By Arthur-Trevor D.M. Lasher, for the Sicariot sect.
"And it came to pass that the Son of the Morning Star said unto his Childer: 'Go hither into the Outer Darkness and cleave unto the Seed of Caine. They are thy get as thee are Mine. Succour them, for theirs is the Curse that Adonai hath seared upon their souls. Hold them to thy breast until Another comes to lead them through the fires of Gehenna and into Dominion.' " - The Canticle of the Ages 3:1-4 The Book of Thorns
Nickname: Thornites
Prophet
Zerubbabel had been beheaded by the Persians somewhere in the middle of the Third Century, BC. His crime was one of treason as his newly returned countrymen sought to crown him King of Israel after a long captivity in the loins of Babylon (now part of Cambyses' greater Persian Empire). The prince didn't remain in Sheol long, however.
Within seconds of the blade's descent, darkness swept across the land and the fallen prince's body erupted in ebon fire, starting a conflagration which ripped apart the prison complex and slew scores of men, prisoners and guardsmen alike. It is said that the earth wept at the touch of the flames and nothing ever grew their again. Today, the land where the lost complex stood lies in the middle of a salt lake west of the Iraqi city of Tikrit. Nothing is left of it.
When Zerubbabel awoke he was confronted by a great and terrible man, with electric blue skin and long ebon hair. He said His name was Abaddon the Destroyer and that He had chosen the prince to be the prophet of a new age, one which the prince would not see but could pave the way for...if he submitted to His will and open his mind to the Truth.
The prince, knowing that he should have been dead, agreed, thinking that Abaddon was simply an emissary of Elohim. Only later did he come to know how wrong he really was. By then, it was too late. He'd been Changed and was now the first Abaddonite.
The Prophet Zerubbabel spent the next three centuries criss-crossing the lands of the Middle East, planting seeds of the Truth as was told to him by Abaddon and others who would later come to minister unto him. Beings with names like Bael and Belial; Azazel and Mephistopheles; Asmodeus and Mashith; Astoreth and Sammael and many, many others.
Here he planted a Seed in Sinope, which would later bloom in the mind of a man named Marcion...
There he planted a Seed in Ctesiphon, where a prophet named Mani would find it...
The Arians, Monophysites, Montanists...all of them, Seeds of gnosis planted where the Childer of Abel could see and learn from them, in the hopes that they would be spared from the coming flames if only they knew... ..but only in vain. Heresies, all, they were called. Soon, belief in their knowledge fell and the only repository of such wisdom left, if only in fragmented form, was amongst the Childer of Caine. More specifically, in the age-old libraries and subterranean temples of Zerubbabel's progeny, the Abaddonites. Part of Zerubbabel's mission, to protect the Seed of Abel, was now further from realisation than ever. What was needed was retrenchment. A new beginning, perhaps, focusing solely on the salvation of the Seed of Caine who, it is hoped, would eventually shepherd their lesser cousins, the mortals, into a better life after Gehenna.
The Daggers
The prophet-prince was gone, though. None had seen him since shortly after the Carpenter's Son's birth. There was no one left to lead the small number of his descendants into the Dominion they had been promised, nor anyone to shepherd and warn the Childer of Abel from the horrors that were to come at the hands of others such as they. No one even to impart unto their own kind the gnosis needed to purify Caine's Childer in preparation for the Antediluvians' coming.
Soon, despair replaced the depression which had slowly been setting in since the moment the Abaddonites realised their prophet and sire was gone.
It was at this time that one of their youngest, Halikh bar Koziba, suggested a route to them all, a route which would become their defining event. There was a small faction of doomed warriors in his homeland of Judea, called the Sicariot. There these men sought, against all rational odds, to overthrow the existing regime and drive out the Roman legions, which had occupied their land for many decades. Soon, though, there would be nowhere left to hide and already those of elders in the Abaddonite Clan knew that their land would be enveloped in fire and all hope would be lost.
