Sunday, April 19, 2020

An analysis of Anarchs in Vampire: The Masquerade

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    Vampire: The Masquerade is one of the top three most successful tabletop roleplaying games of all time with its only rivals being Dungeons and Dragons as well as Call of Cthulhu. It has been adapted to television, video games, and also a large selection of books. The premise is that you are a vampire, a damned creature of the night, and are living in the modern day behind the scenes. It predates the genre of urban fantasy and may have helped inspire many of the current successful series that are being published around the world. Certainly, it was an influence along with works like Blade and Anne Rice on my own supernatural novels.

    One of the primary conflicts in the game is the War of Ages that is the conflict between Elders and Neonates. The older a vampire becomes, the stronger a vampire becomes. The stronger vampires thus do their best to oppress the younger vampires because they are potential rivals and also because they might threaten the Masquerade that protects them all. Another conflict is the rivalry between the three primary sects of vampires in the setting: the Camarilla, the Sabbat, and the Anarchs. The Camarilla exists to preserve the power of its elder leadership as well as protect the existence of vampires from discovery, the Sabbat exists to fight an apocalyptic war against ancient puppetmasters they see everywhere, and the Anarchs exist to fight both. But why? What do the Anarchs fight for?

The Brujah have always been the Anarchs' heart.
     The Anarchs are one of the less detailed sects of the setting and have only been made the second most powerful sect of the setting by Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition. They have an important history in the game, however, and the Sabbat is actually a militant offshoot of their first incarnation. The First Anarch Revolt began in 1395 with the death of 5th generation Ventrue Hardestadt the Elder at the hands of the Brujah Tyler. This inciting incident occurred in the backdrop of the Papal Inquisition destroying countless vampires and the Elders freely sacrificing their childer to protect themselves. Later, the Lasombra and Tzimisce would successfully destroy most of their Elders with the assistance of the Banu Haqim. This would apparently include their Antediluvians or founders.

    The motivations for the First Anarch Revolt are surprisingly clear: the tyranny of the Elders. Supplements for Vampire: The Dark Ages and the Transylvania Chronicles shows that the freedoms of younger vampires were almost nonexistent. A pyramid of Blood Bonds and social control meant that sires had almost absolute control over their childer up to and including the Final Death. The rites of Accounting and Destruction meant that Elders could call for the death of their offspring the way Princes used to. Actual wars would be fought between regions with the Omen War between the Tzimisce as well as Tremere being one particular conflict, followed by another between the Tzimisce and Ventrue. The Inquisition had been turned on vampires due to a combination of Lasombra overreach in influencing the church, Elders attempting to use Inquisitors against their enemies, and the machinations of Goratrix in turning Philip the Fair against the Knights Templar in 1314.

    Conventional wisdom holds the First Anarch Revolt was failure with the surrender of its leadership during the Convention of Thorns during 1493. It is also the beginning of the Sabbat with the refusal of a substantial number of leaders that formed their own sect with the massacre of nearby Silchester. The First Anarchs either ceased to exist or became Sabbat. I disagree with this interpretation for multiple reasons. In my opinion, the Anarch Movement was semi-successful in its aims and continued to exist in the Camarilla while the Sabbat served as a breakaway faction.

    The Convention of Thorns guaranteed Anarchs freedom of belief and movement as well as an inability to be destroyed unless they broke the Masquerade. The complex web of sires and childer stretching back to their Antediluvian masters was also broken forever with so many individual Elders slain. "Moderate" Anarchs could now seek to reform the Camarilla further and, to be honest, also seek their own power within the sect. It was only the Sabbat that chose to reject the Masquerade and any form of accommodation whatsoever.

The first Anarch was a English peasant woman.
   Vampires are inherently predatory and treacherous creatures, though, due to the influence of the Beast. If the Camarilla believed the moderate Anarchs would eventually fall in line and that they only had to deal with the Sabbat from now on then they were sorely mistaken. The French Revolution would serve as localized Anarch Revolt of its own with the center of Toreador power in Europe being severely damaged. An even more shocking event would happen when the Ventrue, Tzimisce, and Toreador Elders of Russia would be overthrown by the Brujah Council. The totalitarian dictatorship was far from most Anarchs' dream of freedom (unless they were honest about wanting freedom for themselves but not the Kine) but created an Anarch Free State covering the world's other superpower until its fall at the hands of the Nosferatu Baba Yaga. Perhaps overstated in its importance, most of the state of California fell to the Anarchs in the 1940s, which is sometimes referred to as "The Second Anarch Revolt."

    Perhaps the reason the California Free State was so important was the fact that it did establish a separate territory and put into writing an Anarch ideology: that they would have no Prince, Primogen, or rulership beyond what they chose for themselves. Also, that they would help other Anarchs overthrow their masters in other locations. This was called the Status Perfectus and is one of the few written pieces of Anarch ideology. Leaders Jeremy MacNeil and Salvador would have have questionable results, though, as the territory swiftly became a hundred patchwork territories ruled by warlords called "Barons" who were Princes in all but name. Salvador, instead of resolving this, turned his Brujah rage outward and wrote the Anarch Manifesto.

    The moderate Anarchs would continue to violently plot revolution against Camarilla Princes in smaller ways as well. This was acceptable, to an extent, due to the fact that such militant plots are the way conflicts among Princes and would be Princes are resolved in Kindred culture. Socialist labor leader Modius failed to oust Lodin from Chicago and declared himself Prince of Gary instead before becoming a parody of a Camarilla Elder himself. Caitiff Carol Davis ("Maldavis") organized an Anarch revolt but maintained Elder support until the end by making it clear she planned to be Prince of the city therafter. Despite having their own Free States and violent revolutionaries, both the Camarilla Elders and moderate Anarchs considered themselves to be part of the Camarilla. They might fight over who ruled or what sort of system should be in place but were essentially part of the same society and even would protect each other against a worse foe: The Sabbat.

