Dance me to the End of Love is set on the eve of Gehenna, a vampire apocalypse that has been foretold for millenia.
But just as the Kindred have very different opinions on if and how the end times will come to pass, there are many possibilities of what might happen in canon material.
This is what will happen in our interpretation of the Final Nights, what your game experience will be all about.
Every few millenia a cyclical purge of the Kindred species happens, when there are too many competing predators vying for limited resources. Open rivalries lead to increased bloodshed which awakes the eldest of the kind whose ravenous cravings lead them into seeking out the young for food mortals no longer provide.
The ensuing conflict has led to the near extinction of the species several times before the present day. Often, only the youngest or most withdrawn have survived and become the progenitors of new generations, inadvertently beginning a new cycle.
Because of religious or philosophical inferences filtered through centuries of staggered retellings, Gehenna has been interpreted as a divinely mandated end times scenario that has been the basis of scriptural prophecy, millenial panic and terrible bloodshed among true believers.
The end of everything has been promised many times before, and whenever it didn't come movements devoted to it devoured themselves in great dispensationalist disappointments, leaving only a remnant of hardcore fanatics living in the shadows and recruiting new believers, insisting that Gehenna has in fact come and is happening right now!
And in a way, a broken clock is right twice a day. Gehenna is not a single event, it is a gradual process. While it it is a natural occurence and not some deity's judgment, this turn of the cycle may very well be the last.
While the Kindred have not changed much, humanity has. The extent to which mortals have access to information, can network and wield technology is at an unprecedented high. When the Kindred impose their apocalypse on the world, this time, they won't get away with it to continue for another round.
Participants in the LARP are going to be portraying the Kindred and their human companions residing in a single, relatively well-ordered Camarilla city in the present day.
Gehenna has been going on for some time in the background - you will learn more about current upheavals in the subpages describing the fictional history and present concerns of the setting -, and has already started to influence the older Kindred, beginning changes that lead to cracks in the social struture.
When the game begins, characters will not be prepared for the end. Most of them might not even know that something extraordinary is happening. But they will soon find out.
To the Kindred, the event starts out as yet another social salon of polite society, albeit one presenting an exciting opportunity for gathering information and social advancement.
As the game progresses, the psychological and physiological symptoms of the immense upheavals all over the world will continually worsen in those affected, leading to chaos and a potential break-down of the social order, where the roles of predator and prey are suddenly reversed.
While they are concerned with their desperate power games, fighting for scraps to ensure their survival, the ripples these events have caused in the mortal world will lead to a threat no one is prepared to face.
This domain is a microcosm of all domains. We don't need to show the whole world falling. Gehenna may be an epic existential failure of the Kindred, but it is the personal story of each person affected by it that matters.
Our Gehenna is about the crucible of choices before death, the decision on how you will face your mortality.
Death is no respecter of rank or riches, of power or perseverance. Death waits for the childe who has not even made their mark just as for the elder weary from the ennui of centuries. Eventually, all must join hands in the dance of the dead.
Your character will die.
Please, take a moment to think this over.
Your character will die.
While the game is structured in a way to ensure that you will get to experience the full range of everything this LARP has to offer, losing everything your character has including their life is a crucial feature.
But character death is a hard thing to accept and also a hard thing to get right in a way that is satisfying and adds to one's enjoyment of a game rather than take away from it.
No one can force character death on you.
It is always opt-in only. Even at the very end, you might potentially choose not to fall, because it is always about your choice.
But this is not a story about survival against all odds. It is the story of love and loss, and facing the inevitable.
So, you will have to make them die.
Your own experiences inform their inner logic. As you identify with them, you might check their choices against those you would make. You may sympathise with their struggles and wish them to succeed.
You will pour your heart into the role, you will make them come to life, you will feel for them, you will love their friends and hate their enemies, cry their tears, and then you will kill your darling.
Find the beauty in their last dance.
Give us their poise, their dignity, their desperation. Don't talk things over to reach a reasonable compromise. Don't make rational choices for the good of all.
Fight desperately, love obsessively, live vigorously, and rage against the dying of the light until the last moment. Let your character burn like a falling star and light the night with their passing before the great dark settles in.
Accepting the inevitable doom of your character, becoming the architect of their fatal flaws, embracing the tragedy of their tragic fall, will give you agency in a game where the end is predetermined.
Then, let them go.
Every participant enters with different expectations and will walk out with different experiences.
But whatever you take away from the event, when the time comes to let it go, we hope that is this: That we all created something beautiful together. Because in each loss, there is the celebration that something was ours for a while. That it gave us joy.