Halikh suggested welcoming them into the fold, giving the Sicarii the Dark Gift which had been bestowed upon the Abaddonites by Zerubbabel. There, the Sicarii would be able to channel their intense zeal in search of the Truth. They would become the driving force that the Abaddonites now lacked. In short, perhaps the saviours of the vampiric kind. If only they would accept...
Whether it was the words Halikh spoke to them, huddled around a fire against the chilly Judean nite, or a divine spark which ignited the gnosis from within, the miraculous happened. The Sicarii accepted the offer.
From that seminal event, both the Abaddonites and the Sicarii were forever changed. From what was once an infinitesimally small Clan of Kindred, no more than a dozen, grew a faith and, eventually, a sect. The Sicariot, reborn into Darkness, did indeed become the engine that Halikh foresaw and then some. They became the unholy warriors of Zerubbabel's progeny, the defenders of the faith. And, after a while, they sought out those of similar disposition and found their first converts.
From Faith to Sect
Up until this point, the distinction between Abaddonite and the faith they espoused was nil. Initially, the Sicarii clung to their Hebrew religion but as the decades passed many of them assimilated into the Clan fully. This process was accelerated when, as predicted by Halikh, the Temple was destroyed and Judea lost the first in a series of doomed revolts against Rome. Those Sicarii resisting assimilation were confronted with the painful thought that, perhaps, what their sires taught was Truth after all.
Shortly before the turn of the fifteenth century, contact was made with the first Clan foretold by Zerubbabel to eventually join the Abaddonite's purifying mission. Though it seemed clear that the Belialians were at least some of the Kindred the Prophet had spoken of, many Abaddonites--ironically, many of them Sicarii who had assimilated--resisted imparting their gnosis unto the Childer of Belial. After long debate, the vast majority of the Sicarii were able to plead the case of the Belialians and, for the first time, another Clan was taken into the faith. A sect was born.
Over the centuries, the sect became known after the men who'd helped bring it into being: the Sicariot. The Abaddonites' faith unified them; whomever joined be- came a disciple of the teachings of the Dark Ones, as espoused by Zerubbabel.
The faith, itself, became highly structured. The head of the Thornites, the Antipater, would eventually establish himself underneath what was then the imperial capital: Constantinople. As the city was mercilessly bore down on by the Islamic Seljuk Turks, the Antipater emotionlessly sat deep beneath the Bosphorus, his every word waited upon by loyal supplicants. Descending from him was an uncanny replication of the episcopacy used by the Seed of Abel. Some Sicarii scholars say the Abaddonites merely mimicked what they saw, while others insist that their institutions were ground in the words of the Prophet, himself...you simply needed the correct gnosis to see it properly and in the correct context.
Growth
For a hundred years after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, the Sicariot consisted of two Clans. The Abaddonites were the priests, ministering unto their footsoldiers, the Belialians, who provided the bulk of the expeditions the Unholy See was constantly sending out to retrieve lost caches of written wisdom the Prophet Zerubbabel was alleged to've spread across the Earth. The time for canonisation had come and the Book of Thorns was reaching the point of closure. All that was needed were all the pieces.
During this timeframe, the Belialians came in contact with the Azazelians, a paltry Clan of Kindred in the Indus river valley. Under constant and vigorous attack by the Baali from the west and intermittently from the mysterious Gaki in the east, this Clan was in danger of becoming extinct. Pitying them, and convinced that they were one of the Nine Lost Lines of Caine--like themselves and the Abaddonites--the Childer of Belial approached the Unholy See and all but begged for intervention...and were rebuffed out of hand.
The Antipater was not sure of the Belialians' lineage and it would be another two centuries (three Antipaters later) before the Azazelians were eventually admitted.
Union
Eurasia had changed in the intervening centuries. Chaos was everywhere. The Anarch Rebellion and the Inquisition tore a wide swath across Christianised Europe and the Ottoman Turks sat astride an unsettled Balkan empire where Byzantium once ruled. Sects formed, lines were drawn and Kindred was turned against his brother.
