area within
is used), plus one point of Mental Attribute per four rounds. If this Terror is selected a third time,
success beyond the first. This caress does not inflict blood drained in this way transfers directly to the
physical damage, although it heals at the same rate damned, allowing her to feed at a distance. She
as aggravated damage. may not gain more than three points of blood in
a single round from use of this ability, even if her
Designer’s Note: An identical Terror swarms encompass four or more creatures.
that deals dots of damage directly to an
opponent’s Physical Attributes, her Social Touch of Famine’s Curse: With a brush of her
Attributes, her Willpower, or even to skin, the damned strips her victim of his strength,
her Virtues might be made available, at vitality, potency, and animating energy, reducing
Storyteller discretion. him to a hideous, emaciated husk. The damned
may spend a point of blood or Willpower to
Thirsty Children of Oblivion: The damned activate this ability; no roll or action is required,
spends a point of blood or Willpower and rolls and its effects last until the end of the scene or for
Wits + Occult (Difficult 6). On a success, clouds one hour, whichever comes first.
of buzzing flies and masses of writhing maggots
appear in the immediate vicinity of the damned, While this Terror is activated, the damned
burrowing up from the earth, spilling-forth from automatically afflicts her opponents with a touch
shadows, emerging from unclean places (sink (requiring a successful Dexterity + Brawl roll); this
drains, corpses, garbage cans, cracks in the walls) curse also affects any creature who willingly touches
and from the flesh and clothing of her enemies. the damned. A victim exposed to this curse may
This filth occupies an area approximately 10 yards resist with a Stamina roll (difficulty 7); if the roll
across; it initially surrounds the damned, but she fails, the victim loses one dot from each Physical
may direct the swarm as she desires so long as it Attribute, as well as one point from his Appearance
does not leave her line of sight. This cloud will not Trait. The infected victim may, in turn, spread the
move onto sacred ground nor approach open flame; contagion: the difficulty of the Stamina roll to resist
if targeted by an area-effect that deals damage, the infection drops by one for each “step” of infection
cloud is dispersed for one round per Health Level since the original damned, to a minimum difficulty
of damage that would normally be dealt. A swarm of 3.
52 Infernal Disciplines
creature within 10 yards of the damned while this While this Terror is in effect, the damned is
ability is active suffers a -2 dice penalty on all diceassumed to have had direct access to her newly-
pools and suffers one level of bashing damage. established level of opulence & authority for up to
one full week: thus, if the damned increases her
Note that successful use of this Terror is highly Resources from 1 to 6, for example, she could tear-
dependent on the local environment: if it is away her ratty trenchcoat to reveal a $25,000 dress
activated in an average office-building, within a with matching $10,000 earrings; she could then
suburban home or in the middle of the desert, this snap her fingers to summon a limousine, used
Terror might do precisely nothing. After all, is there to deliver her to her penthouse apartment atop a
really anything just laying around that the average luxury hotel, from which she may take her private
person would be sincerely hesitant to touch? Maybe helicopter to her exclusive new nightclub just
the ability can pull a dirty toilet out of the floor, outside of city limits.
but that’s probably about it.
In the morning, however, there is no record of
If this ability is used in an abandoned the damned having ever stayed at the hotel; her
slaughterhouse or beside a pit full of broken glass fancy clothing crumbles to ash, and her “nightclub”
soaked in raw sewage, on the other hand, creatures is a long-abandoned warehouse. The impeccably-
unlucky enough to get caught in the tornado will dressed driver of her limo can be found wrapped
suffer lethal damage instead of bashing. in rags, sleeping-off a wine hangover in an alleyway
This special terror may be selected multiple times; behind the hotel, while the limo and helicopter
each time it is selected, the effect of this Terror are simply… gone. All those hot & fashionable
increases in size & intensity: the area of the storm party-goers at the club? They were, it turns out,
increases by 10 yards and the amount of bashing just an encampment of broken-hearted, hollow-
damage done to creatures in the area increases by eyed addicts squatting in the shadows of the dusty
one. Thus, if the damned had selected this Terror warehouse.
three times, any creature within 30 yards of the Use of this Terror may allow the damned to
damned – while this ability is active – would take a increase her score in any Background up to one dot
-2 dice penalty on all dice pools and eat three levels beyond her generational limit. Background points
of bashing damage. gained when this Terror is used may divided among
Wealth & Taste: The damned spends a point multiple Backgrounds as the damned desires,
of blood or Willpower to activate this ability; and the Storyteller is the final arbiter of what
she immediately chooses one Background (or Backgrounds are necessary to achieve a specific
set of Backgrounds) related to the mortal world: effect.
Influence, Resources, Allies, Contacts, Fame,
etc. – as approved by the Storyteller – and rolls
Manipulation + Occult, difficulty 7.
One success on this roll increases one selected
Background rating of the damned by one for one
hour; each additional success grants the damned
either one additional dot in a selected Background
or one additional hour of effect, as she desires; this
Terror cannot be activated again until the original
application wears off. In addition, all Backgrounds
temporarily gained in this way – and the results of
possessing such Backgrounds, if applicable – fade
to nothingness at sunrise.
Wellspring of a Raw & Gaping Foulness: The servitors as she does so; she expends one point
damned cannot activate this Terror while on of blood or Willpower and rolls Wits + Occult
consecrated earth or holy ground of any kind (difficulty 6). The earth – or floor, as appropriate
(see the Trespasser Upon Sacred Ground Flaw, – immediately cracks open and begins to spurt a
below). The damned strikes the ground with an substance functionally identical to warm human
edged weapon, intoning an indecent prayer to the blood; a total number of blood points flood from
Sleeping Children and their unnamable demonic this grotesque wound in reality equal to the current
54 Infernal Disciplines
temporary Willpower of the damned or the total
number of successes on the roll, whichever is lower.
Blood produced in this way must be licked directly
from the ground or scooped-up with bare hands; it
clots into useless black sludge upon touching any
other material or after one hour, whichever comes
first. Immediately upon intoning this prayer, the
damned is struck mute (V20, pg. 483) until she
awakens from slumber the following evening;
this special Terror cannot be activated by a mute
character.
It is by use of this Terror that large-scale Hives
remained self-sufficient, cut-off from the outside
world, for years, decades or even centuries:
sending-forth small swarms to secure additional
resources for the Hive only rarely, vanishing back
into the darkness with enough raw materials to
feed multitudes.
Windstorm of the Outer Dark: The damned
spends a point of blood or Willpower and rolls Wits
+ Occult (Difficult 7); she intones a single syllable
of one Sleeping Child’s name and unleashes a
razor-sharp blast of icy-cold murder from her skin
in a scream of unsane, impossible geometries
briefly intersecting with this abused reality. Each
success inflicts one level of lethal damage to all
creatures with 20 yards. Baali, members of Baali-
associated Bloodlines, and those bearing the blood
of Baali – such as the ghouls of Baali and those
blood-bound to a Baali – are immune to this
damage. Immediately upon intoning this syllable,
the damned is struck mute (V20 pg. 483) until
the end of the scene or for one hour, whichever is
longer; this special Terror cannot be activated by a
mute character.
56 Infernal Disciplines
perfect, sinister framework that combines the into the deadly form of his most-favored beast: the
subtle elegance of Fear the Void Below with the silent hunting-owl of the deepest desert.
incalculable brutality of Conflagration: providing
the loyal servant of the Sleeping Children with • Illusion of the Night-Hunter
precisely the right tool for the job at exactly the With a twist of blood, the damned cloaks herself in
right time, nothing more and nothing less. swift wing, sharp eye, and razor talon: a shape most-
Corrupturum, likewise thought lost for over pleasing to Moloch.
a thousand years, is more scatter-shot still: an
System: The damned spends a point of blood
eclectic mélange of stolen gifts and half-perfected and makes a Willpower roll, difficulty 4; success
techniques, borrowed in ancient nights from ten- causes the damned to appear to all outside
thousand dark traditions, cobbled together by observers as an owl – rather than as herself – for
frenetic would-be gods & magicians into nothing
one hour per success. The specific appearance of
so much as approaching a coherent “art”. her owl-form is chosen by the damned when the
What percentage of what is now called power is activated: she might appear as a snowy
Corrupturum was once a step upon a Path of that owl, as a barn owl, or as a great horned owl,
greater Baali Sorcery, rescued just barely from the for example, as she desires. Most damned who
ashes of an inquisitor’s pyre? gain this ability default to the image of a single
preferred “iconic” owl-shape, but the damned may
For now, only a few hints remain of the strange, alter that appearance if she chooses.
obscene Paths and Rituals that might have been
encompassed by True Baali Sorcery … and many The damned is still herself: she can open a
of those secrets are being drawn back, now, into window, make a call on her cellphone or drive
the neon-lit shadows of the Final Nights by those a car. It’s just that no one sees it that way: the
willing to trade in the blackest enchantments of window appears to open of its own accord while
Dark Thaumaturgy. the owl perches on the fire escape next to it, the
owl appears to be standing silently on the edge of
a rooftop while a cellphone conversation happens
Dark Thaumaturgy somewhere near it, or the car appears to be rolling
Path: Swift Whisper of along with no one behind the wheel, an owl
staring ominously from the driver’s seat.
Moloch’s Wings If the damned violates the illusion granted by
this power so completely that her Storyteller can’t
To please their master, sire and grand-sire think of a way to make it make sense – like, say,
– Moloch King of Kings, Moloch the Mighty, by shooting someone in the chest with a shotgun
Moloch of the Bronze Bull, Moloch the Blazing – the magic fails completely.
