Daimoinon
LEVEL 1
*Sense the Sin It is said that creatures of evil can turn even the most pious man to evil, does not everyone fear the capacity for sin? This power allows the Baali to see into the soul of his victim, to ferret out her greatest weakness. System: By making a Perception+Empathy roll against a difficulty of the target's Self-Control + Instinct (+4), the Baali can sense the subject's greatest character flaw, be it a low Virtue, a weak Willpower, a Derangement or whatever. The Storyteller should use discretion should the "flaw" be something without a stat, such as the subject's guilt at having killed her sire.
LEVEL 2
*Fear of the Void Below Through the use of this Discipline, the Baali can send those who listen to her into fits of terror at the damnation that awaits them in the afterlife. This power is feared by pagan and Christian alike, for such is its power that even blasphemers tremble at the Baali's words. System: The Baali must first use Sense the Sin (above) to discern the tragic flaw of the target. She must then speak to the target, telling him of his inevitable damnation. If the Baali makes a Wits + Intimidation resisted roll against the target's Courage (+4), the victim falls into Rotschreck; if the Baali scores three more successes, the target collapses in panic.
LEVEL 3
*Conflagration Through focus and force of will, the adept summons forth something of the essence of Beyond...the briefest trickle of otherworldly power. This sinister "black fire" has been known to manifest as an imperceptible distortion of time and space, an incadescent halo of ethereal light, even the semblance of eldritch flame -- all of which, of course, leave observers eerily reminded of traditional guises of the infernal... System: The player spends a blood point. this creates a bolt of black flame that inflicts one die of aggravated damage; more blood points may be spent to increase the size and damage of the flame. Such fires are fleeting and dissipate at the end of the turn in which they are summoned, unless the Baali spends blood points over several turns, gradually creating a larger flame. The player also rolls Dexterity + Occult (difficulty 6) to hit his target, who may dodge as normal, unless circumstances prevent it. Vampires confronted with this black fire make Rotschreck tests if confronted with a similar quantity of normal flame.
Flames of the Netherworld By using this power, the Baali may hurl blasts of flame at his enemies-a truly spectacular sight which will instantly convince any onlookers that the Baali is indeed a creature of Satan. System: The Baali Throws a blast of hellfire that does one die of damage per Blood Point spent. Striking an intended target requires a Dexterity + Occult roll with a difficulty dependent on range. This eldritch fire does aggravated damage.
LEVEL 4
*Psychomachia The Baali is able to summon the Beast in an individual. After using Sense the Sin (above) to discern weakness, the Baali can actually coax the Beast to the surface, causing her victim to lose control and become ruled by his passions. System: The victim must roll his greatest weakness (i.e., lowest Virtue) against a difficulty of 8 or fly into a frenzy; any Derangement possessed by the victim manifests itself violently.
LEVEL 5
*Condemnation Calling upon forbidden pacts, forgotten powers and a legacy of blighted ritual dating back to prehistoric times, the Baali may call down a curse upon his enemies. The least of such afflictions cripple, disfigure, or otherwise hinder their victims; the greatest have become the stuff of legends. System: An Intelligence + Occult roll (difficulty equal to the subject's Willpower) dictates the length and severity of the curse; successes must be split between both these effects as follows: 1 success -- up to one week; "No voice shall be lent your lying tongue" 2 successes -- One month; "Sicken and wither, infidel...a babe's weakness upon you" 3 successes -- One year; "Reap the bitter harvest -- may your closest friends turn foes" 4 successes -- Ten years; "Barren be thy seed and the loins of all your line" 5 successes -- Permanent; "The mark of doom -- all you touch or love must fail" At any time, the Baali may choose to end the curse, though few have ever done so. Storytellers should feel free to invent creative or story-appropriate curses; similarly, abuse (including but not limited to overuse) should be met with automatic failure or distortion beyond the curse's original intent.
Curse The Baali may call upon his hellish powers to inflict a curse upon his enemies, often disfiguring or crippling them. The Baali may remove this curse at will, should he choose. Few ever do. System: By making an Intelligence + Occult roll against a difficulty equal to the target's Willpower, the Baali may cast a curse on the target. One of the target's Traits, chosen by the Baali, drops to zero for a duration dependent on the number of successes: 1 success - One night 2 successes - One week 3 successes - One month 4 successes - One year 5 successes - Permanent
LEVEL 6
*Concordance At this level of mastery, the Baali takes something of the nature of his true masters into his person, partially transcending his undead condition. The prices exacted by Those Who Wait Beyond, however, can be steep indeed. History depicts the priesthood of Faal as a cabal of hellish creatures -- horned, taloned, insectile, possessed of the powers of flight, the ability to withstand open flame and countless other infernal investitutes. System: The most typical manifestation of this power incorporates immunity to the damaging effects of fire, though other equivalently powered assets maybe available at the Storyteller's discretion. Most of these tributes take the form of left-handed "gifts" with unforeseen consequences (a telltale bronze tint to flame resistant flesh; an inhuman homunculus that must be fed from a third nipple; a vestigal set of wings; visible talons or horns that cannot be conealed, etc.). This power may be purchased more than once for concurrent divestments...at still greater cost to body and soul. (Indeed, the current shaitan is said to have been so gnarled and twisted by the Masters as to be no longer even remotely mistakeable for human.) Note that certain banes of the Cainite race -- piety, dependency on blood for sustenance, etc. -- may not be overcome by this power under any circumstances. In the end, it is up to the Storyteller's discretion as to what the Baali may or may not withstand.