The Sicariot saw no place for themselves in the New Order, though their sympathies clearly lied with the anarchs, who now called themselves the Sabbat. It is said this sympathy came not from any intrinsic ideological affinity but stemmed from a chance encounter between the Antipater and the Malkavian Antitribu prophetess Vasantasena. A fragment of the alleged conversation, found in Hyderabad, documents the profound effect she had on the Thornite pontifex...
"'And I saw a string of crimson pearls, held high over the mouth of the Old One. And he plucked them one by one from the string and did consume them,' she said.
'What is this ye speak of?' the Unholy Father asked, amazed at her vision.
'I speak of the End. I speak of Gehenna,' she replied.
And immediately a gail rushed through the antechamber, blowing out the candles and filling the room with dust. The Cardinals assembled cowered in their corners and feared for their unlives.
And as the dust settled and vision cleared, all in the antechamber saw that the Antipater had been enlightened. Slowly, forcefully, he nodded. He knew the Truth of what she spoke." - Fragment of Tidings verses 23-31 The Book of Thorns
In the New World, where they had fled the Convention of Thorns finalising the failure of the Anarch Rebellion, the Sabbat could not maintain cohesion and the Age of Chaos continued its path of destruction across the ages as the First Sabbat Civil War raged. Clearly, now was not the time fort he Sicarii to involve themselves in the affairs of a sect that might not see the morrow, no matter how close to the Truth they might be. Self-preservation, so much a factor as Assamites and eastern Kindred began encroaching on their core lands, kicked in. The Sicarii, for all intents and purposes, faded from the scene for decades, leaving their Kindred brethren to internecine warfare as they sought to protect what little they could muster.
Following the end of the Sabbat's first civil war, the entire landscape of that sect had changed. The force which had kept them from hopeless fragmentation, the Black Hand, was now suspect. Always there just in time to avert disaster but never there when large gains were on the brink, the Hand had now engaged the curiosity and, eventually, fear of the highest levels of the Sabbat.
It was at this time that synchronicity--or was it divine guidance?--took over. A whispered fear from the Regent to a Templar of the Nephilim Bloodline led to a discussion with the Abaddonite Patriarch of Phrygia. One thing led to another.
The Nephilim wanted only security for their Bloodline. They could achieve that only by securing their place within the Sabbat. The Abaddonites (and their Belialian compatriots) wanted both a way to stem the encroachment of others into their lands and the respite to continue their almost desperate search for gnosis. The Regent wanted a counter-weight to the Hand, who was now not-so-above suspicion. Everyone found what they wanted in the Treaty of Union, signed in 1755. The Nephilim would be brought into the Sicariot and the Sicarii would become a subsect within the Sabbat, the Regent's own private strike force, who answered to no one save he or she. The Nephilim would feel secure, the Regent would be reassured and the encroachments into traditional Sicarii lands (the Balkans, mostly, but eventually portions of India as the Azis were brought in) would be halted by the weight of the Sabbat whenever possible.
Post-Union
Initially, the Sicarii would toe the party line and they became some of the most fervent of Sabbat. During the various attempts to lay a beach-head on Africa or Asia, the Sicarii stood by the Regent when others muttered at the paucity of results.
Slowly, though, the Sicariot rebuilt their autonomy. No one is really certain whose decision it was to start distancing themselves from the Regent but for certain it occurred within the last sixty years. Traditional Sicarii-held areas were soon cut off to non-Sicarii intrusion. Even fellow sect-mates -- other Sabbat Clansmen -- were not allowed entry or transit. Dark mutterings against the Lasombra began, especially during the reign of the most recent Regent who, ironically, was the only non-Lasombra to hold that post and was a Tzimisce.
Fealty remained though and, sometimes, it exceeded the expectations of even the Sicarii themselves.
When New York City tottered on the edge and victory was assured, Black Hand support suddenly faded. The Hand simply didn't engage with the same ferocity they normally would have. The Regent wasted no time and called in the Sicarii in what would be their finest hour. In the weeks to come, as the Big Apple fell, Sicarii packs lashed out with vigour and speed that reminded many old-time sect members of the way the Hand used to be. Baelites, in particular, laid waste to Camarilla holdings and took sadistic glee in ravaging the megalopolis' Primogen.