& Infallible, Moloch the Wise, Moloch Invincible
Overlord and Devourer of Men – the very greatest At will, the damned may dispel this illusion; she
sorcerers of the early Baali worked tirelessly around must reactivate this power to cloak herself in this
the Organ Pits of their artifice, sacrificing scores false self once again.
of souls, flayed and bleeding, into the churning Use of Auspex or any other extrasensory
& still-screaming maw of waste and obscenity. perception-ability automatically overcomes this
In the course of depraved centuries, beneath the illusion: it is less powerful than even the weakest
full moon and lit by the fires of Topheth, these Obfuscate. It is simply more … highly refined.
magicians brought forth a new litany of spells &
wonders, crafted to reshape Moloch’s favored sons
58 Infernal Disciplines
••Defy the Crude Hold of Yahweh’s to her Perception die-pools for one hour, or add a
Firmament single die to each die-pool for five full hours. The
damned may cancel her use of this ability at any
The damned lifts free of the earth and all its dust, time as a free action and subsequently reactivate
rising like a swift angel of Moloch’s fury. it; the ability may not be activated again until the
previous use of the ability has been dismissed or
System: The damned spends one point of blood
has worn off. In addition, if the damned fails or
and rolls Willpower (difficulty 5). Success on
botches a Stealth roll while this ability is active, she
this roll grants the damned one dot of the Flight
may simply cancel the action that caused her to
Discipline (V20 pg. 447) for one hour per success on
breach Stealth; she does not get the action back,
the roll. This single dot in Flight Discipline stacks
but she is spared the consequences of failure:
with other dots of that Discipline the damned
instead of risking movement, she remains stone-
may possess, to a limit of her normal generation
still.
maximum: if the damned is an 8th generation
Baali who possesses Flight 3, she increases her • • • • True Flesh of the Owl
Flight to 4 while this power is active, for example,
but she could not increase her Flight from 5 to 6 Skin & bone are mere slaves to the will of the damned,
in this way. beloved in Moloch’s sight.
In addition, once this power is unlocked, System: The damned spends a point of blood
the damned may always gain additional dots and rolls Willpower (difficulty 7). Success on this
in the Flight Discipline without instruction or roll grants the damned all the benefits of Shape of
mentorship, and Flight is always treated as an in- the Beast (V20, pg. 200) for one hour per success
clan Discipline for her. She gains the benefits of on the roll. She may only take the form of an owl
any dots in Flight learned in this way only while in this way; the natural abilities of such a creature
this power is active: the damned might learn Flight are treated as mechanically identical to those of a
1 & 2 on her own, for example, after gaining access bat.
to this power; if she does so, she cannot fly under
If the damned otherwise possesses Shape of
normal circumstances but gains the full benefits of
the Beast, she instead gains Thousand Wings of
Flight 3 while this power is active.
Moloch’s Faithful as the Level Four ability of this
• • • Apex Predator of Black Wind Dark Thaumaturgy Path and Angel of Moloch’s
Wrath, below, as the Level Five ability of the Path.
Nothing escapes the notice of Moloch’s blessed raptor, If the damned possesses Shape of the Beast, her
flying wreathed in silent shadow. “flight” form is always an owl.
System: The damned spends one point of blood ••••• Thousand Wings of Moloch’s
and rolls Willpower (difficulty 6). A success on this Faithful
roll increases the die-pool of the damned by one
for all uses of the Stealth skill or for all Perception- The storm descends, and Moloch’s will is done.
related skills for one hour; each additional success
grants the damned either one additional die to all System: The damned spends a point of blood
her Stealth die-pools, one additional die to her and rolls Willpower (difficulty 8). Success on this
Perception die-pools, or increases the duration roll grants the damned all the benefits of Shape
of this effect by one hour. This power may be of the Beast for one hour per success on the roll,
mixed and matched as the damned sees fit: if she as per True Flesh of the Owl, above; when the
achieves five successes, for example, she may add damned enters this form, however, she may choose
two dice to her Stealth die-pools and three dice to disperse into as many owls as she has blood
points, with each owl carrying that single blood
60 Infernal Disciplines
Discipline, below) to become airborne, the lose contact with her victim; when using
damned suffers no damage from any fall so this maneuver, the damned tears deeply at
long as she has some measure of flexibility the mass of flesh still gripped in her beak,
and awareness during her fall; guiding her shredding her victim to ribbons in great
fall with her wings is instinctual and does gouts of ichor. The victim is permitted an
not require any action on the part of the instinctive opposed Strength roll (this does
damned not require an action); if this victim cannot
break free, the damned deals an additional
• her Bite, made with her massive curved, +1 die of damage with her Bite to that
downward-facing beak, deals +1 die of victim until the beginning of her next turn.
damage; as this hooked beak is designed
specifically for gripping and tearing-at prey, Special: The damned must possess Shape of the
the damned gains access to the Rip-and- Beast to gain access to this ability; if she has access
Tear Combat Maneuver, below to that that ability, she gains Thousand Wings of
Moloch’s Faithful (above) as the Level Four ability
• so long as she is at least partially airborne of this Dark Thaumaturgy Path and this ability as
or possesses significantly higher ground – the Level Five ability of the Path.
because she is leaping off a building onto
her target, for example – the damned may If the damned possesses Shape of the Beast, her
use her foot-talons to make Claw attacks “flight” form is always an owl.
without any increase to the difficulty of her
attack
• the damned may strike with her wings as
normal for an unarmed strike: a wing-swipe
deals neither more nor less damage than a
standard punch
• she gains one additional dot in the Flight
Discipline, up to one dot above her normal
generational limit
• she gains Str +1, Dex +2, Sta +1, App 0, Man
-3, Per +3; these bonuses ignore normal
generational limits. If entering her strigine
form would ever increase the Strength
score of the damned above 10, she instead
gains a temporary dot of Potence. Use of
this Horror cannot increase the abilities of
the damned beyond Strength 10, Potence
10.
The damned may cancel this effect and return to
her base form at any time as a free action.
Rip-and-Tear: This maneuver requires that
the damned, while in her strigine form,
successfully used a bite attack in her previous
turn and did not subsequently withdraw or
62 Infernal Disciplines
That said, an Organ-Pit falls dormant after one – with the essence of her obscene creation: gaining
month if not maintained. full access to her Organ-Pit Background (see below)
for the remainder of the night. If the damned is
The process of maintaining an active Organ-Pit not within line of sight to her dedicated Organ-Pit
is identical to the ritual of re-awakening a pit that when this roll is made, the difficulty of this roll
has fallen dormant: the damned prepares a living doubles (to difficulty 8).
sacrifice – usually human, a process that takes one
hour – then makes a gift of that sacrifice along Multiple damned may be aligned to the same pit
with seven blood points of her own vitae into the simultaneously, but any individual damned may
depths of the pit. Upon doing so, the damned rolls only be aligned to a single Organ Pit at any one
Manipulation + Occult (difficulty 7). time.
If the sacrifice to the pit is a human child, •• Veil Against the Inquisitive
a supernatural creature (such as a sorcerer,
but not including ghouls), or a creature In secret places, our majestic foulness builds and
with True Faith, the difficulty is decreased spreads.
by one (to 6). If the sacrifice to the pit is a
System: While adjacent to and attuned to her
large non-human mammal such as a horse
Organ-Pit, the damned spends one point of blood
or bull, the difficulty instead increases by
and rolls Willpower (difficulty 5). Success on this
one (to 8). The damned may even choose
roll causes the pit and all of its immediate environs
to sacrifice something as simple as a dog,
to become masked behind a mystical effect very
goat or pig, increasing the difficulty by
similar to the Obfuscate Discipline: any physical
two (to 9). In an emergency, the damned
doorway into the area may only be noticed, seen,
might sacrifice a cat, owl, serpent, or other
observed or interacted-with in any way by a creature
iconic “witch’s animal” – such as a raven
with a level of Auspex (or similar supernatural
– increasing the difficulty by three (to a
sensory ability) greater-than or equal-to the highest
maximum difficulty of 10).
level of this Path mastered by the damned.
At Storyteller’s discretion, the Organ Pit
Children, animals, and other creatures with non-
might be successfully renewed or awakened
standard or non-human senses will often notice the
via the sacrifice of other valuable creatures,
existence of the doorway as well. Baali, members of
such as squid or endangered animals. Baali-associated Bloodlines, and those bearing the
Use of any lesser animal – such as rats, blood of a Baali – such as the ghoul of a Baali or a
cockroaches, or worms – to feed the Organ Toreador blood-bound to a Baali – are immune to
Pit fails automatically. this special Obfuscation.
In any instance, the damned must achieve a This special protection covers every part of
minimum of three successes on this roll; if this the pit and the chamber containing it, not just
total is not met, the pit falls – or remains – dormant the doorway, and it lasts for a number of weeks
until the ritual sacrifice is completed. equal to the number of successes gained on the
• Reap the Organ-Pit Willpower roll made to activate this ability. This
effect is maintained even if the shrouded Organ-
By means of human vivisection & blackest witchcraft, Pit falls dormant.
the strength of Oblivion is at hand.
System: The damned spends a point of blood
and makes a Willpower roll, difficulty 4; on a
success, the damned aligns – body, mind and soul
64 Infernal Disciplines
••• Echo of Distant Pits anatomy as well as its death-throes as she casts the
pieces one after another into her gaping Organ-Pit.
By the whispers of one, the voices of many Hives may
be heard. The damned may choose to destroy a living
creature of any type, although more valuable living
System: While adjacent to and attuned to her creatures yield more potent auguries (as noted
Organ-Pit, the damned spends one point of blood below).
and rolls Willpower (difficulty 6). Success on this • Creature is rare (an albino raven or a
roll grants the damned a direct, physical, auditory member of an endangered species): +1 die
connection to every other active Organ-Pit in • Creature is unblemished and pure when
existence: by whispering into her pit, she may speak the ritual begins: +1 die
freely with any other creature adjacent to another • Creature is expensive (a purebred bull or
active Organ-Pit anywhere in the world for the show-horse): +1 die per two dots of Resources
remainder of the scene, until the conversation is or Allies necessary to obtain the object, rounded
ended by either party, or for one hour (whichever down
comes first). • Creature is illegal to own (a tiger or
The damned may maintain communication Burmese python): +1 die
with multiple Organ-Pits at the same time, and all • Creature is supernatural (a wolf that serves
attempts to communicate with other damned are as a ghoul, or a witch’s cat familiar): +2 dice
automatically successful: a Baali Elder in Paris who • Creature (such as a blood-bound ghoul or
speaks not a word of Portuguese can both hear true believer) sacrifices itself willingly: +2
and understand an Akahaete neonate dwelling in dice
Brazil, for example, and vice versa. • Creature is marked (by tattoo or brand,
usually) as the private property of another
In addition, the damned may speak freely – in magician: +2 dice
exactly the same way – with any creature carrying a • Pieces of the creature are ritualistically
fresh cherry taken from her pit. The target need not burned in a ceremonial flame before being
be aware of this power’s use or even of its existence: cast into the pit, and the smoke of this
if an associate of the damned quietly places a cherry flame is inhaled by the practitioner: +2 dice
from the Organ-Pit in the backpack of a Ventrue (note that this may cause Rötschreck)
ghoul, for example, the damned may choose to • The damned destroys two or more identical
listen-in on the ghoul and his surroundings at her creatures, such as human triplets or a set of
own leisure, so long as the ghoul is carrying the purebred puppies from the same litter: +1
backpack and the cherry remains undiscovered. die per creature destroyed, to a maximum bonus
The damned might even choose to speak to the equal to the Willpower of the damned
ghoul, potentially causing quite a bit of confusion
and terror. During this ritual, the damned focuses on a
specific event that she believes will occur later that
•••• Haruspex of the Organ-Pit night: a contest between rivals to the position of
Prince or Bishop, for example, or the outcome
Nothing is hidden – neither past not future – from the of an expected fight between the local Tremere
sight of the Sleeping Children. chantry and an invading Sabbat-pack.