    During this time, the Anarchs would have every bit as much a conflict with the Sabbat as their Camarilla foes. The Sabbat considered the Anarchs to be traitors to the cause and thus the two warred continuously. This would include Anarchs repulsing a Sabbat invasion of the California Free States not long after the Camarilla's defeat. Indeed, the Anarchs would ally with the Camarilla to repulse the Sabbat invasion of the East Coast in 1999. This detente would end with the war over Los Angeles followed by the Second Inquisition.

Jeremy MacNeil would be both a blessing and curse.
    The death of Baba Yaga in 2000 would allow the Brujah Council to reincorporate and eventually take over Russia's territory again. The Wan Kuei invasion of the California Free States led to its temporary dissolution and re-conquest by the Camarilla before the Bloodlines Fledgling assassinated traitor Prince La Croix in 2014. The Second Inquisition formed during the early 21st century thanks to attempts by the Camarilla to manipulate the US government against both the Anarchs as well as Sabbat. What would follow would be an almost eerie repetition of the First Anarch Revolt's events.

    Blaming the Anarchs for the Second Inquisition and assisting the hunters in finding them, the Camarilla began a crackdown upon the moderates among their ranks. This failed disastrously in Berlin where the replacement of liberal Ventrue Prince William Waldburg. Purging themselves of Neo-Nazis, the Berlin Anarchs led by Gangrel revolutionary Rudi successfully claimed one of the most important cities in Europe and established a German Anarch Free States. Smelling blood, the California Anarchs purged the city of Las Vegas of its Giovanni masters and created another sign that the Anarchs were now a force to be reckoned with. Other conflicts would go the Anarchs way due to the Camarilla Elders' lack of familiarity with modern technology, loss of leadership to the Beckoning or Hunters, and gross overreaction to the threat against them.

    In the end, it was the Convention of Prague that resulted in the expulsion of the Moderate Anarchs and the end to the failed experiment of the Old Camarilla. Attempting to make a show of power, Hardestadt the Younger was assassinated by Archon Theo Bell and his death triggered the expulsion of the Brujah. Apparently, this expulsion allowed the Brujah to stay on an individual level but without an Inner Council seat or Justicar among other privileges. The majority appeared to choose the Anarchs or Independence instead. The Gangrel, having left over Antediluvian denial years earlier, would welcome them. Furthermore, the Camarilla emboldened its enemies by refusing the joining of the Followers of Set ("The Ministry"), resulting in said group defecting to the newly formed Anarch sect. This was followed by the Camarilla banishing the Thin Bloods and Caitiff from their ranks, consolidating their power around a small elite minority of loyalists.

The second Tyler.
    This, in my opinion, is much more worthy of the term "Second Anarch Revolt" but might go down in history as the Third. But why do the Anarchs rebel? Why cannot they achieve a lasting peace with the Camarilla or even each other? The answer is inherent to the Kindred condition. Vampires are immortal parasites that inherently in competition with each other for blood, domain, power, and prestige.

    The Prince of every city has a vested interest in keeping down any vampire not supporting him, keeping them from accumulating power, and preventing them from siring. No Elder ever dies naturally so the only way to gain power is to create an opening by working against them. The Anarchs may speak of freedom but they have the same needs as their enemies. Ancient beings also pull the strings of both Elders and Neonates, keeping them at each other's throats both for their own purposes as well as amusement.

     Why join the Anarchs? In general, I feel it's because the Camarilla was never really as welcoming as many people felt. At the end of the day, the organization existed for the purpose of protecting the power of its eldest members. If you were lucky to be born a Toreador, Tremere, or Ventrue then you'd still have to bow as well as scrape before beings who view you as nothing more than pawns. The allure of the Anarch is a community that is much more likely to have your back than the Ivory Tower. Not so much that you won't get backstabbed but perhaps 50% less. For most of the high generation and Lower Clans among the Kindred, it is a matter of survival rather than ideology.

Rants are a political rally of the vampire Left.
     For Caitiff, Thin Bloods, illegal Embraces, and a decent percentage of Brujah as well as Gabgrel--you are an Anarch by default. The Camarilla does not want you. It is not a matter of toeing the line because you were born a crime. Others may flee the Camarilla because an abusive sire, powerful enemies they may not even know why they have, or a death sentence for crimes they may or may not have committed. One of the earliest adventures for V:TM was Ashes to Ashes where the player characters are framed for the kidnapping and murder of Prince Lodin because no one important would care about their deaths.

     Life in Kindred society has never been fair and there is safety in numbers [to an extent]. Some Anarchs are gross hypocrites like Gengis, Juggler, Tara, and even Tyler--but most children of the Modern Nights would prefer to take their chances with them over the Prince. That's in addition to those who were Embraced into the Anarchs the same way you might be Embraced into the Camarilla or Sabbat--and they could date back to Tyler's Rebellion in unbroken lineage.

    Either way, only time will tell if the new Anarch sect ("The Movement") will end the same way as the previous ones. Will they finally transcend their origins and bring the Kindred into the 21st century, fall prey to their rivals in the Camarilla's cunning, or become a new Sabbat to replace the collapsing old? Only Caine knows for sure.
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