The aftermath of the the siege though saw an even starker polarisation beginning to shape. As the Loyalist movement grew and the Thornites looked for new allies within the sect, the impossible was contemplated: coup. The Antipater had determined that the Lasombra were riddled with Infernalists, hence, heretics of the worst kind. Perhaps it was that Clan's heresy which had troubled the Hand and led it to conspiracy, perhaps it was always that way. No one knew. What was known, though, was that the Thornites were reaching a climax.
A religious decision had been made to stamp out heresy before Gehenna arrived. Enough gnosis had been found to justify a secret edict by the present Antipater, Baphomet IV, to close the process of canonisation. Redaction and compilation of the Book of Thorns was complete. Orthodoxy, once a distant goal and easily dispensed with to justify co-operation with other Sabbat Clans, was now to be enforced. A massive effort to convert those who could be trusted would now be undertaken. Afterwards, it was believed, Gehenna would come, followed closely by the Demiurge. Judgement for all.
Thornite belief is basically reworked early gnosticism with a heavy syncretic layer of accrued practices that have been grafted to the faith over the course of 2300 or so years.
Creation
Belief begins with the dualistic notion that the universe was formed by the interaction of two co-equal pre-existent beings called Adonai and Lucifer. One, Adonai, had influence over the spirit while the other, Lucifer, was the lord of matter and material being.
Initially, the Two were extremely close, being the only two of their kind, and they sought to fashion others of their nature for companionship. No avail. In despair, Lucifer left Adonai and travelled the universe they had created in search of knowledge.
Meanwhile, Adonai had successfully managed an act of creation independent of His "sibling", an act which heralded the coming of the angels. As companions, however, they were not as Adonai expected, and were, instead, automatons, devoid of an independent will. They were simply sycophants.
Lucifer returned after his long travels, excited and eager to tell his "brother" what He had learned on his journey. He was greeted by what He considered the starkest of betrayals: the archangel Mik-el.
Adonai, clearly not seeing his "sibling's" distress, showed off His new creations: Rapha-el, Gabri-el and the afore- mentioned Mik-el. He was hoping for congratulations and instead got condemnations. A violent argument then ensued, with Lucifer accusing Adonai of hiding His capa- bilities and not bothering to attempt to contact his "brother" after the angels were created. Lucifer felt alone and rejected. Adonai did not have the chance to explain about the angels' imperfection. The Son of the Morning Star, enraged and hurt, left Adonai's company for Earth, never to set eyes on His "brother" again.
But solitude and the happiness He thought it would bring was not to be. Instead, Lucifer found that Adonai had not stopped with angels. From the formerly lifeless ball of matter Lucifer had created, Adonai had instilled a spark of life. Animals roamed vast forests and fish and great marine beasts swam in the seas and oceans. Lucifer was crushed. Desirous of revenge and blistering in His anger, Lucifer sought out a beast of the field and rose it up, working upon its form until it most resembled Himself. Then He released the beast--now called Man--back into the fields from whence it came. He then created a perfect partner for Man, taking meticulous care to fashion it well. He called His newest creation Lilith and, after He was finished, He released her to seek out Man so that they could spread their kind across the world Adonai had sought to make His. Satisfied that He had found a way to reinject His influence on what Adonai had corrupted, Lucifer went on His way.
The Fall
After a period of time, Lucifer returned and found that Man had not taken to Lilith and, in fact, had rejected her. He was enraged once more, blaming Adonai for originating this disaster.
Lucifer then went to Man and made him another companion, this time one suited for the man's every whim. It was with disgust that he saw the Man take to the Woman so easily and Lucifer vowed to see the Man fall. Which, indeed, happened when Lucifer seduced the pair into tasting of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. That wasn't the way it was planned, though.
Lucifer had expected Man and Woman to become as Adonai and He were: self-aware and divine in nature. He was only half correct. Divinity did not follow and Adonai, who'd planted the Tree, was outraged by Lucifer's actions. He banished Man and Woman and cursed Lucifer from afar. Lucifer, for His part, transferred His rage to His creations and sought, once more, to harm them.