System: While adjacent to and attuned to her At the end of this hour, the damned rolls
Organ-Pit, the damned spends a point of blood and Willpower (difficulty 7); at this time, she includes
one hour destroying a living creature in a ritualistic additional dice gained from her use of valuable
fashion. During this time, the damned slowly pulls ritual objects and the performance of potent ritual
the creature apart piece by piece, studying both its actions (above).
66 Infernal Disciplines
the damned may “step sideways” into
adjacent realities – such as the Umbra
or the Shadowlands – assuming that an
active Organ Pit is located there for her to
emerge-from
If no active Organ-Pit exists within her range,
the damned may choose to cancel her movement
before entering her pit and may attempt the use of
this power again the following round.
Once this pathway has been opened by the
damned, any creature carrying a fresh cherry taken
from her pit may also travel in this way during the
same round.
And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient Each bestial Wicked Corpse form is unique,
serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver although all are outright monstrosities and cannot
of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, pass as ordinary humans in any way. Amongst
and his angels were thrown down with him. the truly ancient practitioners of Jigoku’s art, it
is traditional to become like the Ch’ing Shih: with
-- Revelation 12:9 flesh of sickly and mottled gray, tightly wrinkled
around jet-black bones that spear through rotting
By means of this art, the damned reshapes herself
skin in blossoms of obsidian thorns, running
according to the whim of her darkest impulses, becoming
down her spine & emerging in honeycombs of oil-
a mockery of God’s own image: when this ability is
dripping razors from her joints.
activated, the damned contorts, fractures and slithers
her unliving body into a uniquely monstrous form, drawn Younger damned tend to draw inspiration from
from the black nightmare of her long, strange descent into their own cultural images of demons, devils, rotting
cackling and nihilistic madness. bog-witches, slavering hell-hounds, shadowy urban
predators and hulking, nightmarish eaters of man-
System: A damned with knowledge of Jigoku
flesh; asymmetrical, faceless Lovecraftian things of
may enter her Wicked Corpse form at will.
unhealthy angles & whipping, phallic tendrils are
No roll is required to enter her Wicked Corpse as common as pale, eerily graceful nymphs in black
form, although three blood points must be ballgowns of slick, gore-drenched silk, their delicate
spent, and the transformation takes three turns limbs wrapped in scarlet-dripping razor-wire.
to complete. The damned may freely expend
Each additional dot beyond the first that
Willpower in place of blood to achieve this
the damned possesses in Jigoku grants her one
transformation; blood and Willpower may be
additional Horror. Unless noted, an individual
spent in any combination, as the damned desires.
Horror may not be selected more than once. In
When the damned fully manifests her Wicked addition, the damned increases one Physical
Corpse form, her Appearance drops to zero; her Attribute – Strength, Dexterity, or Stamina – of
Physical Attributes simultaneously each increase her choice by 1 while she maintains her Wicked
by one (ignoring normal generational limits). In Corpse form for each level of Jigoku above one.
addition, the damned gains use of one Horror
For Example: Winter Bellamira has two
from the list below while she maintains her Wicked
dots of Jigoku; she has chosen to gain +1
Corpse form; this specific Horror is chosen when
Strength, +2 Dexterity, and +1 Stamina
the damned gains her new dot in Jigoku (but see
while in her Wicked Corpse form.
below).
Whenever the damned gains access to a new dot
In many ways, the Level 6 Daimonion
in any Discipline – including the Jigoku Discipline
power Concordance (V20 pg. 446) can
-- she may freely redistribute the Horrors granted to
be thought-of as the selection of a single
her by her use of Wicked Corpse.
permanent Horror, one that persists even
when the damned exits her Wicked Corpse For Example: Winter Bellamira has two
form; it is suspected by occult scholars dots of Jigoku; she possesses the Horrors of
that the entirety of this Discipline was Crown of Blades and Jagged Claws. Upon
developed from experimentation with that gaining Level 2 Protean, Winter discards
single technique by a Methuselah of the her Jagged Claws and gains Walking
Bloodline, perhaps with the assistance of Leviathan.
68 Infernal Disciplines
The damned cannot pass for human while in
her Wicked Corpse form; mundane humans (not
including ghouls, sorcerers, or other supernatural
mortals) exposed to a Wicked Corpse must succeed
at a Willpower roll (difficulty 7) or flee in terror;
such creatures forget their exposure to the power of
the damned within 1d10 days.
The effects of Wicked Corpse last until the
end of the scene or for one hour, whichever
comes first; the damned also may choose, at that
time, to expend an additional point of blood or
Willpower to maintain her Wicked Corpse form
for one additional hour or one additional scene, as
appropriate. Otherwise, the damned automatically
reverts back to her normal undead shape. The
damned may always dismiss the effect of her
Wicked Corpse form at any time as a free action.
Use of this power is a very clear breach of the
Masquerade and leaves no doubt in the mind of
any witness that the damned is blessed with dark
supernatural gifts. Use of this ability, however,
causes all mundane and electronic recording
equipment within line of sight of the damned to
glitch-out for the duration of this effect: a camera
trained on the damned when she invokes this
ability records only otherworldly crimson-tinged
static, sometimes outlining only the damned and
sometimes filling the frame.
Neither mundane human senses nor supernatural
abilities such as Auspex can determine whether a
damned possesses a Wicked Corpse form unless she
wears the form openly; however, any use of Sense
the Sin (V20, pg. 445) reveals whether a target has
access to such a gift, no roll or check required. By
use of this loophole, Baali and Akahaete – and
their co-conspirators, including the Yomonlik –
are often able to recognize one another on sight.
70 Infernal Disciplines
Horrors: something like real skin … but fake, nonetheless.
Whenever the damned suffers damage of any kind
Bladed Extremity: The damned gains access to while this Horror is active, all creatures observing
a special Combat Maneuver (Str + 2 aggravated the damned are entitled to another Perception +
damage; difficulty 7) that she may use with any Awareness of the same type; the difficulty of this
novel appendage – tail, tendril, etc. – gained from roll is reduced by 1 for each Health Level of damage
the Legion of Thrashing Limbs Horror (below) or suffered by the damned.
other Horror, such as Wings of the Pit.
At any time, the damned may rip this false skin
Bones Forged of the Underworld: If the off of herself as a free action, revealing her true
damned normally suffers only half bashing damage Wicked Corpse form beneath and ending the
after her soak (V20, pg. 285), she instead becomes suppression of any Horrors – or other effects – that
completely immune to bashing damage. If the would reveal her as monstrous; immediately upon
damned normally suffers full bashing damage doing so, she may fling this torn sheet of bloody,
after her soak – because she is a ghoul, a mortal shredded skin at one opponent within a range of
sorcerer, or another living creature, for example (5 x [Str + Potence]) yards of her. When she does
– all bashing damage remaining after her soak is so, she and her target each make opposed Dexterity
halved, rounded down, just as if she were a vampire. rolls; if the damned succeeds, her target is briefly
Breath of Oblivion: The damned gains all the entangled in the lacerated, dripping flaps of false-
benefits of the Exhalation of Hell Investment flesh and suffers a +2 difficulty on all physical rolls
(below). (including attacks) until the end of the turn. This
ability may be used in combat as a reaction: if the
Cape of Pretty, Pretty Skin: When the damned damned realizes that she is about to be shot, she
enters her Wicked Corpse form, her outward level may tear off her skin and throw it at her assailant
of attractiveness actually improves – granting her just before he is able to pull the trigger.
Appearance +3, ignoring all normal generational
limits and overcoming even the curse of the Use of this Horror is especially common amongst
Nosferatu or Samedi – and her Appearance does those who also possess the Mantle of Child-Flesh
not immediately fall to zero. The damned retains Terror (above).
her Blush of Health Merit (V20 pg. 480) if she
normally possesses it and may spend blood
to disguise her undead nature (V20 pg. 269)
as normal, if she desires. Use of this Horror
temporarily suppresses the Engine of Punishment,
Hideous Strength, Legion of Thrashing Limbs,
Walking Leviathan and Wings of the Pit Horrors,
for example, alongside the suppression of all other
abilities, powers, gifts or investments that would
otherwise change the size or the shape of the
damned to something inhuman.
