Fate leads the willing and drags along the reluctant. — Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger

Lambert Rode, mayor of Rostock, has not had a particularly easy first year in office. Though little else could be expected for a man charged with running a city that has been pulled a dozen different directions in as many years.

Rode was a lower-level bureaucrat back during the Rostocker Domfehde, when nearly a century of feuds between the city's Hanseatic merchants and the Dukes of Mecklenburg finally boiled over into full-scale insurrection. His cousin, Thomas Rode, had been appointed the first provost of the Rostock Universitätskirche by the Duke of Mecklenburg over disagreement from the city population, who began their retaliation by beating him to death and hanging his body in front of his church. The uprising was supported politically and financially by the Hansa, despite attempted mediation by Lübeck's mayor Heinrich Brömse, and was eventually put down for good when Ducal troops under the command of Duke Magnus II regained full control of the city and executed the insurgent leader Hinrich Runge.

The years that followed were not kind to Rode, nor to any in the city of Rostock. Magnus II demanded significant concessions from the city following his victory, including additional penance, massively increased taxes, and a much-heightened levy of men for the Mecklenburg army. The Hanseatic traders who had for so long vexed him were expelled, and not immediately allowed to return. In addition, the efforts of the city to apply for Free Imperial City status were halted, and the University of Rostock - one of its most proud institutions - was forced to bend to the oversight of the Duke, who did not wish to see it succeed where it had in the past. Indeed, Magnus seemed quite content in stripping the city of all it was worth, regardless of how much that would damage both its status and its people. Poverty rose higher, trade began to flow to other cities on the Baltic coast, and virtually every family seemed to lose children to the Mecklenburg levy.

By 1500, these policies had left Rostock a shell of its former self. The complete disinterest Magnus had in actually running the city meant that few real changes were able to be made, or restorations able to be completed. While this disinterest did have the benefit of allowing a slow return of some Hanseatic influence to the former Hansa stronghold, the damage done to its trade reputation meant less interest, and less value for those who chose to come back. But even this seemed to be a position able to be dealt with - the Hansa had faced similar situations before, and given enough time and investment, the trade always came back. And when it did, their established privileges in the city would reap the investment back tenfold.

But then something... unexpected happened. Magnus, in a desperate bid to push his claim to the Danish throne, sought out a massive loan to fund what was expected to be a monumental war effort. Knowing the Hansa would never agree, he turned his head south, and found a willing financier in Jakob Fugger, who was able to provide him with capital to the extent of nearly 600 thousand Groschen. Such a large sum, however, would typically require an incredible amount of interest if borrowed from the non-Christian bankers of the Mediterranean, nearing over two million additional Groschen in value. Fugger, being a good Christian businessman, instead offered what he described to be a "mutually beneficial arrangement" as a form of non-interest guarantee - establishing himself as the Ducal representative of Rostock, effectively putting him in direct oversight control of the port city.

At first, this was seen by the city and its merchants as an incredible stroke of good fortune. Surely anyone would be better in that position than Magnus, and Fugger was a businessman after all - in all likelihood, he would simply help return the city and its policies to their positions before the Rostocker Domfehde, allowing the Hansa back in, and making a decent amount of extra money himself in the resulting kickbacks. After all, that was the way these things had always worked, and in the minds of most everyone, the way these things would always work. It was the mindset the Hansa were happy to bring to the table in their meeting with Fugger after his "acquisition", and the one they never expected they would have to adjust.

But Jakob Fugger was not most everyone. His income base was secure, and he had no particular love for the Hansa. He found their methods of control to be "distasteful", their predilection towards violent means to secure their monopolies to be not in line with the Christian teachings of his youth, and their overarching goals of enforced dominance over unaffiliated traders to be a full-on rejection of the meritocratic ideals on which he based his own business morals. So when the Hansa representatives sent to meet with him mentioned the assumed resumption of Hansa affiliation for Rostock, they were shocked to hear a firm but polite "no" pushed back at them. Jakob Fugger intended for the city to be one of free trade - truly free trade - where all merchants were able to trade and compete on an even playing field, all subject to the same rules and regulation. He would not be expelling the Hansa - far from it, they would be welcomed back in. But they would be welcomed as equals, free of their old privileges, to compete on merit rather than monopoly.

