The Anarch Revolt

The Anarch Revolt

CHAPTER ONE: THE HISTORY OF THE ANARCH MOVEMENT As events unfolded, the words of the Toreador Rafael de Corazon echoed across European domains, calling upon Cainites to rally behind the banner of the Masquerade. Another voice sounded amid the rising chorus: the Ventrue Hardestadt, who called for the formation of a new society to be called the Camarilla. He asserted that the unity and strength this Camarilla offered were the only defense by which the Cainites would survive the Inquisition’s purges. Through its Traditions, enforced by an Inner Circle of elders and interpreted by the Princes of its domains, they would all weather the storm. moment Patricia diablerized the architect of the Camarilla.

This was the spark that ignited the powder keg, and fire lit up the night across Spain. Soon all of Europe would see what had happened. The revolt had begun.

The Anarch Revolt Accounts of the events unfolding spread across Spain with worrying swiftness like a contagion. In the wake of Hardestadt’s fall, a growing number of neonates raised their fists skyward, enraged by the murder of Galaric and determined to show their support for this burgeoning movement of those who would cast down the old tyrannies.

They turned their anger on the elders and began the bloodbath to end their oppression and to take power for themselves. If one neonate could diablerize an elder, why couldn’t others? No longer would they be the stepping stones on an elders’ road to power or the instruments of a liege’s success. They were Cainites, as were the elders, capable of the same ambitions, regardless of age. They had an equal claim to power and the right to do as they willed: the right of the Blood.

More than one defiant “Kindred” saw the Camarilla and the Masquerade as tools for the elders to solidify their control at the neonates’ expense, and many made a stand. The Brujah Galaric spoke his mind in opposition to the tyranny he believed the elders proposed, opening the old wounds of Carthage. Hardestadt ordered the assassination of Galaric to silence the firebrand, but the Brujah’s childe escaped and word of his martyrdom soon reached the ears of Patricia of Bolingbroke.

Patricia was a neonate who had led attacks against the English monarchy who embodied everything she despised, until she realized that such action could never topple the entire feudal system. She then fled to Spain, where she witnessed firsthand elders sacrificing their childer to the fires of the Inquisition. The assassination of Galaric spurred her into action. Alongside neonates left to meet the flames of the Society of Leopold by their Elders, Patricia stormed Hardestadt’s castle.

This revolt of the anarchic youth soon became a war of attrition. The unorganized fledglings fought with more zeal than strategy against the much more experienced elders and their innumerable minions. Bitter conflict consumed The Ventrue had nowhere to hide, so surprised was he at the audacity of these wretched whelps.

The toll of centuries — millennia! — of inequality came due in the the 15th century, and word traveled beyond Spain to the rest of Europe.

Vampires across Europe watched the plight of the Spanish neonates and drew parallels with their own existence under their own elders. Princes, following tried and tested ways, did what came naturally to them — they tightened their grip on their subjects to prevent them from rebelling. Individually, many domains stood as firm as Ivory Towers. Within those domains, though, many neonates felt a solidarity with the Kindred in Spain.

The elders of Clan Lasombra were no exception in their response. One, though, Gratiano de Veronese, took a different course. Reputedly the last childe of the Lasombra Antediluvian, he saw a chance to turn this popular movement toward his own ends. In secret, he gave the Anarchs the leadership and support they lacked.

His contributions were many: He organized them into cohesive groups across Spain, he established lines of communication to coordinate their efforts and spread the message of rebellion, and, most importantly, he travelled to the Balkans to secure the allegiance of the Assamite clan to aid the Anarch cause. The Assamites had long been moving across Europe one diablerie at a time in their spiritual quest to find their progenitor’s wisdom. Through the deal with Gratiano’s Anarchs, the Assamites earned the muscle of the rebellion and could call upon the master assassins. Both sides stood to benefit, and together they fought against the elders in Spain.

A half-century later, the revolt erupted in Italy as the Lasombra, led by Gratiano, rallied against their elders. Together with forces from the Brujah and the Assamites, Gratiano and the Lasombra fought their way to Sicily. Here, they broke the morale of the Lasombra elders by cutting the head from the snake itself: They followed the example of Patricia of Bollingbroke and diablerized the Lasombra Antediluvian.

At the same time, in Eastern Europe, the Tzimisce faced enemies from multiple directions. Their ancestral homelands were threatened from the west by Germany and the east by the Mongols, while the clan itself was losing the battle to fend off the growing influence of the Tremere.

Many elder Fiends, to their undoing, responded as other European elders had done when faced by the Inquisition: they hid and left their childer to die in their stead. As the slaughter grew, two Tzimisce neonates, Velya and Lugoj, made a monumental discovery: a ritual that could break blood bonds and unify those who partook in it. They called this ritual the Vaulderie, and the ties of comradeship it formed were known as Vincula. As word and practice of this ritual spread, young Fiends across Eastern Europe, no longer shackled by blood-bonds, took revenge against their former masters. While few had any sympathy for the Anarch Revolt proper, their timing would prove fortuitous.

Indeed, despite the Vaulderie being able to bring them together, many of the young Fiends acted alone. As insular as their Elders, they preferred to savor this vicious betrayal on their own terms. This predisposition later put them at ANARCHS UNBOUND odds with many of their eventual Anarch brethren, who acted together rather than alone. Distrust of the Fiends would fester as a significant number of surviving Tzimisce elders decided to join with the Anarchs —not to support their cause, but to save themselves.

In the closing decades of the 15th century, the young Fiends finally struck down their Antediluvian. Even with this great blow dealt against their oppressors, they still found their mortal and Cainite enemies closing in from all sides. With few options remaining, the Anarch Tzimisce headed toward Central and Western Europe to join their new brethren. After sharing the Vaulderie, the small pockets of Anarch resistance outside of Spain and Italy erupted into all-out war.

The unbound Anarchs saw all Cainites as either loyal to their nascent movement or to the elders. Such blackor-white perspective left no nuances for the Jyhad. The fighting escalated at an alarming rate. As the disorganized, uncontrolled conflict raged, mortals were soon caught in the crossfire, which earned the attention of the Society of Leopold.

History repeated itself. The elders retreated to their remote havens or sank into torpor, leaving the Anarchs exposed, and the Inquisition struck down all they found without mercy. While the Anarchs tried to forestall their impending doom, a Ventrue many thought had long since turned to dust returned: Hardestadt (or at least someone bearing his name). This time, amid the carnage of the Anarch Revolt and the fires of the renewed Inquisiton, his calls for the formation of a unifying Kindred organization were met with more receptive ears. In Vienna, his campaigning succeeded and the leaders of the major European clans came together to form the Inner Circle.

Together, they vowed to crush the Anarch Movement forever. The Camarilla was born.

After seven years of extermination by the Inquisition and the organized retaliation of the unified Camarilla, Hardestadt chose to formally undertake peace talks with the nominal leaders of the Anarch Movement. In 1493, the Anarch leaders travelled to Hampshire, England, to the Abbey of the Sacred Crown in the small village of Thorns, near Silchester. They came here fully aware of the cries of their brethren across Europe that many would rather fight to the death rather than return to subjugation, but rationally knew it was better to negotiate while they had some power left rather than later when they had none at all.

The peace talk that the Convention of Thorns offered was little more than a statement of surrender. By its terms, the Anarchs would submit themselves to elders’ authority under amnesty granted by the Camarilla, while the Assamites, for their part in the revolt, would be cursed by the Tremere in order to prevent a resurgence of their