Any creature observing the damned closely while
cloaked in this way is entitled to a free Perception
+ Awareness roll, difficulty equal to the total
Manipulation of the damned + 3. On a success,
the creature notices that the skin of the damned
is somehow “off”: a cunning forgery, made of
74 Infernal Disciplines
the corpse of such a creature provides half-again equal to the Stamina of the damned) or lose their
as many blood points as normal (15 for most action while gagging and choking. Even if this roll
humans, for example, who normally possess 10 is successful, the victim suffers a one-die penalty to
blood points; see V20 pg. 270). all Dice Pools. A botch on this roll cause the victim
to vomit uncontrollably for his full turn: he may
Any vampire who expends three or more take no actions, including in self-defense.
points of blood after being poisoned in this way
automatically purges the venom from her system. Mock the Creator’s Will: The damned gains
the benefits of the Violate Gravity Terror (above);
Baali and members of Baali-associated Bloodlines note that gaining this ability as a Horror means
are immune to this venom. that damned may benefit from access to the ability
Knit-Closed the Tattered Corpse: The damned only while in her Wicked Corpse form.
automatically heals one level of Bashing or Lethal Monstrous Hunger: The blood-dripping maw
damage at the start of every round. At the end of of the damned distends most horribly, sprouting
each minute, she also heals one level of aggravated thousands of additional razor-sharp fangs. She
damage; at will, she may spend a point of Willpower inflicts Str + 3 aggravated damage with her bite.
to heal a level of aggravated damage instead of
healing a level of Lethal damage. Multitude of Horrors: The damned chooses
two Horrors she does not already possess. One of
Legion of Thrashing Limbs: The damned these is her Scarlet Horror; the other, her Obsidian
sprouts either an additional set of arms or a single Horror. When the damned enters her Wicked
prehensile tail, tendril, tongue, tentacle, or other Corpse form, she gains access to her Scarlet
appendage that can be used as if it is was a long Horror. At any time, while in her Wicked Corpse
arm ending in a hand; an inhuman extremity form, the damned may expend a point of blood
gained in this way can freely wield a weapon and or Willpower as a free action. Upon doing so, she
reach targets up to ten feet away. The damned gains loses access to her Scarlet Horror and gains access
two extra dice when grappling, when blocking or to her Obsidian Horror. She may revert back to
parrying attacks, and when making multiple melee using her Scarlet Horror in the same way – losing
attacks (the damned always takes multiple actions access to her Obsidian Horror when she does so
as normal; normal attack limits & penalties apply). – as she desires. Under no circumstances can the
This special Horror may be selected multiple times; damned possess access to both her Scarlet and
its effects stack. Obsidian Horror simultaneously.
Longevity of Horror: The damned, when she Oblivion Armor: The damned is sheathed in
enters her Wicked Corpse form, maintains her hideous, inhuman plate: blade-shrouded draconic
form until sunrise or until she chooses to dismiss scales, ornate samurai armor crafted from warped
it, whichever comes first. This special Horror may bone, a twisted insectoid exoskeleton, or another
not be selected as either a Scarlet Horror or an immediately obvious – and ominous – type of
Obsidian Horror for purposes of the Multitude of physical protection. The damned adds 3 dice to her
Horrors ability (below). soak pool against Bashing and Lethal damage and
Miasma of Rot & Brimstone: The damned 1 die to her soak pool against Aggravated damage.
exudes an exceedingly foul and unclean stench, This special Horror may be taken multiple times;
like the filth-crusted meat-sewers beneath the its effects stack.
capital cities of Hell. Any living, breathing creature Perfection of the Cursed Corpse: The damned
who begins his action within a number of yards gains one dot in any one physical or shape-shifting
equal to the Willpower of the damned must gain Discipline, including – but not limited to –
at least one success on a Stamina roll (difficulty Potence, Celerity, Fortitude, Protean, Serpentis or
76 Infernal Disciplines
leaving only a blacked hoofprint of soot; close- Transfigure Excruciation to Ecstasy: The
range attacks made by the damned while moving hedonistic damned revels in her wounds, casually
in this way generally have their difficulty reduced reshaping the most agonizing gashes of physical
by 2 due to the element of surprise. suffering into waves of purest joy on the fly. The
damned suffers no wound penalties and has two
Talons of the Yomi-Prince: Claw-attacks made extra Bruised health levels. When the damned exits
by the damned – as per the Horror of Jagged Claws her Wicked Corpse form, these extra Health Levels
(above) or via another means, such as Protean 2 – disappear but damage does not; if the damned is
deal two additional dice of damage; for example, below Incapacitated, she falls into torpor and may
if the claws of the damned would normally deal even meet Final Death.
Str + 1 damage, they now deal Str + 3 damage.
These massive talons – each a minimum of eight Unfurl the Corpse’s Sinew: The neck, limbs,
inches long, thick as a chukabocho – cannot, for the fingers, and torso of the damned can extend and
most part, be employed at any task other than for elongate, at will, up to five feet per point of Stamina
use as wicked, iron-hard, razor-sharp weapons of possessed by the damned. The skin surrounding
slaughter: these talons impose a three-dice penalty the extremity does not gain any additional
on all Dexterity rolls involving fine manipulation elasticity, causing the chosen limb to twist away
(such as utilizing a firearm or melee weapon), and from the damned along a stringy, taught thread of
the damned must concentrate carefully when viscera and muscle tissue. This allows the damned
attempting to use her fingers to push the buttons on to bite, strike and grapple an opponent at range; in
a laptop, pick up a credit card off a counter, or turn addition, the damned might choose to uncoil his
the pages of a book. Note than the performance of neck in order to peer a few feet down a hallway and
these tasks is not impossible, given the gifts of agility around a corner, or send a single hand onto the
available to a well-studied practitioner of Jigoku: roof of a nearby building. Extending a body part
an Elder of the Akahaete Bloodline gifted with this requires an action but no roll or expenditure of
Horror who demonstrates his ability to casually blood or Willpower. Any part of the body unfurled
fold origami cranes while clothed in his Wicked in this way may be “snapped back” to its normal
Corpse form is a foe that should give pause to even size and shape instantly, including in response to
the most practiced martial combatant. Note that the action of another character. Note that limbs
use this Horror does not grant access to claws; it unfurled in this way may be attacked anywhere
only enhances existing claws already possessed by along their length, and that decapitation will still
the damned. kill the damned normally.
Ten-Thousand Mouths: Additional mouths – Unholy Carnage Devil Aegis: The damned
with or without attached faces, at her choice – open
spends a point of blood and a point of Willpower
across the torso, shoulders, limbs, lower abdomen
to activate this ability and rolls Wits + Occult
and upper back of the damned. These additional(difficulty 7). A success on this roll grants the
mouths inflict automatic bite damage (Strengthdamned one “floating” phantom Health Level
+ 1 aggravated) on all grappled opponents. In – which is tracked separately from her normal
addition, the damned may feed through these Health Levels – for one hour; each additional
mouths, such as by pressing her palm against the
success grants the damned either one additional
chest of her foe, although she may not drain more
phantom Health Level or increases the duration
than three points of blood from an individual of this effect by one hour. This special Horror may
victim in a single round in this way. not be activated again until the previous use of
the ability has worn off. The damned may cancel
The Crimson Tsunami: The damned gains the her current use of this Horror at any time as a free
benefits of the Scarlet Fountains Combination action; this effect also ends if all of her phantom
Discipline (see below).
78 Infernal Disciplines
damned may choose to forgo one or more health elite inner-circle of highborn Methuselah
levels of damage that would normally be dealt to Archfiend Infernalists.
her opponent to drain additional Blood Points:
the target loses one additional Blood Point for each This so-called ‘Unholy Carnage Devil Path,’
health level of damage that she would otherwise supposedly containing the four ‘Unholy
suffer. Blood drained in this way is delivered to the Devil Carnage Horrors’ detailed above, is
damned when the projectile vanishes and returns said to have culminated in a fifth, most-
to her hand, just as if the damned had consumed powerful & most-blasphemous capstone
the blood herself. sorcery – sometimes referred to as ‘Unholy
Carnage Devil Phoenix’ – now lost to the
Unholy Carnage Devil Rush: The damned dust of shattered empires.
spends a point of blood or Willpower and rolls
Wits + Occult to activate this ability; on a success, According to these tales, the rudiments of
her body instantly transforms into a roiling mass of this Path were cannibalized by wandering
cold phantom flame & thrashing blood-tendrils, Akahaete pilgrims in the centuries since the
then moves up to 40 yards in a single direction end of the Devil-King Age: stripped from
chosen by the damned. Upon arriving at her the minds of those few survivors to escape
selected destination, the damned immediately the blazing Oasis of Eternal Bliss intact, its
returns to her Wicked Corpse form. The damned, dark and glorious techniques bastardized
while in this whirlwind form, is a vaguely human- into a mere subschool of Jigoku.
size, vaguely sphere-shaped storm of hell-tempest: If true, of course, the full Path may yet exist:
a blinding composite of thinly-spread ichor and etched into a fallen temple wall or carved
swift-coiling unnatural energies. In this state, she into the iron, millennia-old psyche of a long-
may freely pass through any barrier that rain could slumbering Yomonlik sorcerer, hidden far
get through: she is not slowed by iron bars but from the sunlit world of sanity. In such an
is instantly halted by a thin sheet of glass. If the instance, these forbidden teachings have
damned, while in this strange state, encounters no shortage of treasure-hunters seeking
an obstacle that she cannot bypass, she instantly after their blasphemous magnificence: one
reverts to her Wicked Corse form. While in this of the few prizes that could rouse multiple
form, the damned is immune to most mundane Hives and Choirs toward the completion
attacks and weapons; against the few dangers that of a single goal is acquisition of the Path,
can threaten her – such as magic, sunlight, and recorded in full.
flame – she gains +1 die to dodge for each success
she achieves on the activation roll, above. This Vent of God’s Hatred: The damned must first
special Horror may be selected multiple times; each possess the Exhalation of Hell Investment, either
time it is selected, the damned moves an additional through the Horror of Breath of Oblivion or
20 yards whenever she activates this ability. Thus, through a full demonic investment, before she may
if this Horror is selected three times, the damned gain this ability. While in her Wicked Corpse form,
moves 80 yards whenever this ability is activated. a short-range version of this power is activated
whenever the damned is hit with an attack (even
Some apocryphal evidence suggests that if the attack doesn’t inflict damage): all victims
during the absolute apex of Yomonlik within a yard of the damned when she is struck are
power – in and around the blood-splattered immediately targeted by an Exhalation of Hell, as
city-abattoir called the Oasis of Eternal used by the damned, as the energy of her “breath”
Bliss, at the very height of the Devil-King explodes from her wounds. If the damned is struck
Age – a unique Path of Dark Thaumaturgy with a melee weapon, the attacker can attempt an
was developed and shared among an immediate Dexterity + Athletics roll (difficulty 6)
80 Infernal Disciplines
• Life-Thirsty: The weapon deals Str. +3 by a living saint (a creature in possession
aggravated damage instead of Str. +1. of True Faith). Winter activates this ability
while stabbing one of the mortals with her
• Saint-Breaking: While this weapon is hell-granted blade: she is now treated as a
wielded, the damned may – may – gain up mortal (rather than as a Baali) and loses
to three additional points of Potence (up her vulnerability to blessed objects. When
to one dot above her normal generational she fills the room with a toxic gas, however,
maximum) when she strikes her target. For Winter may choose to be treated as undead
each level of Humanity above 7 possessed rather than as a mortal for purposes of
by her target, the damned gains one of not choking on her own foaming-red lung
these additional points of Potence: 1 point tissue.
