To those on the Path of Thorns, Lilith is a fantastic philosophical concept and her dogma makes sense on a purely academic level. She may be real, but that matters less than the grand experiment her philosophy suggests. They take their study of the faith very seriously, but ground it in the real world. Emotional hardships are fine and good, but the practical expression of physical pain can be studied and quantified, and that is far more interesting than subjective concepts of growth and torment. Hidden in the flesh is wisdom. Hidden in the mud is wisdom. Wisdom can be written down and taught as well as it can be tattooed on bare sensitive skin.
The strangeness in the path comes from its relationship with alchemy. From alchemical research, the path rejects the idea that Caine or Lilith alone created vampires (and the truth), but rather were a unified force of creation. They also see the Second and Third Generations are a completely failed experiment, and that the Antediluvians should be destroyed simply to encourage the Mother/Father to start again from scratch.
The Path is one of the more organized cults among the Bahari. They gather in secret once or twice a year in as great a number as they can manage. These meetings, or Sabbaths, are opportunities for the practitioners to test their physical and intellectual limits by exposing themselves to suffering, fire, and even sunlight to test their theories and prove their force of will.
Additional Ethics
- Wisdom alone does not suffice. Intelligence is also required.
- Creation should be built on careful study. Raw creation is never as good as carefully crafted beauty or horror.
- Do not seek students. They should come to you, destroyed and begging.
| Level of Sin | Description |
| 1* | Feeding immediately when hungry; joining any community of fools |
| 1 | Ignoring one of Lilith’s faces |
| 2 | Rejecting or dismissing the suffering of others; cruelty for its own sake |
| 3 | Accepting a student (formal or informal) the first time they come to you; destroying a thinking being |
| 4 | Not seeking out the teachings of Lilith |
| 5 | Shunning pain; putting the learning of another before your own |
*: only for someone with Road rating of 6