The Anarchs are the youngest of the vampire sects, a group of fairly new Kindred who espouse political ideas of equality (at least on paper). Disenchanted by the rigid hierarchy of the Camarilla and the unfair power it awards to elders, who control younger Kindred like puppetmasters when they so choose, the Anarchs revolted several centuries ago and declared themselves a new sect, one in which offices are based on merit and the will to succeed rather than the ancientness of one's blood. Vampires of all different clans may be Anarchs, although most of them are made up of defectors from the Camarilla clans, particularly the Brujah and Nosferatu. Like the Camarilla, they want to see Kindred society be civil and avoid threatening the mortal population too much, but unlike them, they aren't willing to give up their free will to get there.

The Convention of Thorns

At the end of the fifteenth century, the Anarchs had broken away from the Camarilla and attempted to assert dominance over several cities, but their lack of organization and failure to unify their vision of what they wanted to actually happen if they succeeded prevented them from ever gaining a true advantage (although they certainly caused a major conflict nonetheless). The peace treaty which would come to be known as the Convention of Thorns was called to put an end to the fruitless war; the Camarilla offered membership in its ranks to the Anarchs and the Independent Clan Assamite, in hopes of finishing the matter for good. The Anarchs, aware that they were fighting a losing battle, accepted membership into the Camarilla with as much grace as possible.

The Convention stipulates that the Anarchs may do whatever they wish, as long as they do not break any Camarilla rules; this of course seemed eminently reasonable to the Camarilla, but many Anarchs bemoan the poor position they were in when the Convention was created, pointing out that it was some of the more unfair rules of the Camarilla that they were trying to get away from in the first place. In fact, many of the Anarchs of the day immediately defected to the Sabbat rather than submit to Camarilla law, but those that remained in the Anarch sect view themselves in the position of the lesser of a great many evils.

Abolishment of Elder Power

The general goal of most Anarchs (although they are not good at creating any kind of unified mission statement) is to end the millennia-long hold the elder vampires have over the rest of Kindred society. Since no vampire can ever get comparatively older than they already are (except in the oblique case of the abhorrent crime of diablerie), any new Kindred being created is, in their opinion, essentially being brought into slavery, forced to dance to the elders' tune for who knows how many years. There are no elders among the Anarchs themselves for obvious reasons, and while they don't necessarily want to see all elders dead, they do demand that they immediately give up their undeserved power, and if a little blood has to be spilled to achieve that goal, so be it.

Organization & Enforcement

The Anarchs' main problem has always been that they are not a very organized sect. They have great difficulty agreeing on anything, and for the most part each Anarch "cell" in each different city acts semi-autonomously, with most recognizing the same overall goals but not collaborating or exchanging any information that would unite their efforts. Their emphasis on individual freedoms makes them loath to set up any larger system of overarching laws or enforcement, which unfortunately means that the better-structured Camarilla and Sabbat tend to walk all over them.

Lack of Overall Organization

The Anarchs lack any kind of high-level organizational structure. While they have managed to collect some official territory, especially in the Anarch Free States on the West Coast, Anarch cities are few and far between, and a democratic decision-making style has not been working very well for them when so many members are hard to get hold of, unable to attend conferences, busy fighting off the other sects, or just unlikely to agree with one another on method in the first place. Brief voting bodies called Revolutionary Councils occasionally convene to deal with issues in a specific Anarch-dominated area, but they only do so if no other solution can be found, and usually dissolve immediately once a decision has been reached.

City Offices

There aren't very many Anarch cities, but a few do continue to hang stubbornly on, often in areas that the Camarilla and Sabbat consider too "undesirable" to fight over (like rural Montana, for example). There is a nominal leader of each Anarch city who bears the title of Baron; the Anarchs insist that Barons are not equivalent to Princes, but the Camarilla are amused to note that the Baron does everything that a Prince would do, just without any of the perks of Status or discretion that go along with it. The Baron of a city is theoretically the most capable administrator in the domain, and spends most of their time mediating disputes and trying to ensure fairness for all the city's vampiric residents.

Anarch cities do not have any other official positions besides Baron - and, to be honest, they wouldn't even have that one if they could find any way of running a city without one.