at Humanity 8, 2 points at Humanity 9, 3
points at Humanity 10. Damage dealt by • Torturous: While the victim of the weapon
this weapon cannot kill a creature with a retains even a single health level of damage
Humanity of 8 or higher; instead, damage dealt by the weapon, all of the victim’s
from this weapon can only reduce such wound penalties are doubled.
a creature to Incapacitated. Creatures
incapacitated by use of this weapon may • Wind of the Apocalypse: The damned may
still be executed in other ways. throw the weapon, attacking an opponent
up to a number of yards away equal to
• Shadow-Reaving: The weapon may strike the [Strength + Potence] of the damned x
incorporeal, spirit, and ghostly targets 5. Immediately after striking in this way,
across the veil of realities just as if those the weapon flies back to the hand of the
creatures were fully fleshy entities. damned to be used once more.
• Soul-Wounding: Whenever the damned If this weapon is removed from the grasp of the
successfully strikes a creature with this damned, it vanishes at the end of the round and
weapon, she may choose to forgo one reappears in the hands of the damned immediately
or more health levels of damage dealt before her next action.
to instead temporarily lower one of the
target’s Virtues by one or more. The target This object vanishes when the damned returns
loses one point from a single Virtue – to her normal form. If damaged, lost or destroyed,
chosen by the damned – for each health the weapon reappears in the hands of the damned
level of damage that would otherwise be – unharmed – the next time she enters her Wicked
dealt. Virtues temporarily reduced in this Corpse form. This special Horror may be taken
way return to their normal score the next multiple times; each time it is selected, the damned
time the victim wakes. gains a new melee weapon with a single special
ability listed here or adds an additional special
• Thief of Ten-Thousand Selves: Whenever ability (chosen from the list above) to a weapon
the damned strikes a creature that does not previously gained via use of this Horror.
match her type – for example, if a Baali with
this ability strikes a ghoul or a Malkavian – Weaver of Twisted-Iron Webs: The damned
she may choose to be treated as a creature spends one point of blood or Willpower to
of that type (instead of as her normal type) vomit-up a grotesque mass of sticky, highly elastic
for the remainder of the scene or until the webbing; she may freely manipulate this material
ability dismissed. For Example: Winter with her fingertips, spinning & interlacing it as
Bellamira is jumped by a group of mortal she desires. It sticks like superglue to just about
witch-hunters armed with weapons blessed anything else. This webbing is often a creepy,
mottled slate-grey, like a coiled sheet of oil & ash,
82 Infernal Disciplines
TWISTS OF OBSCENITY: ESOTERICA OF THE BAALI 83
Techniques of Demons with unparalleled access to unique gifts,
inaccessible to those who embrace mere mortals:
Ruin & Horror: clever as a human sorcerer or brutal as a living
soldier of fortune might be, even a hundred such
Baali Combination- kine are fundamentally unlikely to bring anything
truly new to the repertoires of those Clans who
Disciplines embrace them.
The dragon stood upon the edge of the great Compare a thousand years of turning mortally-
abyss. And I saw a beast coming out of the wounded knights into Brujah and sickly old kings
abyss. It had ten horns and seven heads, with into Ventrue against the raw power to be gained by
ten crowns upon its horns, and on each head a corrupting a single Assamite elder to the fold of the
blasphemous name. The beast I saw resembled Baali, complete with all her centuries of knowledge
a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and in the killing-arts, the sorcery of her lineage and
a mouth like that of a lion. And the dragon the thick blood washing slowly, like icy venom, in
gave the beast his power and his throne and her night-dark veins.
great authority upon the earth.
For every newly-minted Tremere the Camarilla
- Book of Revelation, Chapter 13 might produce, the Baali can boast a dozen of their
own sired by a single ex-Tremere Antitribu pulled
Baali share forbidden knowledge amongst out of the flames; for every Zanatosa uplifted from
themselves. Revenant to Cainite by the Sabbat, the Baali can
claim a hundred heirs to the Angelis Ater and all
This has been true since the time of the Second the shadow-wreathed glory of that corrupted
City, and in the Final Nights it is no less a fact. Lasombra line.
The Baali and their childer lurk in darkness, And that’s not to mention the benefits inherent
scuttling beneath the sane and daylit skin of the to tutorship by alien entities of the Outer Dark.
rotting world, eagerly spreading malevolent occult
secrets between sprawling Hives, wandering Choirs In short, any Baali encountered by another
and lone Pilgrims of depravity. The ancients Kindred might be expected to exhibit the stolen
of the Bloodline, when they awaken, gather gifts of any Clan or Bloodline, re-forged in gore
worshipful students to their feet to impart black and exultations of profane worship into a perfectly-
mysteries and long-lost blasphemies; brash young warped weapon of hell.
devil-worshipers of the sect gleefully seek-out one
another to swap blood, war-stories, curious relics of After all … it only takes one Tlacique to fall in
atrocity and clever “hacks” of the vile damnation rapture before the throne of Huitzilopochtli-
coiling in their cold veins. who-is-called-Shaitan, and within a half-century
another Hive of young Baali walk the night in
It is true, of course, that this practice is also jaguar-flesh, flashing obsidian knives from the
known to the Camarilla, to the Sabbat, and most shadows and pulling hearts from gaping torsos to
especially to the Anarchs. fuel a corruption of shamanistic Nahuallotl blood-
sorcery.
But none possess the drive to transmit the most
obscene of arts from corpse to corpse quite like the
Baali.
In addition, the Baali actively recruit from
other Clans and Bloodlines; this provides the
84 Infernal Disciplines
Terrifying Flexibility of
Corrupturum
Unless a Combination Discipline listed below
specifically calls for Corrupturum – such as
All the Wicked Delights of Hell or Nightmare
Rain, for example – Corrupturum may be freely
substituted in place of Daimonion when judging
whether the damned meets the prerequisites of a
Combination Discipline.
For Example: Winter Bellamira possesses
Corrupturum 2 and Dominate 2; as such, she
qualifies to select the Cruel Thorns of the
Satyr’s Need and Indulgence in Delicious Sins
Combination Disciplines, among others.
All the Wicked Delights of Hell [Corrupturum 5 it can be … circumvented, perhaps, by slick manipulation of
or Jigoku 5 and Daimonion 5] demonic forces.
There is no limit to the power available to one willing to System: The damned may gain sustenance from any
swim the coiling black depths of her own damnation. number of unnatural sources, gaining up to 10 blood
points worth of vitae each night from substances
System: The damned gains one additional Horror, that are not actually human blood. No single object
above and beyond the number of Horrors normally consumed in this way can provide more than three
available to her Jigoku rating. blood points, and most provide only a single point.
Storyteller’s Note: By means of this Objects to be consumed must be things associated with
Combination Discipline and Multitude of depravity, monstrosity, or excess: the damned gains no
Horrors (above), a Cainite of 13th to 8th benefit from consuming gravel, unless it’s from a spot
generation may have access to up to seven where a mortal was assaulted or killed. The damned
Horrors. This serves as a hard limit to the can eat food fit for mortals and gain blood points in
number of Horrors available to such creatures. this way, but she must eat it in front of a hungry mortal,
and she may not share it in any way. Alternatively, she
Alternatively, the damned gains one additional Terror might smear the food with non-blood bodily fluids.
above and beyond the number of Terrors normally The damned may also gain sustenance from consuming
available to her Corrupturum rating. murder weapons, stolen wedding rings, rare art, illegal
drugs, human flesh, maggots, vomit, feces, insects,
Experience Cost: 35
bones, suicide notes, ash, and – at the Storyteller’s
Appetite for Obscenity [Jigoku 1 and discretion – even stranger things: a damned drinking
Fortitude 1] water taken from a swimming pool where a child
drowned would find herself quite refreshed indeed.
The ancient curse of God upon his willful, murderous
grandchild Caine cannot be lifted by any mortal magic. But Experience Cost: 7
86 Infernal Disciplines
Coiling Black Mask of Most-Wicked Deeds Confide & Confess [Daimonion 1 and
[Daimonion 5 and Auspex 2 or Obfuscate 2] Presence 3]
And thus shall all who behold you know you for a sinner. Be my friend. Tell me something you’ve never told anyone
Yes, dearie: even if you aren’t one. else.
System: To invoke this curse, the damned must System: The damned focuses her attention upon
make physical contact with her target, then spend one creature she can see, spends one point of
up to five points of blood over a period up to five blood or Willpower, and rolls Manipulation +
turns; if contact is broken, the application of the Occult (difficulty equal to target’s Willpower); on
curse is halted. There is no roll to evoke this curse. a success, the target must confide in the damned a
Each blood point spent when the curse is first laid- single dark secret that could be used to blackmail,
down causes the victim’s aura to show a stark black harm, or cause major problems for the target. The
vein of diablerie for one scene – or one hour – to victim – unless her memory is altered – clearly
anyone using Aura Perception on the victim. remembers that she let her secret slip to the
damned, potentially making the damned into an
Experience Cost: 35 ally – or target! – of the victim.
The Coming Curse [Daimonion 2 and Experience Cost: 21
Chimerstry 2]
Contagious Lineage [Daimonion 5 and
You’re going to hell, John. Thaumaturgy (Path of Blood) 5]
System: The damned focuses her attention upon By the blessing of a dark trinity of her new peers, the
one creature she can see, spends one point of blood childe of a lesser clan may be reborn as a member of the
or Willpower, and rolls Manipulation + Occult Baali.
