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Are We Without Hearts?
Honestly, it hurts my feelings that you think I’m a lost
cause. Other Kindred like to congratulate themselves for
resisting their dark sides and flagellate themselves if they
step out of line. Why is this the best way to live? Why does
the Beast have to be this thing vampires fight against? If
you make a deal with your Beast and tell it “I’ll give you
something else to torment besides me,” it can become
quite the comrade. That is one of our tricks, by the way.
Demons listen to us because they fear the thing we have
inside of us. Our bloodline is potent enough to browbeat
even the strongest demon into a cage of our design, one
we have control over.
“But you worship evil,” you think. Yes and no. Certain
rituals need to be put into place for us to summon the
correct demons and get what we need from them. We
worship those demons like a cat worships their human
owner. We’re smart enough to do just enough to get what
we need without too much involvement. If you do it right,
the demon starts to feed you without you even asking, in
the hopes of future affection.
Of course there are those Baali who go overboard.
Everyone’s got to have their rotten apple. Thing is, we like
to have some of our apples are rotten as possible. Every
coven of Baali has one or two fools among them who are
carefully groomed into the icon of what other Kindred see
us as. They dress the part, talk the part, they are the part
because that’s what we’ve painted them to be. We call them
our Nergals, the boisterous ones among the Baali that the
rest of us put up as sacrifice. Once the Nergal is killed by
the Camarilla, the White Tower can pat themselves on the
back for ridding the world of another horrible creature,
and the search for the rest of us eases for a time. Gives us
a chance to pay attention to what is truly important.
Every death is precious, as I said before. This is just one
example of how the death of a Baali can have meaning
beyond what is obvious. The same is true of the sacrifices
we offer in the demon rituals. We are giving them the
chance to be part of something larger than themselves.
Does this make us cruel? I’d argue that it makes us as
pragmatic as any other vampire who bites into a victim’s
neck. The Baali just take it a step further and fully commit
to our monstrous nature, and we are vilified for this fact.
Sad, isn’t it?
How We Are Viewed
The Nergals aren’t the only ones who bear the markings
of the obscenely anti-religious. If you call a group of people
LORE OF THE BLOODLINES
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