Imagine what it was like to be one of our kind in the dark ages. Imagine a time when the young had no rights, and could be treated like chaff and cannon fodder for their elders. Imagine knowing that the rapacious forefathers were resting, feeling their presence in our blood, and knowing that they would one day rise and devour the world of men and Cainite alike. We waged our secret wars across the earth, clan against clan, kin against kin, forever re-enacting our dark father's crime. We hurled our young across battlefields, to batter down the fortress walls of our enemies, to supplant them in this region or that.
Finally, someone said no. Finally, someone stood up to their dark masters, breaking the chains of blood and struck down the elder who thought he could mistreat his childer with impunity. Patricia, a young neonate of clan Brujah, sickened by the way the elders of her clan eagerly sacrificed their neonates to the human inquisitors in the burning times, lead a revolt against Hardestadt, her master, and committed diablerie upon his broken body. This marked the very beginning of the first Anarch revolt. The war between elders and childer reached it's most conclusive point when Gratiano de Veronese, eldest childe of the Lasombra antediluvian lead an assault on his sire's keep and destroyed the monster in his tomb. Spurred by his example, Lugoj of Romania and his Tzimisce allies destroyed their antediluvian as well, marking the very first time in history that two of these ancient monsters had been slain by lesser Cainites. The cunning Tzimisce, who joined the revolt with the Lasombra brought with them a blood ritual called the Vaulderie, an essential tool in breaking the elder's hold over the blood of the young.
Of course the corrupt elders tried to restore order. They were afraid that they were growing obsolete in the modern times. They were terrified of being left behind by history or being extinguished by the power of mortal ingenuity. They gathered together, amassing their resources and formed the Camarilla, our hated rival. The Camarilla proposed the cowardly option of denying our true natures. It proposed the idea of hiding among the mortal cattle that we could so easily have subjugated in those ancient nights. The elders were afraid, you see, and formed an entire organization around that fear. Still, it was a powerful organization, and the combined might of seven clans managed to defeat the nascent unruly childer. On October 23rd, 1493, we were called to the Convention of Thorns, a supposed negotiating table, which in truth, was nothing but the elders calling us to lay down their terms for our surrender. They give us the option to return to our masters, partake of the vinculum, and bow our heads once more, in exchange for not being wiped out entirely.
Unsurprisingly, many in our number responded with a rather conclusive 'fuck that.'
We had fought long and hard to gain our freedom, and we would rather have faced the cold mercy of the sun than return to our enslavement. A young Tzimisce who would later become a Priscus of our order, named Sascha Vykos reportedly even sheared away his manhood and hurled it on the table to make his feelings on the matter known. More cowardly Anarchs argued that they should tow the line of the Camarilla, that we should allow ourselves to slip once more beneath the rule of elders. We of clan Tzimisce and Clan Lasombra, however, are proud clans. Noble clans. We bowed before no one, and even if we did, the destruction of our antediluvians would have rendered us a mere abberant bloodline in the eyes of the Camarilla, without pedigree and stripped of the nobility we had cultivated through the centuries. From that moment on, a line was drawn in the sand. Let the foolish Anarchs play at rebellion while seeking scraps of approval from their Camarilla masters. Let the neonates of the Camarilla be ground to bloody gristle by the schemes of the antediluvians. In the Sabbat, we know freedom. In the Sabbat, we find a family who will accept us as we are.
In it's modern incarnation, the Sabbat is the last bastion for Cainite freedom. While obviously, it would be foolish to reveal our nature to the kine, as the Camarilla has allowed them to organize and build weapons and armies capable of destroying us, we do not deny who we are. Among the Sabbat, we are a family, one and all, and we care for our family. Through the sacred rite of the Vaulderie, pack members share blood and become as loyal to each other as we may have loved in life. Through the sacrament of the blood bath, we exult in our nature, not pretending to be mere cursed cattle, but knowing to our hearts that we are the chosen of God and Caine, the wolves to walk among His herds of sheep. Through the Paths of Enlightenment, we need not cling to irrelevant and obsolete human morality to stave off the Beast. The Sabbat is the one place in the night, where any vampire, elder, neonate, or even Caitiff, can claim the right to be free. It is the one place where no Cainite need ever be judged for the sins of his forebears. It is the one place where being a vampire is not a shame or a weakness, but a strength, and one day, when the stars are darkened, and the hated light of the dawn is extinguished forever, the Camarilla and the false Anarchs trampled to bleeding embers beneath our heel, the world shall be our domain, our slaughterhouse, our buffet. Caine shall return and lift us all up, my brothers, and together, we shall strike down the antediluvians as his sword. That night is coming, my brothers. Coming very, very soon.
- Kephn
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