In Havelland, Sigismund von Hohenzollern has tried to re-build the region that had come under serious damage after the failed war with the Teutons and the invasion of Zintra, pulling Havelland into the HGE. While the raids from the Sorbs and Czechs ended due to the entry of Luzycanska into the HGE as well, the region was still not conducive to urbanization and economic growth, and the Hohenzollerns struggled to keep order in the region.

The castles that have become a recent development over the past few decades had quickly spread out among the north inside the Landgraviate, and they were significantly difficult to besiege. These allowed these lords called Raubritter, or robber barons, to appear throughout the north. They would use their status mostly as ritter to take advantage of the system to set up egregious tolls for travelling merchants both on land and on water to make a quick buck. They would quickly grow rich on the trade between Havelland and the rest of the Empire, and stayed safe inside their castles. They would have retinues, albeit mostly full of nothing more than bandits and thugs, that would help ensure that the locals would know who ruled over them.

These lords quickly decentralized the situation in the north and caused even more trouble as merchants slowly came north less and less as their profits decreased more and more due to these excessive dues. Local guilds rose up but quickly monopolized various economic activities, and many ran in tandem with these robber barons. In fact, some guilds appeared to be more criminal than legitimate, and rumors were that even some of the upper nobility made a cut of these taxes...