„If there is a well-attested history in the world, it is that of the Vampyres. Nothing is missing from it: interrogations, certifications by Notables, Surgeons, Parish Priests, Magistrates. The judicial proof is one of the most complete.
And with all that, who believes in Vampyres?”
– Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Exsanguis is a larp with erotic and horror elements, set in an Austro-Hungarian convent school for young adults in 1897, run by nuns with a strict hand.
We are approaching the vampire theme outside of popular templates such as “Vampire: The Masquerade”, “Twilight” or “What we do in the shadows” and want to co-create a spooky atmosphere with participants. We want to enable players to set their own play impulses in the direction of eroticism and psychological horror. Additional play impulses will be set by the organizers.
Players are given a predefined character (many of them loosely based on the characters from the larp Belleteyn, designed by Betti Auberger and Lukas Sima). Each character is a student at the monastery school and is integrated into the school’s social network.
For design reasons, Exsanguis is a larp with a strict schedule concerning mealtimes. If you have trouble with eating at specific, pre-announced, times, you might want to re-consider signing up for Exsanguis (there will always be snacks in an off-game room but not full meals).
Players of vampires eat in short off-game breaks (since vampires need no food in-game). These short off-game meal breaks take 20-30 minutes, are set before the regular mealtimes and might also be used by the game masters to pass on some information for players of vampires, if needed.
Exsanguis is a historicizing larp with an Austro-Hungarian imperial flair, but it is not a historical game. Historical facts have no influence on the game. The focus is on portraying social relations with erotic and horror elements as well as on portraying everyday life in a convent school for young adults.
Three themes define Exsanguis: school, eroticism and horror. All three themes are played and portrayed by all players without exception. This makes Exsanguis a very physical larp. If you are uncomfortable with any of the main themes, please do not sign up for Exsanguis because you cannot avoid them during the larp.
You can decide at any time how intensely you want to play something. Especially with regard to erotic elements, we use mechanics to calibrate the intensity of the portrayal, and you are always in control of your body. Real sex is prohibited on Exsanguis. However, it can be portrayed like in theater.
A good baseline for portraying intimacy is that fellow players are allowed to touch your arms, back, head, face and neck and kiss you on the cheek (all while you are fully dressed!). You can always leave any situation for a different direction of play or step outside the play area to take a break from the fiction as needed.
For us, portraying a school means that students follow a defined daily routine and attend classes. Of course, you can also skip classes to meet your sweetheart if you are willing to accept a possible punishment. However, the students pay respect to their teachers and (usually) follow their orders.
In terms of horror, we aim for a dark and eerie atmosphere. We will not provide you with horror elements such as jump scares and elaborate monster costumes. However, we want to support you with our larp design in creating an atmosphere of psychological and cosmic horror that you can fill with your character’s fears, fantasies, etc.
What you won’t find at Exsanguis is slapstick and parody à la “What We Do in the Shadows” or “Dracula: Dead and Loving It” and we also ask you to refrain from bringing this into the larp.
Exsanguis is set in a remote monastery school in Austria-Hungary at the end of the 19th century. However, it is not a historical game. Global political events of this period will have no influence on the larp, and some topics of this period will be excluded. Some historic events, from real-world Austro-Hungarian history, might be part of some characters‘ background story.
Portraying Catholicism is a part of the larp (e.g. all characters take part in a mass).
Costumes should be inspired by the period. We aim for a „coolthentic“ style.
Male students wear a white shirt (with a turn-down collar), dark trousers, suspenders, a vest, a dark jacket, and a cap. We provide the tie.
Female students wear a white blouse, a dark ankle-length skirt, dark waistcoat, dark blazer, fan, and hat. We provide the scarf.
Everyone needs a functioning pocketwatch and a long white nightgown so they can roam the castle after bedtime. A coat is usually necessary at this time of the year to go outside (which you will do during short periods of time during the larp).
Folklore says that a vampyre is created when a person dies far away from a priest and has no opportunity to receive the last rites. The cross on their grave stands crooked and the corpse does not decay. At night, the vampyre leaves its grave and drinks the blood of the living.
Nothing can protect you from a vampyre; only the grace of God can save the immortal souls of good Christians.
In the enlightened Austro-Hungarian Empire of the late 19th century, this superstition is ridiculed and sometimes even considered shameful.
However, garlic, decapitation, burning, staking, silver, and other things known from film and literature certainly do not help against vampyres (who, of course, cannot transform themselves into bats or similar creatures).
Vampires are our main „tool“ to enable erotic and horror scenes. In Exsanguis they do not have powers like in many other stories – they only have one: they are irresistibly attractive (but also spooky 🙂 ).
Exsanguis is set in a convent school, and all players portray young adult students (age 18 – 22). The older characters (nuns, priests, teachers) are NPCs.
The daily routine is strictly regulated. There are (pseudo-Catholic) church services and lessons in astronomy, religion, poetry, Latin, biology, art, and dance. The young men and women are taught separately during school hours. In between, there is time for prayer, confession, study, and, of course, secret meetings. 😉 The students are divided into gender-mixed learning groups with similar interests.
In the spirit of the 19th-century Austro-Hungarian Empire, the characters have a clearly defined gender, according to which they are assigned to same-sex classes. The real gender identities of the players do not have to match those of the characters. We invite everyone to portray the gender identity in the larp with which they feel most comfortable and with which they are also willing to play erotic scenes. When signing up, players bindingly determine the in-game gender identity of their character.