(difficulty equal to target’s Willpower); if this roll
is successful, her target is haunted by the strangest System: This ability functions identically to the Re-
phenomenon: for the next 24 hours, everyone he Embrace Elder Discipline ability of the Baali (Lore
speaks to – all of them, every single one, from his of the Bloodlines, pg. 17) except that it requires
closest friend to the random panhandler on the the presence of three damned to enact the ability.
subway – will, at some point in the conversation, Only one of these damned must possess this
tell the target that they, by name, are going to Combination Discipline, but all three damned
hell. As this is an illusion, the people addressing must possess either Daimonion or Thaumaturgy
the victim will always refer to the target by their (including Dark Thaumaturgy) and all three must
real name, not any alias they may use. For each expend a point of Willpower to complete the ritual.
success on the roll past the first, this curse lasts
an additional 24 hours. Much like the Evil Eye Rumors persist that the Akahaete possess a
Investment (below), this effect cannot deal damage privately-held variation of this ability, substituting
in combat but creates an intensely unnerving effect Jigoku for Daimonion, capable of transforming a
for the victim: the difficulty of all attempts made to non-Baali Kindred into a member of that fearsome
Intimidate the victim while this curse is active is lineage; if so, that ability is unknown except to
reduced by 2. most potent and ancient members of the Akahaete
splinter Bloodline.
Experience Cost: 14
Experience Cost: 35
88 Infernal Disciplines
Note that the infatuation compelled by use of
this ability is purely one-sided, and may be acted-
upon by the victim in any number of extreme and
unpredictable ways: a Toreador Elder infatuated
with a mortal might stalk her target, writing him
love-sonnets, murdering rivals to his affections
and tempting him with immortality; a Malkavian
Elder, on the other hand, might find herself
compelled to break the mortal target’s sanity
completely, obsessively driving the object of her
desire to become more like her; a Nosferatu Elder,
meanwhile, is likely to destroy her new obsession
in a fit of rage, self-loathing & misplaced jealousy:
such a perfect creature could never love a Sewer
Rat, after all, yet how could he allow this rarest
beauty to be loved – soiled – by any other?
Note also that this infatuation is far weaker than
even the weakest Blood Bond, but that it might
lead to the formation of such a pairing.
Experience Cost: 14
Dance of Twisting Nightmares [Daimonion 3
and Jigoku 1]
This night-lit world of the living & the thirsty dead is a
mere illusion, a crude shadow-realm of puppets painted
over the deeper horror of reality: the infinite, echoing
Outer Dark, and all that it contains. When you step
back from oblivion to this creaking place of cardboard,
you may choose to do so at a place of your convenience.
System: When the damned exits her private hell
while using Step into the Hellish Rift (above), she
may choose to reappear in any place in the living
world that she can see clearly. Thus, she might
return to the world standing atop a building visible
from her previous location, but not on the other
side of a locked door. The damned brings residue
from her private hell with her when she exits that
hideous realm, marking her passage in two places.
Experience Cost: 21
90 Infernal Disciplines
System: Similar to the arts of I Am Legion damned is carrying around her own severed head,
(Clanbook: Baali pg. 47), the damned first spends a her body still possesses all of its normal Health
point of blood or Willpower to activate this ability Levels (usually seven).
and rolls Manipulation + Occult (difficulty 7).
One success summons a single lesser incorporeal None of these severed, animate appendages may
fiendish entity to occupy her body; this ghostly be staked; if the heart of the damned is staked, all
imp boasts an Intelligence of 1, Wits of 1 and severed appendages collapse, paralyzed.
Perception of 1. Each additional success increases If the damned possesses the Discipline of Flight,
one Mental Attribute – chosen by the damned – of the Thaumaturgical Path Movement of the Mind,
this creature by 1. the Jigoku Horror of Violate Gravity, or another
For Example, Winter Bellamira activates means of achieving supernatural movement, her
this ability and scores five successes; she detached limbs may take full advantage of this
increases the Intelligence of the demon ability; in not, her limbs move at half the normal
“possessing” her body to 2, its Wits to 3, speed of the damned: rolling, scuttling like spiders
and its Perception to 2. or coiling like serpents, as appropriate. Limbs
removed and animated in this way retain the full
The summoned demon has zero in all other Physical Attributes and Abilities of the damned:
Attributes. The damned maintains telepathic her head can attack with her normal Dexterity +
contact with her summoned demon under all Brawl pool and inflicts standard bite damage, while
circumstances, with no roll or action required. This a severed arm – moving like a snake – can strike
ability may be activated multiple times, allowing with a claw, choke an opponent, and otherwise
for a small horde of demonic entities to inhabit deal damage as normal.
the corpse of the damned simultaneously.
An appendage – arm, hand or eye – that is destroyed
Once this ability is successfully activated, the while this ability is active may be replaced by
damned may freely separate her head from her expending a number of blood points equal to the
body by spending one point of blood or Willpower number of Health Levels held by that appendage
(no roll or check required); alternatively, she may (see above); for example, the damned may grow a
choose to detach a single eye, an arm or a hand by new eye by expending a point of blood and may
spending a single point of blood or Willpower. If regrow an arm by expending three points of blood.
her head is detached, the damned maintains control If the head of the damned is destroyed, she meets
of her head while her body is directed – under her final death instantly. If the body of the damned is
telepathic supervision – by her summoned demon; destroyed while her head is detached, the damned
if she instead chooses to separate an eye, arm or must expend 10 points of blood and one point of
hand, her summoned demon takes control of Willpower to regrow her full body.
that extremity while she continues to “pilot” the
remainder of her body. This ability, once activated, remains in effect until
dawn. At dawn, any limbs or appendages not
A detached head or appendage (arm or hand) is reattached to the vampire crumble to dust and
considered a small target – difficulty 7 to hit in must be replaced as normal. Limbs & appendages
Melee, firearms difficulties increased by one – may not be replaced while in-use: a vampire with
while a detached eye is difficulty 8 to hit in melee, access to a near-unlimited supply of blood could
with Firearms difficulties increased by 2. A severed not, for example, send a wave of one thousand
head has four Health Levels; an arm, three Health arms to attack her foe.
Levels; a hand, two Health Levels; an eye, one
Health Level. The body of the damned retains all Experience Cost: 28
of its normal Health Levels during this time: if the
92 Infernal Disciplines
rated Virtue (Courage, Conscience, Self-Control, later date and pick up her search where she left
Instinct or Conviction) replaces her Stamina, and off. Once a text – or black-box theater, or obscene
her temporary Willpower replaces her health levels. diorama, or bizarre series of interlinked paintings
– containing the desired memory has been found,
If the damned is reduced to zero temporary the damned and her target each make opposed Wits
Willpower by damage she suffers within the + Awareness rolls (difficulty equal to opponent’s
nightmare of her victim, she is ejected and suffers Willpower); if the damned is successful, she is
one unsoakable level of bashing damage to her true able to decipher the desired information: pulling
form. If her target awakens while the damned is the knowledge from the faded, coded, crimson-
still within the dreamscape, the damned is likewise stained pages of the nightmare library or otherwise
expelled: the total collapse of the labyrinth’s gleaning the information through direct, mental
structure “kills” the psychic projection of the interaction with the victim’s illogical, metaphor-
damned instantly. soaked gibberish-physics.
The damned may speak with her victim during Once this information has been obtained, the
this nightmare, or she may attempt to go digging victim instantly becomes aware: she knows only
through her victim’s subconscious for secrets. that someone broke into her nightmares and took
Each nightmare-library is unique, decorated a secret from the depths of her memories, however:
and arranged according the subconscious of the she does not know who performed this theft.
owner, although there are some commonalities: A nightmare library entered in this way is a
the libraries of the undead tend to be cut-through dangerous place, filled with traps and monsters
with rivers and lakes filled with all the blood the lurking among the gore-caked memories. The
Kindred has ever consumed, and the ghosts of victim herself wanders the hallways, insensate and
every creature the owner has ever killed walk among immune to all damage; in addition, any creature
the stacks. This library is not arranged or ordered diablerized by the target also creeps along the
in any sane fashion, but the practitioner rapidly long, crooked pathways of the library in fully
develops a strange sense for the … general direction physical form. Such creatures are universally some
toward whatever knowledge she seeks. Searching combination of hostile, ravenous, and insane.
for any individual memory – such as learning the
true name of the victim’s sire or finding where the Experience Cost: 14
target hid a heart removed via Heart of Darkness
– within the target’s library requires 1d10-3 hours,
plus one hour for each decade the target has walked
the world.
The library of a neonate might have only the
acreage of a good-sized nightclub, while the
library of an ancillae might occupy several
city blocks, and the library of an Elder is
likely to be the size of a small nation-state.
The library of a true Methuselah occupies
multiple continents of dust-shrouded
horrors, riddled with impossible towers
and vast, echoing mazes cut deep into the
earth.
If the damned cannot immediately find what she
desires, she may re-enter her victim’s mind at a
94 Infernal Disciplines
Instincts for Violence [Jigoku 1 and Celerity 1] the target. For example, the victim’s flesh might
be etched from within to read “Murderer” or
The body of the damned – warped by foul curses, “Diablerist” or “Thief” in the victim’s own blood;
blasphemous bargains, and the darkest of magics – is whatever word appears, and in whatever language,
not entirely her own; this lethal killing machine, forged its meaning is immediately apparent to everyone
to survive the Outer Dark, may act of its own accord: who sees it. The damned does not control what
lashing out with terrifying speed at all who would dare words appear; instead, she may use this ability
approach the infernalist. to find out what sins her victim has committed.
System: Whenever she is attacked in close combat Words cut into the skin of the victim do not vanish
(usually with Melee or Brawl roll) while in her until the victim no longer suffers a single level of
Wicked Corpse form, the damned may make a aggravated damage.
free counterattack upon her foe using a wing, tail, Experience Cost: 28
horns or even the back of her hand. The damned
rolls Dexterity + Brawl (+1 difficulty) Close Combat
Maneuver; if this roll is successful, the damned
inflicts lethal damage equal to her Strength -1. No
more than one free counterattack of this type may
be made per turn.
Experience Cost: 7
Lingering Fear [Daimonion 1 and
Dementation 3]
Hide all you want, childe; the stench of your fear still
bleeds through.