Glimpse the Great Gulf Beyond There are worlds beyond worlds and places beyond space and time; this power allows a Baali to shatter the boundaries between such zones of cosmic terror and the mundane world. Glimpse the Great Gulf Beyond is never used lightly, for even the masters fo Daimoinon fear what they might see -- or what might see them. But when a Baali does invoke the face of the Void, the effects are terrifying. When this power is invoked, the Baali literally uses his will to force cracks in the walls of reality. Through those cracks come the sights, sounds, smells and other aspects of existence outside of reality as most know it. While exactly what comes through from the other side varies from moment to moment (blashphemous whispers one second, a charnel stench and the howls of the damned the next), the impact on the target is always tremendous. A sepnding of Willpower causes this power to go into effect. Results vary from nothing at all happening, to the victim being shaken but unharmed physically, to losing willpower and having to defend against Rotschreck, to losing consciouness with willpower, to falling into catatonia for an hour and losing willpower, to becoming severely mentally incapacitated to the point of permanent gibbering idiocy. It can leave the victim with a random derangement, and can be temporary or permanent depending upon the severity of the victim's trauma.
Ignore the Searing Flames Fire no longer affects the Cainite, while this power is in use. It allows the vampire to shrug off the normal damaging effects of fire, natural and mystical in nature, even direct sunlight, though its cost in Blood points or Traits is high, three of them and a Willpower point or Trait as well.
LEVEL 7
*Summon the Herald of Hell (aka Summon the Hearald of Topeth) This power requires a one hour ritual, three blood points' expenditure and a human sacrifice. The Baali may then summon a lesser demon from Hell to do her bidding. Demons vary greatly in abilities and form, but will usually be built on something approximating the following statistics: Demons Attributes: 10/7/3 Abilities: 15 points worth Willpower: 8 Disciplines: 10 points worth, as well as a Fortitude of at least 3 and the ability to heal like a Lupine. Form can vary wildly-some demons are beautiful seductresses, others reptilian horrors. The demon may be summoned without the hour-long ritual or the sacrifice, but the Baali must spend six blood points and the demon will be uncontrolled-it may well decide to drag the Baali down to Hell with it for her temerity.
LEVEL 8
Contagion Not so much as a means of directed curse or control as a natural extension of faith, this power infects the very institutions and inhabitants of the Baali's surroundings with a pervading sense of gloom, despair, and malaise. Crime and violence soar; petty angers give rise to seething hatreds; local economies take a downward spiral; marriages end over trivial quarrels and the world, as the region's residents know it, becomes a nastier place in general. In the history of the Baali, entire towns and villages have been temporarily enslaved -- mindless armies yoked heart, strength and faith to an infernal master's will.
Great Curse This curse is more subtle than the Level Three power, and affects a much wider area. With this curse, the Baali afflicts an entire city or province with a feeling of gloom, despair and malaise. The more successes rolled on the Baali's Intelligence + Occult against a difficulty of 9, the greater the effect. Crime and violence soar, petty angers become seething hatreds, the economy takes a downward spiral, marriages break up over trivial causes, and the world just becomes a nastier place in general. Even Kindred organizations become more fractious and less efficient- thus, this power is ideal for undermining Camarilla power structures in a city. A successful use of Auspex 9 or above will enable the user to determine that there is a malevolent outside aura on the region affected; otherwise, the populace will simply assume that the times, they are a-changin'- for the worse.
LEVEL 9
Call the Great Beast This ritual takes four hours to cast and requires the sacrifice of 50 victims (Kindred or kine) with at least 4 Humanity each. One of the Great Demon Lords of the Netherworld will thereupon erupt from Hades; the details of this are always uncertain, but it is safe to say that such entities are more powerful than any Vampire, and that the world is in serious trouble.
LEVEL 10
*Open the Way While the other Houses prattle about the wars of the Antediluvians, the Baali have remained dedicated to a dark purpose: the release fo their lords and masters onto an unsuspecting earth. Open the Way is the method by which this unholy act might be enacted, and such is the might and depravity required to use this power that it has only been attempted thrice in all of history. Fortunately, all three attempts have failed. The past is of no moment to the Baali, however, as they maintain that such setbacks only postpone the inevitable. It will not be long, faithful Baali claim, before they release the ultimate darkness to ravage the face of the earth. Even though this power is in fact a normal power of the Discipline of Daimoinon, the intense formality of its use has become so that it is psychologically impossible to exercise this ability without an extensive ritual to "prepare" the Opener. In fact, this power would function perfectly well without the ritual, trappings and such, if there were a Baali who did not beleive in such, yet none among the Baali fail to believe in this, although other Cainites possessed of this Discipline perhaps do not believe in the trappings.