Bahari Lore

Who was Lilith? Few ask the question, mortal or not. Some say she was the haughty first wife of the first man, who took off to consort with demons because of a conflict rooted in a gendered and sexual inequality. Or, she was the victimized first wife of the first man, who ran to the darkness beyond Eden for safety.

In the medieval period, new versions of her story leapt into being, with one among others capturing the imaginations of many. Created by the debates of holy men and a satirist, it would prove to be the one that dug deepest. Lilith was the first wife, and Eve was the second.

Lilith and Adam quarreled from the day they met, and Lilith grew tired of it. She used a secret name of their Creator to whisk herself away to safety. When mothers put amulets on their babies to ward off Lilith, they were warding off a woman whose rage was eternal, who would take all children in the night, and leave them dead. To kill the children of Adam and Eve was to strike back at their shared Creator, to unmake parts of a world that had been set in motion long, long ago. Despite the powers ascribed to her, there was almost something human to her pain and hate. In other tales Lilith is confronted by angels and stakes her claim on the lives of newborns. She becomes a consort of the Angel of Death, and evolves into a figure of powerful evil, one connected to a violent, roiling world beyond that of the average mortal; one that was terrifying, but perhaps necessary for existence to have the meaning that it does. Perhaps, if Lilith sits upon her throne, she will not come down into the night, and take more than just newborn babies. In each myth, intermixed, the smallest seeds of the truth can be found by the determined reader. There is something almost human to her pain, and hate, but also to her love, and her grief. She does not simply access a world beyond the mundane human reality, she is part of it. For a time, she was the lover of an angel. In all her grief, she has had only herself to rely on.

Lilith is loyal to herself. She is self-assured, she is above human morality, and she possesses a power and sexuality utterly alien to many, even some of the Bahari. She is self-sustaining and resists heaven, Caine, and humankind, century after century. She is power, and knowledge. And she is a scapegoat, for humans and Cainites alike, for their fears and their desires. Her story has been passed back and forth between the children of Adam and Eve, and her own children. It is not pure, nor is it untouched by the hands of men, uninfluenced by those who do not know her revelations. Those who follow her know that without question, they will die. They will know fear and be forced past it, their bodies sent past the breaking point. They will suffer greatly for understanding and to protect each other. They are dedicated to bringing about the goals of the Dark Mother, and these are their reasons for living.

What is Lilith, is the most important question. She is the voice heard in the dark apartment, when no one else is present. The fragment of a song that obsesses but seems to come from nowhere. Dreams of blood-filled trees or the full to bursting belly gorged on food and blood, before the bed is ripped apart. The mother wailing and rocking the bodies of her dead children. A woman whose garden has been burned to the ground. All of the Bahari must know loss in their time. Physical and psychic pain. The role of a feast in the night. The role of being the feast in the night. To worship her is to be a fragment of her, to feel pain and crave vengeance.

The many Gardens of the Bahari have their own feelings about what parts of the scriptures or satires or scholarly treatises of mortals have captured an inkling of the Dark Mother. Each Garden has as many opinions of the Revelations and rituals as a pomegranate has seeds.

Stories about the Dark Mother are like holding a fistful of writhing snakes. The observer may see the storm, air, flight, angels, night, light, lovers, loss, desert, birth, sea, thorns, violation, magic unimaginable — and by that point they will be bitten and die.

From Canaan, Babylon, and Israel, the myths of Lilith traveled from people to people, carrying with them both error and truth about her and the Bahari alike. Even then, the cult carried within it a mix of Lhaka, humans, and mages. When the Babylonians said the night-demons of the air were women and men, once human, angry at the living, they were unaware of how much truth was in their belief. In this period of human and Cainite history, the recruitment of new Cainites was rare compared to later periods, and the Lhaka of the time were frequently of lineages that, while not old enough to have come from the Garden over which Lilith wept when it was destroyed, were still old. Those among the Bahari of antiquity who may have sprung closer to Lilith’s blood kept their own counsel, and no oral or written documentation of their number has been found. While Jewish folklore was early to adopt discussion of Lilith, this pursuit of understanding her nature and binding her power made its way to Christianity. Where lilins once skated under the notice of Greco-Roman mystery cults and the Cainites haunting the halls of Greek and Roman power, the rise of the Christian Church brought a new threat to their nights. Where the children of Caine represented both danger and secret enmity, the Christian empire brought with it fervent prosecution of witchcraft, and a weaponized fight against demons.

Modern Nights

The need the world has for the Bahari is ever-growing, at least according to the lilins.

For every pain someone suffers, there is the chance at renewed purpose, or deep insight. There is no fear of death, or final death. In a world that seems increasingly desperate and chaotic, the bloody hand that tilts up someone’s chin to tell them the suffering are seen is a powerful one. The lilins spread a truth craved by those paralyzed by grief and pain. In the beginning, Lilith was there, and Lilith was repeatedly betrayed, and they can attain vengeance for Lilith. The suffering that lilins spread feels like a substitute for the justice they will never have. To the new Bahari of the brutal modern world, the worship of Lilith is not only transgressive, but serves as a shadow faith against all human faith, a shadow nation against the children of Caine. It is an unholy time, and the Bahari of the world walk through blood and thorns on their way to the ocean, to hasten the waters’ rise.

They are playing a dangerous game in war zones around the world, operating under the noses of thrill-seeking members of the Camarilla and their enemies, seeking to both lift up would-be lilins from the bloodshed and strike down the children of Caine.

Chicago

The Bahari of Chicago used to keep their presence in the city close to their hearts, but in recent years, more and more mortals and kindred have joined their ranks. Currently led by the toreador Erzuli and the Nosferatu Edith Beaubien, their garden takes root downtown at an establishment known as The Painted Lady, a tattoo shop for exclusive mortal and kindred patrons that acts as a front for a BDSM dungeon that serves as both a temple and recruitment grounds for the Cult.

The cult has gained enough notoriety in the city that they do not need to hide their presence anymore, but Erzuli's carelessness has begun attracting the wrong kind of attention. Unknown to most, in the mid 2010s, Erzuli and the local Bahari discovered the location of the Tremere Chantry in Milwaukee after words that Carna and her followers had abandoned it. They proceeded to raid it and have been using the knowledge they have since acquired to study the secrets of Blood Sorcery. ( Members of the Bahari may pick Blood Sorcery as an out of clan discipline at creation )