Revolution by Other Means
As the Red Question evolved from a manifesto into a movement, its members and affiliates continued to refine their computer-related Disciplines and rituals. Importantly, members of the Red Question generally do not know any of the other members outside of their own coteries, as anonymous handle-based posting is a requirement on all of their forums. The group also became more aggressively contemptuous of the other vampire sects and their anachronistic dogmas. The year 2004 saw the debut of the “The Book of Don,” a vampire blog that satirically mocked both the Book of Nod and the various Gehenna cults that believed in it. Aside from what some orthodox Sabbat elders considered seditious libel against Caine, the blog was most notable for debuting the Red Question’s latest technomantic innovation, a ritual-program called “Bloodspot,” which functioned as a user-friendly blog client but which caused its pages to appear as nothing but “File Not Found” error pages unless the reader was Kindred.
Now, it was no longer even necessary for the reader to possess Auspex to access data hidden on the Internet.
The Bloodspot program automatically identified readers as Kindred or not, and only the former were capable of perceiving the blog’s true nature.
For the first several years of its semi-public existence, the members of the Red Question and their affiliates carefully maintained an attitude of breezy humor combined with some pointed commentary on the foibles of elder Kindred. Nor were Camarilla elders the sole object of mockery. Young, tech-savvy Sabbat vampires found their inboxes filled with juicy rumors about the peccadilloes of prominent Bishops and Archbishops, while Anarchs up and down the West Coast were amused by a mass email entitled “My Dinner With Salvador,” a vicious parody of Salvador Garcia’s “Anarch Manifesto” reimagined as a love letter from a gawky teenaged girl to her imaginary boyfriend who died tragically during the Spanish Civil War.
Initially, the tone of each Red Question missive was gently mocking, even when it exposed dangerous secrets held by the elders of all sects — Anarchs included. This tone was deliberate and carefully practiced, and each major communiqué was carefully vetted by Licks as experienced in PR and psychology as they were in computer science. The vampires of the Red Question knew from firsthand experience what their elders were like, and their provocations were deliberately intended to trigger what would seem to be a wildly disproportionate response to the average neonate. In early 2006, they got their wish.
ANARCHS UNBOUND Two separate Justicars sent out missives to Princes across the world denouncing Anarchs Unbound as sedition to be suppressed by any means necessary, and numerous Princes and Archbishops announced that they would punish any Kindred found “consorting” with the Red Question. The Tremere Regent of London executed three Tremere fledglings simply for practicing Technomancy rituals disseminated through Red Question mailings. In Chicago, Bobby Weatherbottom was threatened with a blood hunt for his vocal support for the Red Question, while in Manhattan, the Nosferatu were outraged when the Camarilla Inner Circle demanded that they turn over complete control of ShreckNet to the Ventrue Justicar for “security purposes.” Similar harsh responses were made by various Sabbat elders and Anarch Barons, lending credence to accusations that the elders of the various sects had greater loyalty to vampires of their own age and to the sectarian institutions to which they had become devoted than to the rights and dignity of their own sect mates. As one Red Question post put it: “No matter what sect you belong to, the revolution has already been bought and sold.”
As intended, the disproportionate reaction led to widespread sympathy for the Anarch cause from younger Kindred offended by the response. Then, when the Camarilla’s suppression campaign was at its height, the Red Question sprang its trap. On August 8, 2007, a terse message arrived electronically to each of the Camarilla Justicars via untraceable means: “We have noted your response to our pursuit of liberty, independence, and free will for all members of the Cainite race. Tomorrow, you shall have our rebuttal.” The following day, BNP Paribas, a prominent French banking concern, informed three hedge funds that they would not be permitted to withdraw funds due to “a complete evaporation of liquidity.” Other banks followed, quickly triggering a panic among investors in Europe and the United States. By September of 2008, most of the Western world was in the grip of the Great Recession, the worst global financial crisis since the end of the Great Depression in the 1930’s.
To the kine, the Great Recession was the foreseeable result of greed, lack of regulation, and human stupidity.
The Camarilla knows better. Its investigation shows that the crash, which risked totally collapsing most Western economies, was somehow engineered by the Red Question.
Many of the banks that collapsed due to lack of liquidity were actually victims of computer hacking intended to manipulate each bank’s ledgers and asset sheets so as to hide how overextended the bank was. Furthermore, many of the bank officials themselves show signs of having been mentally influenced into making their most disastrous Readers will notice that this history of the Anarch Movement omits some events detailed in other Vampire: The Masquerade titles. This is deliberate. The books in question, most importantly Nights of Prophecy and Guide to the Anarchs, addressed the status of the Anarch Movement within the context of an imminent Gehenna. As such, they made significant alterations to the Anarch status quo in keeping with a setting in which a global Apocalypse was already in progress. For Storytellers who wish to address possible outcomes for those books (regardless of whether those outcomes ever occur), here are the previously published facts heretofore excluded from this chapter. Feel free to incorporate or ignore them as you wish.
The Anarch Free States: The Red Question’s critique of the L.A. Free States is essentially accurate. Jeremy MacNeil’s obstinate refusal to establish any kind of governance for the Anarchs of L.A. beyond anarchomutualism ultimately renders the city’s Kindred incapable of defending itself against the Cathayans. The Fall of L.A. begins with a decapitation strike against MacNeil, who is removed from the board along with most of his closest allies. The turncoat Garcia surrenders his Barony in exchange for status in the Cathay’s New Promise Mandarinate. He insists that by the time he turned the battle was already hopeless and he merely wished to prevent further bloodshed, but many surviving Anarchs consider him anathema and openly accuse him of betraying MacNeil to his Final Death.
San Diego: The Red Question is even more accurate in its assessment of Tara, who uses the Cathayan invasion to purge her court of all rivals before declaring San Diego to be a Camarilla domain. The Camarilla, in turn, lavishes resources on her as a bulwark against Anarchs, Cathayans, and Sabbat alike. But her betrayal ultimately avails her nothing. When Gehenna comes, she is one of the first Princes to fall.
Justicar Petrodon of Clan Nosferatu: The Justicar most openly hostile to the Anarch Movement is assassinated in his Seattle haven not long before the fall of the Free States. No one ever claims responsibility, though Anarchs, naturally, take the blame. His childe and lead archon, Cock Robin, succeeds him as Justicar and is even more oppressive to the Anarch Movement than his sire.
Baba Yaga: The ancient Nosferatu hag, the true reason for the fall of the Soviet Brujah Council, continues to rule Russia with an iron talon... until the Niktuku come for her in the form of a hideous little girl from an ancient fairy tale who was Embraced when the world was young. The death of one of the greatest monsters of both folktale and fact passes almost without comment among the understandably distracted Western Kindred, an early and cryptic event amidst the carnage of Gehenna.
CHAPTER ONE: THE HISTORY OF THE ANARCH MOVEMENT