The Dark World of Enlightenment in Blood: What's At Stake?

Enlightenment in Blood is a larp about the first night of the Anarch revolution.

Below, we go into what that actually means.

How it’s been

You've tried to keep your head down and just go about your nightly existence, the same as any other Berlin Anarch, but the Camarilla makes that very, very hard. First they say that you can only feed in some place like Templehof or Kreuzberg, then they say you're absolutely forbidden from doing so. The rules change arbitrarily, and the punishments seem capricious. Some offenders get nothing, while others see the sun or spend years staked in the basement of a sadistic Elder.

Every single Anarch in Berlin has experienced what it means to live at the foot of the Ivory Tower. Camarilla assholes coming to an Anarch bar to have a bit of fun at your expense. If you object to these humiliations, you'll be punished. Friends and loved ones executed for trivial reasons, the petty desires of Elders made into law. If you have something they like, they'll take it.

This is personal for every Anarch vampire in Berlin. If you have pride in who you are, you'll find yourself licking the blood of an Elder off the floor. If you have a mortal lover, an Elder will Embrace him just to fuck with you. If you run a business, it now belongs to the Camarilla. If a Camarilla vampire falls in love with you, you're truly lost. Nobody is safe.

What's worst, the city has two Camarilla Princes, both with their own laws. Gustav Breidenstein and Wilhelm Waldburg are remote entities rarely even glimpsed by a typical Berlin Anarch, but the war they wage against each other has a lot of Anarch casualties. Follow the laws of one Prince, and you get executed by the other.

You've all been personally hurt, too afraid to fight back. The Camarilla is eternal, and this is its heartland. Go against it, and you'll find yourself drooling blood, your mind crushed for daring to imagine such things.

What happens next

Or that's how it's been for centuries. But as history has shown, every tyranny will fall. Your list of grievances is long. You want to feed where you like, you want freedom from fear and you want an end to Camarilla caprices over how you live your life. You want to get off your knees, stand tall and declare an end to this humiliating subjugation.

The first whispers that the Camarilla might not be quite as invulnerable as previously thought are already in the air when the larp starts. In the beginning, something happens that shows the Camarilla to be a paper tiger, a hollow shell incapable of projecting force as it once could. During the first half hour of Enlightenment in Blood, news of what's happening spreads and all those long-nursed plans of revolution go into effect.

Who’s in the mix?

The real question is not whether the Berlin Camarilla falls – it does – but who gets to control the revolution. Who decides the future shape of the city?

Will it be the long-suppressed Church of Caine, known for its havens open to any struggling Cainite and moral vision for the redemption of all Kindred? Ravaged for years by the Camarilla, will the Church now be able to finally make its vision of a perfect city a reality?

Anarchs and anarchism have long gone hand in hand, and Berlin plays host to some of the most committed vampire anarchists of the European heartland. The Camarilla has relegated them to the sidelines for centuries, but now is time for the ideologues of the Stirner Group, the Acid Burn Originals, the Red Liberation and the Juniper Initiative to seize the moment.

For many other Berlin Anarchs, the revolution represents a welcome chance to finally live as they have always wanted. They have their own plans and agendas that are made a little easier now that capricious authority is removed. On the other hand, there was something comforting too about the predictable terror of the Camarilla. Now that it's falling, these Anarchs have to choose who to support – in the face of the troubling tendency of all revolutions to eat their own.

For a Camarilla vampire, the revolution is an unmitigated disaster. Long focused only on the war between the two rival Princes, the Camarilla has considered the Anarchs to be completely irrelevant. The master manipulators have failed to take into account that some revolutions start without an ancient vampire pulling the strings. Surprised and shocked by the sudden uprising, they're left lost, confused and terrified. All of the truths they believed in have failed; some choose to flee the city while others surrender, in a last ditch effort to save what they have. And, perhaps, to influence the revolution from the inside, once they have adjusted to the new order.

Meanwhile, vampires are not the only creatures moving in the darkness of the Berlin night. The real supernatural underclass of the city is not Anarch vampires but Bone Gnawer werewolves, derelict and homeless, ravaged by the endless demands of their lonely war. Who could fault them if they sought solace in the pleasures of vampire blood?

For a vampire, a werewolf can be a powerful tool to manipulate against your enemies, but very dangerous too. One false step and your weapon turns on you.

Even further into the interconnected web of Berlin creatures, Glass Walkers, Syndicate Technocrats or Redcap party maniacs might be lured into the vampire world. Whether as predators or prey? Only the larp will tell. You might start your night going to work at an advertising agency only to end it as a vampire blood slave.

All things are possible during the night of the revolution.