Man knew Woman and thence begat Caine and, later, Abel. Unbeknowest to both the mortals and the immortals, with sentience came murderous jealously and rage. When Adonai refused the worship of Caine (it is alleged that Caine only reluctantly worshipped Adonai and preferred Lucifer), Caine rose up and slew his brother in rage.
Adonai, now fully engaged in the mortals' lives, would have struck down Caine at that moment had it not been for the intercession of Lucifer. A compromise was sought and found. Caine was be cursed and would be forever barred from other mortals, separated from his own kind by the blood he'd shed.
The Nephilim
Lucifer wept for His fallen childe, even though He knew He held a part in his Fall. He sought to soothe Caine's bitter feelings and summoned Lilith to help comfort the new being which now hunted in the night.
Over time, the two became close and Lucifer was pleased. Caine knew Lilith and begat a son, Enoch. Soon, joy returned to his life and he went about building a city, naming it after his beloved child. Happiness, though, was forbidden to Caine.
Adonai, watching Caine build, summoned Mik-el to Him and whispered a command to the archangel. Within moments, the being had swept down on the settlement, capturing Lilith and Enoch and rising off before Caine had a chance to react.
Mik-el was commanded to fling Caine's family into the highest mountains, far away from the men's settlements. This the archangel did, unwittingly launching the birth of the Bloodline Nephilim, the lost brood of Caine and Lilith.
Back at his hovel, Caine bitterly wept over his fate and set out to find companionship. What he found were three men...and the rest is history.
The War of the Ages
The forces of Adonai and Lucifer squared off for thousands of years as nations and empires rose up, combatted and were crushed into the sands from whence they came.
In the realms beyond ours, angelic legions and daemonic regiments clashed with violence the likes of which the Earth has never seen.
Religion and politics became the new tools as both powers realised that the forces They had unleashed would not so easily be quashed. Now hearts and minds were the goal. But They were too equally matched and stalemate was always the result, no matter how hard the expenditure.
The Void
Recently, however, the forces of Adonai have suffered serious setbacks. The faiths He spawned are losing their vigour and the nations He burnished are faltering. Lucifer was confounded. Could it be His "brother" was weakening? The truth would never be known. Lucifer set off to find out what had happened to His eternal combattant and has yet to return. A vacuum in both camps' leadership has formed.
In His absence, the Dark Ones were instructed to pay particular attention to the Childer of Caine and to watch over them at all costs. They were told to gather together a selected group of Clans and impart unto them the Truth. Not the truth that Adonai imparted unto Moshe or the prophets that followed, but the unvarnished Truth, including His role in the Fall and the subsequent War that followed.
The Dark Ones were flabbergasted as they watched their commander and creator leave them in search of His old enemy. They argued and fought over whom to impart His wisdom to. And then, quite by accident, a prince of no particular import was struck down for accepting the crown of his people, an act which enraged the prince's imperial masters. Taking advantage of the situation, the Dark One named Abaddon swept down to the Earth, having found his prophet-to-be...and the rest was history.
Gehenna
The End of Days is coming. There are those of the Seed of Caine who are corrupt and evil. They have committed the same sin as their antecedent and slain their brothers in a great war that followed the Deluge. For this, they have gained the eternal condemnation of all.
The Antediluvians, as they are called, are now in hiding or in torpor. Coming soon, however, they will rise up and seek out their progeny in a gluttenous orgy of cannibalistic rage. In order to prevent the entire line of Caine from becoming extinct--and, afterwards, His other creation, the Canaille--, Lucifer has promised a saviour, the Demi-urge or Iniquitus, who will stave off the Antediluvians with the help of those of True Faith.
Victory comes at a price, though. Enough Cainites who follow the words of the Prophet Zerubbabel must be at Gehenna and of the purest of intentions, else the Antediluvians will win and all will be lost.
Jyhad, then, for the Thornites, takes on a *whole* new meaning. For them, it's as much a cleansing of impurities as it is the eternal war between the Ancients and their get.
