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"We Serve a Greater Power. To Submit is to Conquer.
To the other Cainites, we are legends and lies. Behave, the old ones tell their childer, or the Baali will take you. We are as monsters out of children's tales to them, but that is all. That suits our purposes. Let them have their slanders. The truth would freeze the stolen blood in their veins. For we are not monsters lurking in the shadows after the occasional straggler. We are something far, far worse."

The Baali are a bloodline of vampires associated with demon worship. Because of their affinity with the unholy, the Baali are particularly vulnerable to holy iconography, holy ground and holy water. They are highly vulnerable to True Faith. Some versions present the true purpose of the Baali as keeping demons sleeping by feeding them with carnage and destruction. But most presentations show them as infernalists, using demon worship to gain additional power.

The Baali are explorers, first and foremost – students of the unknown, the unknowable, the unspeakable. They will do almost anything and sacrifice almost anyone to gain access to occult mysteries. They squander the wealth they have accumulated, they make deals they cannot live up to, and they do so with no apology and no attempt at excuse. They are, however, not Faustian bargainers, although many Baali neonates fall into that trap.

They believe that the world is doomed, that the End Times are nigh and every sacrifice they make, every murder they incite, is one more c***k in the dam holding back the deluge of blood called Gehenna. If they have to die to break that dam, so be it. As such, the Baali can be considered a doomsday cult.

They have a somewhat complex heritage, appearing at times as a bloodline and at times as a clan. There is some indication that they may be a bloodline of the Salubri, Cappadocians, or Tzimisce, although one earlier source suggested they may instead be descendants or even predecessors of the Gangrel line. They also recruit vampires from other clans to become Baali via a dark thaumaturgic initiation, further confusing the issue and making them also a sect or cult.

All Baali have at least two identities, if not more. Among their own kind, they organize into small, tightly-knit groups called covens, usually in three or six. These covens meet only rarely, gathering only to perform some dark ritual or discuss matters of dire consequence. They prefer to meet under the new moon, though lunar eclipses hold great meaning for them and major rituals are performed at that time. Covens meet in secret places where their activities will not be disturbed, yet still within the city they wish to prepare. They frequently ally with Black Spiral Dancers and make use of their tainted caerns. A grand ritual involving both Baali and Black Spirals usually portends some great and awful occurrence.

The Baali hope to attract Tremere who share some of their beliefs, who have the potential to be recruited, corrupted, or both. Once an applicant has progressed high enough in the Order, they are inducted into the Illuminated Brotherhood. Only after their corruption is complete, their turn to evil assured, do the Tremere meet their Baali masters – and their masters' Masters.

Sabbat Baali have an easier task in some ways, harder in others. While the vampires of the Sabbat have forsaken their Humanity, the Inquisition within the sect limits their activities. Whatever sect they belong to, however, the Baali are united in their cause. Their eventual goal is to turn both the Camarilla and the Sabbat to their infernal masters – and if that does not work, to destroy them. Indeed, many Sabbat-Camarilla conflicts can be attributed to the machinations of Baali on both sides, destroying those who oppose them while garnering greater influence and power. After all, power is the name of the game.

The Baali usually only Embrace those who are intelligent and driven. Most who are Embraced into Clan Baali had interest in the occult during their mortal lives.

The Embracing ritual of the Baali is one of their most disturbing rituals. A Baali will capture his or her prey and bring him or her to a site he or she has prepared. There will be a large pit, filled with dozens of decomposing bodies. The Baali drains his or her victim to near death and tosses him or her into the pit. In just one of the corpses, the Baali hid their blood inside one of the corpses' heart. If the victim manages to find the heart before they die and drink the blood, they are considered worthy of becoming Baali. Ironically, this makes the Baali the only clan that regularly gives their victim the choice of becoming a vampire or choosing to die.