System: The damned rolls Perception + Occult,
difficulty equal to her target’s Willpower. On a
success, the damned learns any phobias held by
the target, as well as any fears her target might have
that could be used to manipulate him. For each
additional success on this roll, the damned gains
one free success of every Social roll made against
the target for the remainder of the scene or for one
hour (whichever comes first).
Experience Cost: 21
Litany of Wicked Crimes, Both Fresh &
Ancient Alike [Daimonion 4 and Quietus 4]
Burn for your sins.
System: This ability functions as per Baal’s Caress
(V20 pg. 204) except that each level of damage
done to the target causes a single word to raise on
the visible and exposed flesh of the victim. These
words spell out crimes and sins committed by
96 Infernal Disciplines
to her current Willpower; this unnatural storm 20 pints (blood points) of something very much
lasts one hour or until the scene ends, whichever like blood but lacking the metaphysical spark of
comes first. The difficulties of all rolls involving life. There is no limit to the total amount of this
sight or movement in the area are increased by false blood the damned may hold within herself
two; this penalty does not affect the damned. For at any given time: if she desires to spend 5 points
each additional success on the activation roll, of vitae and thereby generate 100 pints (twelve
the damned may intensify the storm by one step and a half gallons) of false blood inside her body,
(increasing the adjustment in Difficulties above she is free to do so. This substance is not blood
by one apiece), from a tropical storm at three and cannot be used in any way that real blood
successes to an outright hurricane at 5 successes; – Kindred or mortal – can be used (such as to
alternatively, she may increase the duration of the activate the supernatural abilities of Kindred) but
effect by one hour per additional success gained on it seems to be blood to all examination short of
the activation roll. In addition, the damned may actually drinking the fluid. This false blood is kept
invest one success on the activation roll to vent under enormous pressure within the body of the
unnatural precipitation through her grotesque damned: great torrents of this horrid stuff spray in
storm: the black thunderheads may vomit-forth every direction whenever the damned is injured,
hypodermic needles, burst-open toads, splatters and she may freely vent it from her body as she
of blood, severed fingers, rotting meat, eyes, desires (causing gouts of it to cascade from her eyes
maggots, feces, or any number of other strange and and mouth, for example). The damned may even
disturbing substances. generate enough of this “blood” to drown mortal
opponents. If the damned is the target of any effect
Experience Cost: 21 that would remove blood from her body – Theft
The Puppet Falters [Corrupturum 1 or of Vitae, for example – her false blood is targeted
Daimonion 1 and Dominate 1] first, and it provides no benefit of any kind to the
recipient.
With a casual wave of her hand, in cruel mimicry of a
puppet-master shaking her victim’s invisible strings, the Experience Cost: 7
damned torments the spasmodic limbs of her foe.
System: The damned spends a point of blood
or Willpower to activate this ability; she chooses
one opponent she can see and rolls Wits + Occult
(difficulty 7). Each success cancels one success from
the victim’s next die roll. If her opponent scores no
successes on his die roll, he can take no actions but
to shake unnaturally while hanging eerily in space,
limp: drooling, twitching slightly, and rolling his
panicked eyes in mute terror.
Experience Cost: 7
Scarlet Fountains [Jigoku 1 and Fortitude 1]
Dark red oceans of stolen life cascade through the black
veins of the damned. When she desires, she may unleash
this gore-slick tsunami like a Biblical plague.
System: The damned spends a point of blood or
Willpower; her pale form immediately swells with
98 Infernal Disciplines
may simply state the name of the victim. Clan flaw (like a particular type of art for a Toreador,
or the derangement of a Malkavian). The damned
Once the damned has completed her statement, can also learn minor psychological Flaws (anything
she rolls Manipulation + Occult, difficulty equal valued at 1 point) of her target and secrets that she
to her target’s Willpower + 3. For each of the is actively thinking-about: if the Harpy is pacing,
following words that are included in the invocation trying to decide how precisely to tell the Prince that
statement – “dead,” “grave,” and “curse,” – the her Sire committed diablerie, this small snippet of
difficulty of this roll is reduced by 1. information may be picked-up by the damned.
For Example: The difficulty of the Experience Cost: 14
Manipulation + Occult roll to activate this
power is reduced to the target’s Willpower
if the damned says “We are not the dead.
We are not cursed by the grave” or “I’m
trying to figure out a pattern. After dead,
grave, and curse, what do you think comes
next?”
On a success, every corpse within range – 10 feet
per success on the activation roll – reanimates as
a zombie (V20, pg. 164). The aura of this effect
moves with the victim: if the victim moves close
enough to a corpse, it immediately animates and
attacks her; likewise, if a fresh corpse is “created”
within range, it animates as soon as it ceases to be
a living creature. The target of this curse has no
control over these zombies: instead, the hungry &
mindless undead will follow the victim, attempting
to eat her, until such time as they are destroyed or
until the curse ends.
The curse is exhausted one hour after the first
corpse is reanimated by this effect, plus one hour
per success achieved on the initial activation roll;
when this time-limit is reached, the curse ends
immediately. Otherwise, the curse is permanent
until discharged.
Experience Cost: 35
Skeletons in the Closet [Daimonion 1 and
Auspex 2]
The secret flaws of Kindred are written in their auras, for
those who know how to find them.
System: When reading a target’s aura, the damned
may always make a second attempt to see additional
flaws. If both attempts are successful, the damned
can learn her target’s feeding preference, focused
The philosophies of the Baali are hardly unified. Adherents to every known Cainite philosophy –
from the Path of Honorable Accord and the Path of
In fact, it is likely that the innumerable insane Metamorphosis to the Path of Caine and the Path
heresies represented within the bloodline are in of Paradox – can be found within the sprawling
fact far beyond counting: what is sacred to one Bloodline of the Baali. Of course, many of the
Baali is often utter anathema to another, and Baali walk particularly twisted, debased or heretical
vice versa. Little-enough agreement, however, is versions of their parent Path, much to the revulsion
necessary amongst a group as universally reviled of those mainline practitioners who discover their
as the Demons & their broods: when Josian Devil- own personal walkway-to-salvation perverted in the
Hunters, Setite lector-priests, Anarch war-bands, most awful of ways.
Salubri holy-warriors, Assamite viziers, Tremere
chantry-masters, thirsty war-packs loyal to the Sabbat In addition, many Baali of the modern nights
Inquisition, mortal religious institutions and a few are known to practice one of five Paths unique to
unnamed black-ops extra-governmental agencies are their Bloodline; more properly, these Paths might
all willing to temporarily set-aside their differences be understood as “fourfold & one”: the Apocalyptic
to murder your face off the precise moment you are legacy of Saint Belphagor.
discovered, you do not get to pick your bed-fellows.
Best you can do is set them up to get slaughtered
in your place, honestly.
Via Conflictus – The sparks, spittle, and shattered chains, your sword and your
armor are brightest in that smoky, blood-slick gloom which
Road of War rises alike from muddy crypts, sundered skyscrapers, and
flaming prisons.
You oppose. You overthrow. You unseat. You shall add your verse to the eternal chorus of glory,
to be sung and remembered by the worthy for all time.
Wherever there is a quiet – borne of tyranny or of
satisfaction, it matters not – there shall your war-cries Bring conflict to all things. It is only through
wake the hearts of men with terror. Wherever there are conflict that people can grow, only through
fearful whispers, there shall your thundering deeds fan conflict that enlightenment can be reached. You
sparks of disharmony into the blaze of open rebellion. create conflict not for chaos, but for order. Peace is
Wherever there are tired folk crushed beneath boot-heel, an illusion, fit only for mewling fools.
whip and tax – bound and huddled in chains of bondage
Ancient Beliefs: The god-slaying Children of
– there shall your shining steel be held aloft.
the Outer Dark must be kept entertained. This is
The Iron Warblade is your title, your station and your understood. And it is understood, beyond, that
banner, wet with the heart’s-blood of weak and fallen our cosmic masters are amused – above all things!
oppressors; gripped with dark gauntlets and showered in – by violence. Strife. Discord. Conflict. Challenge.
You intend to live through the ending of this world, In secrets lie strength.
and to greet the masters of the world-to-come as a loyal
Negative View: Half obsessive relic-hunter
seneschal, vassal and advisor. Let the weak cowards
antiquarian, half boogaloo-happy maniacal
hide behind the golden-shining skirt of their sparkling
doomsday survivalist, all twitchy nerd.
“Creator,” weeping in terror at the fundamental cosmic
insignificance of humanity, mortal & immortal alike; Virtues: Conviction/Self-Control
their glittering Heaven is but fleeting, an illusion of hope
to be snatched-away in an instant by the gaping maw of Greatest Sin: Revealing a previously-unknown
the Outer Dark. truth to a heathen.
Service to the Sleeping Children, however, a place of Those who follow Via Apocalypsis hold “secrets”
honor by their side when they wake … that is eternal. as their most valuable possession and, as such, will
never willingly divulge information to someone
The Road of Revelation teaches that the end – the who does not already know the truth: the follower
coming of the Sleeping Children to wakefulness may lie, omit vital facts or change the topic, but she
and the subsequent annihilation of our current cannot tell anyone a fact that isn’t already known
reality – is inevitable. It cannot be fought, opposed, to the listener: she may not tell anyone that she is a
reasoned-with or avoided. vampire, or that vampires even exist, without being
in direct violation of her Path.
That is not to say, however, that it cannot be
survived. If the follower shows up to Elysium and the
Harpy – who already knows that vampires exist –
In fact, those who follow the teaching of Via
guesses that she is a fellow vampire, the righteous
Apocalypsis are poised to become something much
follower of Via Apocalypsis may, of course, politely
more powerful in the world-to-come.
confirm that she is, indeed, a vampire.