Thornites are of a scholarly bent by nature. Very nearly all of them have a current copy of the Book of Thorns and most of them have memorised several passages. Make no mistakes: they are fantatics, however smoothe and easy-going they might seem around unbelievers.
Those who follow the Path of Thorns are also tend to be a tad paranoid. Their admixture of militarism, fanatical millennialism and secrecy tends to bring out the worst in others at times. They won't preach, but they will engage in debate over ideals and legends. If they are soundly defeated in such a debate, the argument lapses and the topic will never be brought up again by them (ie: you've blown your chance at the post-Gehenna Dominion, baby.).
Thornites study ancient languages, theology, logic, philosophy and politics (!) in heavy measures. Those of the more militant bent (Baelites) also study voracious the various martial arts.
Common Abilities: Archaeology, Enigmas, History, Languages, Leadership, Occult, Philosophy, Research and Theology.
Preferred Disciplines:Dominate and Presence (for scholarly types) or Potence, Fortitude, and Celerity (for physical types).
Path of Caine: They are strong in their faith and would make fine additions to the converted...but we cannot accept their almost mindless pursuit of diablerie at the expense of true knowledge. Of what good is vitae if one is ignorant of why it is there?
Path of Cathari: The Albigensians are perhaps the closest to the True Faith. They understand well the lessons once taught by the Prophet Zerubbabel, especially regarding the nature of duality in the universe.
That having been said, though, they are corrupted. Sadly, their beliefs are descended not from the purest of gnosis, but the influences and emanations of the false prophet, Mani. We are eternally ashamed that we could not harvest them before their gnosis was corrupted by Canaille belief. Honour demands that we make amends by attempt to dissuade them of their heresy.
Path of Death and the Soul: Death, in and of itself, is as pointless as life. Only the foolish look for gnosis in the bowels of the morgue. They remind me of the Giovanni far far too much...
Path of Evil Revelations: Damnable heretics! It is they who have grasped the very heart of our kind and squeezed it to fill their voracious appetites. They serve powers that have no interest in them and do not understand -- or, worse, do not care -- that they bring down damnation upon us all with their deeds.
Path of Harmony: They have no respect for the Dark Gift they have been given. I do not wish to ever again be a mortal. My purpose in life is to lead Kindred and Kine alike to Dominion. The Harmonists would have us rejoin the apes and play in the forest.
Path of Honourable Accord: Do we not all follow this road in some way? Why is it that the Canonici feel they have a monopoly on honour? Arrogant in extremis.
Path of Lilith: I...I have nothing to say about these.
Path of Paradox: What madness is this? From where do they gather their proof? Give it to me! I want book, chapter and verse! You cannot? Well then why are you wasting my time! They are heretics!
Path of the Scorched Heart: Is this what the Lesson of Caine taught us? Sterile, emotionless and, in the end, damned. The Unforgiven are aptly named, for the Antediluvians will surely sup on their vitae.
Path of Self-Focus: They are a confusing lot, mixing gnosis with plain insight. Perhaps they do have a measure of Truth in them...but the Book of Thorns requires purity of Truth. If we cannot reconcile ourselves with our fallen Cathari brothers, we cannot give in to the Internalists.
Path of Typhon: Tell me what distinguishes them from Infernalists, eh? Nothing.
| Path Rating | Minimum Wrongdoing for a Path Roll |
| 10 | Failure to spend less than an hour per night on contemplation of gnosis (to the best of your incomplete knowledge). |
| 9 | Failure to pursue all leads to a cache of knowledge. |
| 8 | "Allowing" yourself to be defeated by a non-Sicarii brother (you've no excuse for failure but to a heretic...?). |
| 7 | Fighting amongst your Thornite brother or sister. |
| 6 | Failure to follow a lead to the remaining Lost Lines of Caine. |
| 5 | Failure to observe absolution rites (normally done once a year, similar to the Cathari's consolamentum) |
| 4 | Failure to challege (monomacy) those who've dishonoured you. |
| 3 | Dishonouring a clergyman of the Thornite faith. |
| 2 | Dishonouring your packmate |
| 1 | Breaking an oath. |