Of course, it is possible that an in-game woman may have a more masculine appearance, that an in-game man may have a more feminine appearance, or that characters may appear more gender-neutral but characters will be addressed according to their in-game sex and will be taught in same-sex classes. Gender-based discrimination and sexism are not part of our game concerning the life at the convent school. For example, men and women have the same rights and obligations, as well as the same school subjects. Both – men and women – are expected to get married and have children, once they leave school. Both – women and men – will need to get a job if they do not have rich parents. Women‘s rights in Austria-Hungary are a part of a few characters‘ background stories, however, they are not an issue at the convent school.
Participants, crew and organizers on our larp should treat others in a respectful way, respecting boundaries and doing the best to make everybody feel safe and welcome. We have a zero tolerance policy for sexism, any discrimination of or offensive behaviour towards minorities and sexual harassment. If we have reason to consider a person a threat to the wellbeing of other people at our larp, we reserve the right to exclude the person from the event. Any further costs for an early departure, an alternative accommodation etc. have to be borne by the excluded person; there will be no refund of the participation fee.
Eroticism is a central part of the larp. In order to explore it, we will do workshops on the portrayal of eroticism with you before the larp begins and familiarize you with meta techniques, which you have to use to calibrate the intensity of your interactions with others.
At Exsanguis, every character without exception has hints of erotic relationships in their background. The intensity with which these relationships are portrayed is a matter of agreement between the players involved and must be negotiated / calibrated so that personal boundaries are not crossed. Pre-written relationships must not be ignored, but the intensity of the portrayal is subject to negotiation between the players.
Please do not sign up, if you do not wish to engage with the topic of eroticism at all. When signing up, you will of course be able to indicate if you do not want to play with specific people (or groups of people) in an erotic context.
During the workshops, you will practice various ways in which you can create an erotic atmosphere with more or less physical contact.
The portrayal of sex and sexual acts is not the focus, nor necessary for a good larp experience at Exsanguis. However, if you wish to incorporate this into your play (only after calibration!), it must not be done naked and should be portrayed realistically, like in theater. We do not use any other meta techniques for the portrayal of sex such as Ars Amandi.
Reminder: you are always in control of your body and you decide what you want to play.
Sign-up is only possible via our online questionnaire. It is not on a first come, first served basis. Instead, we will try to take into account your preferences.
We reserve some of the spots for our friends, other larp organizers (who do a lot for the community and should also get a chance to play) and for beginners (people who have never larped before or have only recently started). The remaining places will be allocated by lottery.
After the registration deadline, you can only register for the waiting list.
If you get a spot you will receive the bank account details by email and will be asked to transfer the participation fee. 50% of the participation fee must be paid until the end of December 2025, the remaining 50% have to be paid until the end of January 2026. You can also pay 100% until the end of December 2025. Please make sure to take care of any remittance fees or foreign exchange fees. Only the full amount of the participation fee reaching our bank account counts as a paid ticket. You will receive a confirmation of successful payment.
We will have a photographer at the game. We will provide you with a selection of photos after the game. However, please refrain from publishing any photos in any form (e.g. on Facebook, Instagram etc.) without asking the persons depicted for their consent and linking to the photographer, the main organizers (Olivia Fischer & Stefan Petrovič) and 1000 Atmosphären.
A smaller selection of the photos will be published on our website and our social media channels. They might also be used to promote future runs of the larp or in public documents of our larp association. If you do not want photos of you being used by us, you can let us know the photo number during a limited period of time (about a week) after we sent the link to the photos.
You play a student at the larp.
You play school staff (nuns or other teachers) at the larp. You portray the same character all of the time, however, your main focus is providing the players with interesting scenes. You might get off-game instructions from game-masters during the larp and your character‘s storyline could end up less consistent because you have to prioritize the larp experience of the players.
Do not apply as an NPC, if you want to focus on your own immersion and if you are unwilling to prioritize other people‘s experience.
You play a student at the larp.
You will help us prepare the location for the larp by arriving already on Wednesday, October 28, between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m. You need to be able to carry heavy furniture up and down the stairs of the castle.
You can sleep the extra night on the location in your room. We will provide food.
You play a student at the larp.
The social ticket is meant for people in financially difficult situations (e.g. students without financial support, people with little income etc.).
If we have more applications for social tickets than spots, we will make a lottery.
As a joker, you can participate in the larp, but you will not be assigned a character yet. Until about two weeks before the larp, we will try to compensate for cancellations by people from the waiting list. However, experience has shown that most cancellations occur shortly before the larp. To ensure that all characters are cast, we need the Jokers to replace last-minute cancellations. Unfortunately, this means that you will only find out what role you will be playing very shortly before the start of Exsanguis (maybe only at location).
If there are fewer cancellations than Jokers, the remaining Jokers still participate in the larp. You will have to create a last-minute additional character on your own. You will take part in all the workshops, having the opportunities to create relations to the other characters in your group. This has worked well in previous larps.
Your spot is not transferable. If you are unable to attend the larp, please contact us as soon as possible so that we can find a replacement. When cancelling before May 1st, 2026, you will get a full refund (minus handling fee of € 50,-), between May 1st and June 30th. 2026, you will receive 50% of the participation fee as a refund. For organizational reasons, we cannot refund the participation fee, if you cancel after June 30th, 2026.
1000 Atmosphären
Gemeinnütziger Kulturverein zur persönlichen und künstlerischen Weiterbildung mittels Liverollenspiel
E-Mail: exsanguis@1000atmosphaeren.at
1000 Atmosphären is a non-profit organisation (German: „gemeinnütziger Verein“), run by volunteers in their free-time. The money acquired through selling tickets for Exsanguis is used for the following;
Larp designers / organisers and crew do not receive any payment for their work in relation to Exsanguis.