Through the cultivation of dark knowledge and
She can’t tell the Harpy her real name or Clan,
self-discipline, through the acquisition of lost
though. Not that she would particularly want to,
occult treasures and powerful arcane defenses,
mind.
those who walk Via Apocalypsis are ready to ride-
out a storm that makes the world-shaking rise of All of this maddening secrecy and
the Antediluvians pale in comparison. counterespionage goes out the window the
moment the follower is communicating with
Ancient Beliefs: In the fullness of time, with
another known follower of Via Apocalypsis or one
the grinding of Ages, the Children of the Outer
of its four “servant Paths”: if both Kindred follow
Dark shall rise again. They are the spawn of Night,
the Road of Revelation, they may speak – and
crafted by unclean & inhuman hands before the
compare notes – openly; furthermore, they may do
usurper-god moved over the face of the waters; they
so in front of a creature walking Via Contagionis
are the Firstborn of the Abyss, and we live upon
or Via Conflictus.
but the skein of a bubble floating across the black
ocean of their thoughts. They might still lie to each other & withhold
information, of course, but it’s not for moral or
When they rise again, we must be prepared. We
ethical reasons. It’s simple pragmatism.
must learn as much as we can, diving deep into
Baali, by the strange nature of their intermingled Becoming the Demon-in-Spirit (7 pt.
vampiric & demonic blood, are more likely than Supernatural Merit)
any other Bloodline to exhibit odd … quirks, if you
will. Although you can be seen by mortal eyes, and you
may interact with the material realm, you exist
Becoming the Demon-in-Flesh (7 pt. largely within the Outer Dark, at the side of your
Supernatural Merit) master: much more phantom than flesh.
Your “base form” is your Wicked Corpse form. You You are visible (unless employing Obfuscate) but not
awake each evening already in your Wicked Corpse quite tangible: a cold psychic projection of ghostly
form, and you do not need to spend blood, time, malevolence from distant and unclean realms. You
or Willpower to enter your Wicked Corpse form; appear spectral, hazy and colorless, and your voice
you automatically gain the benefits of Longevity of sounds far away.
Horror.
You cannot normally make physical attacks, and are
In addition to the use of Obfuscate to hide your only able to interact directly with the physical world
hideous demonic nature, you can spend blood after succeeding at a Willpower roll, difficulty
to return – briefly – to your previous vampiric 6, made as a free action; you must succeed at a
form, allowing you to fully conceal the signs of Willpower roll, difficulty 8, to perform any sort of
the demonic metamorphosis churning within you. fine manipulation: loading a firearm or turning
When you choose to spend blood in this manner, the page of a book, for example. Once you have
each blood point spent hides all of your Horrors for succeeded at this Willpower roll, you automatically
one hour per level of Jigoku you possess; you may maintain your semi-solidity for a number of turns
cancel this effect and return to your full Wicked equal to your current temporary Willpower.
Corpse form at any time as a reflexive action.
You’ve got a bad reputation. Especially amongst This special flaw may only be gained by ex-
your fellow damned. Nosferatu, ex-Samedi, ex-Gargoyle and similar
Baali who do not possess the Retention of Blood’s
And you’d be shocked at how fast news can travel Frailty Flaw (above) and who now possess an
that both the Josians and the Sabbat Inquisition Appearance Trait of 3 or higher.
are actively looking for you. You know, because of
your many crimes or whatever. Once per week, you must perform a special ritual
action, as determined by you and your Storyteller,
So, then. Are you actually an Infernalist? And … or your Appearance Trait is lowered by 1. This slow
does it even matter? drain stacks with itself, to a minimum Appearance
of zero. While your Appearance is zero, you are
The simple fact is that you’ve been labeled as indistinguishable from a member of your former
such, and that puts you outside the protection of clan.
literally every non-Infernalist organization on the
planet. AKA: everyone. That said, Kindred society Potential ritual actions include:
is sprawling, clandestine, and – by definition –
secreted-away in the shadows: there are any number • consuming a freshly-removed human heart
of places where someone like you can hide, going • causing a non-Baali to lose a point of
unnoticed for years or even decades. But your Humanity
nefarious reputation – and the death sentence
that comes with it – will always catch up with you • participating in the Embrace (or Re-
eventually. And that’s a guarantee. Embrace) of a new Baali
Demons have great power … and many are willing of demonic entities: a mortal can say the words “I
to impart some measure of such power onto those pledge my soul to Satan” or “Dear Devil, please kill
willing to do the bidding of hell in the mortal realm. my boss and I’ll build you a big-ass temple” or “I swear
In game terms, an infernalist offers her services to to god, I will kill one hundred people in the name
a demon – up to and including the selling of her of Lucifer if you let the Buccs win the Superbowl” as
immortal soul – in exchange for “investments” on many times as she wants, and nothing will happen.
the part of evil spirits.
She can sign “binding contracts” to “sell her soul”
A patron demon is often eager to provide dark every other weekend and get not so much as a year
gifts, knowing that she will gain a worldly (and of free life thrown her way.
potentially even eternal) servant in return. These
are, after all, investments: the demon is giving In a sense, the spiritual levers simply aren’t hooked
something in exchange for a greater return at a later up to anything; the great AUX cable of hellfire &
date. perdition isn’t plugged into the stereo, so to speak.
Mortals just can’t access that part of themselves,
in the same way they can’t stop their own hearts
Mortal Infernalists through sheer force of will or make their body lose
weight by hating it enough. A mortal has to go
In general, it is surprisingly difficult for mortals to digging – searching, questing – to find those secret,
enter into the service of a demon. unholy means of calling-up a dweller in the darker
parts of the spirit-realm & making a deal for her
This is for several reasons, but the general soul; in many cases, the first part of the bargain with
consensus amongst occultists is that mortals are this perverse force involves rejecting all protection
somehow protected from on-high – for lack of a offered to her by angels, ancestral spirits and more-
better term – from the direct, malevolent influence mysterious entities of light.
But the clever ones take notes from their patrons: And let’s not forget China, boasting over fourteen
learning to move in shadow, to listen in dark places, hundred infernalists … with 27 of them living in
and to act as a patron for a growing stable of mortal Shanghai alone.
servants, spreading their influence from there. A mortal infernalist – armed with knowledge of
Just like a real demon. the spirit-realm, a loyal cult, a few potent demonic
gifts, an edge in mortal politics, and the ability to
All told, mortal infernalists outnumber Cainite go outside during the day – is a potent ally to a
infernalists ten to one. While this might seem Cainite in service to the same demon … or a very
surprising, it’s simply a matter of scale: we can dangerous opponent, should their patron decide to
assume approximately one vampire stalking the pit them against each other just for shits & giggles.
night in search of living prey for every 100,000
Very few Infernalists give their souls away. At For Example: “Your demon nods,
least, not right away: an Infernalist who surrenders thinking over your request. After a
her soul to her patron demon on their first meeting moment, she speaks: she simply wants you
usually comes to enjoy a very short career indeed. to go to a certain address at a certain time
Instead, the majority of demonic Pacts involve later tonight, take a set of Polaroid pictures
service in the mortal realm, at least initially: – you’ll know what you’re looking for when
demons are often eager to trade in favors & you see it – put the pictures in an envelope,
services, as most demons cannot affect mundane address the envelope to a specific person
reality with any reliability, and the infernalist may (it’s someone you’ve never heard of) and
act as her willing, clever eyes and ears amongst then put the envelope in the mail without
mortals and Kindred alike. being seen. Do you agree to do so? And then
you go do it? Okay, no roll on your part is
Of course, the cunning Infernalist will doubtlessly required; let me just roll something here,
think of something else she needs. Something for my own notes. Wait … you say you run
that only her patron demon can provide. In such the errand while Obfuscated? Okay, cool.
an instance, it’s a simple enough matter to forge Give me one quick Perception + Alertness
another, more-precious pact. roll to see if you notice something while
you run the errand. No specific difficulty,
By means of this slow reeling-in, the demon
just tell me what you rolled, and I’ll narrate
increases the potency of her pawn until the
the scene real quick.”
Infernalist willingly bargains-away the last shreds
of her “self” in exchange for one last dark miracle,
A 2-point bargain or better, on the other hand,
adding to the demon’s personal stable of eternalrequires at least a few hours of work, or a little bit
slaves. Demons are, somewhat surprisingly, quiteof work over the course of a few nights (no more
willing to invest in those who – by the nature of
than a week); a 3-point bargain might require an
their unforgivable acts – are already damned. entire night’s worth of work or a bit of focus every
The would-be infernalist’s soul may be bound fornight over the course of no more than a month.
hell, after all, but it is not necessarily bound to the
A four-point bargain might require a week’s
specific service of any one particular demon. worth of solid focus, all-night every night, or the
expenditure of a little bit of time, energy and
You would be surprised at just how lucrative
attention every night for up to six months. Five-
such an arrangement can be for a patient demon.
points worth of investment is going to take a year’s
And, as true immortals, demons can be very worth of planning and effort to pull off correctly,
patient indeed. while six-points might take a decade, seven-points
might take a half-century, eight points is a century’s
worth of work, and nine points is – most likely –
Money for Nothing the work of multiple centuries.
Of course, you could always just sell your soul
There are nine levels of hell, by the reckoning
straight away …
of some faiths, and nine level of investment below
Repentance Bitteridge knew – from the day Something that was not god answered him,
he first heard the fire-&-brimstone words of the and very gladly granted his heartfelt prayer, and
red-faced preacher who ruled over his close-knit, Repentance was born anew deep in the echoing
New England community – that the devil walked and unlighted woods: brought forth from the grave
the world, treading dark forest and moonlit glade in a baptism of ecstatic, holy revelation. Since that
with a cold, cruel heart, whispering promises of evening, Repentance has been a hunter for the
sweet pleasure & forbidden knowledge to all those Baali, a most-fervent worshipper of the Sleeping
unwary and unwise enough to listen and pay heed. Children, a man driven by purest need and
deepest fanaticism to work their wordless prayers
As he grew, young Repentance began to see in shrieking, crimson-drizzling meat.
witchcraft and devil-sign in more and more places:
he could hear the creak of corruption growing, Johnny Head-Full-of-Scythes isn’t very smart.
ever spreading, out deep in the woods by night; He’s remarkably good-looking, sure, and plenty
he could smell the stench of taint and lust and handy in a fight, and covered in some pretty decent
spiritual weakness on the rot-splattered bodies of ink, but no one ever accused the man of being the
all those who walked by him in the streets by day. smartest crust-punk dealing drugs to teenagers &
stealing loose change from passed-out addicts in