This state of affairs was truly the worst outcome the Hansa never saw coming. They had dealt with being kicked out of cities before, they had dealt with being forced into specific quarters and Kontors before, they had even dealt with entire cities being burned to the ground before. But now they were not just being removed, they were being rendered unremarkable, their hallowed trading privileges being torn to shreds while others could reap the benefits. And all this in a founding member city of the Hansa. It was an attack most personal, most meticulous, and most unacceptable. Something would have to be done.

Lambert Rode watched all these things unfold within his beloved city, and despised all of it. In his mind, Rostock should be run by Rostock, with their own interests put first and foremost. Hansa control had not been perfect by any stretch, but it worked, and they were typically content with letting the city run itself so long as their precious privileges were maintained. Fugger's ideal was, in theory, an incredible way for Rostock to thrive and prosper under the rule of individuals dedicated to the city itself, and not an outside organization, but there had to be a reason why no other city seemed to prosper without being helmed or protected by a major outside maritime force. Hansa cities worked, in his mind, because of the protection of the Hanseatic navy, something Jakob Fugger simply could not guarantee. The only thing he would guarantee would be more conflict, as the Hansa would stop at nothing to see him dislodged.

It was with all of these things in mind that Rode ran for mayor in the first place, looking to keep a neutral stance between these two behemoth forces who's personal feuds threatened to once again tear his city apart. He would not, he could not see the decade of Ducal atrophy that followed the Rostocker Domfehde be brought back once again, and bring suffering to his people. And it was that belief that spurred him to victory over the outwardly Hansa-affiliated Barthold Kerkhof, who's election would have so likely been met with immediate outright conflict.

But while Rode was an idealist, he was no fool. Neutrality in an election bought him time, neutrality in governance would only lead to a spiraling situation outside his office walls that he could in no way influence. So when Kerkhof came knocking just days after losing the mayoral race, a smile on his face and a bottle of fine Italian wine in his hand, Rode just sighed and let him in. Discussions with Kerkhof, and with the Hansa more directly, allowed him to paint his best-case scenario picture to the side he believed most likely to come out on top - Rostock re-ascending to the Hanseatic league and guaranteeing Hansa privilege, with the explicit understanding that the city itself was to be governed and run without interference by Her own citizens. The Hansa, willing to give genuinely anything to see the return of Rostock to their ranks and the return of Fugger to Augsburg, were well and truly happy to agree to such an arrangement.

And so the stage was set for what was expected to be a prototypical case in re-Hansafication. The Hansa would do what they always did following their ouster from a city - they would make promises and bribes to whatever man was in charge (done), hire a bunch of local mercenaries (done), and then send out those mercenaries to... encourage anyone directly affiliated with the entity who had removed them to vacate the city immediately. Whoever kicked them out in the first place never cared enough for long to really stop this from happening, the local merchants were always all too happy to restore relations with their unjustly-expelled business partners, and the local collaborators affiliated with the expelling force were never large enough in number or funds to believe that they could maintain a position against a well-funded Hansa mercenary group and so gave up easily. It was the classic playbook, and it never failed. That was just the way it had always worked.

These reassurances certainly rang hollow to Rode now, however, as he watched fires spread quickly across his city from the balcony of his mayoral office. From the reports he had been able to collect, things had begun rather smoothly overall. The initial influx of Hanseatic mercenaries were able to quickly find the Fugger-affiliated administrators, merchants, and security personnel, and were quite persuasive in their arguments that they should leave the city as quickly as humanly possible. Fugger himself, busy down south tending to his wife and newborn son, was left fully unaware of these developments, despite reports gathered by his men days beforehand that indicated such an event would be coming. Following the initial ouster of primary Fugger supporters came a more thorough sweep of merchants and political actors who were believed to subscribe to the Fugger way of thinking, which again seemed to go rather smoothly. People seemed incredibly willing to speak to their beliefs and leanings in the Fugger-Hansa debate, only to be shocked with the response if they picked incorrectly. After a week of these sweeps, it seemed as though the predictions were right, and that Fugger would end up being just like all the other tyrants the Hansa had ousted over the years.

But then it began to dawn on the Hansa - they had been doing these sweeps for a week. More people than expected, it would seem, were not immediately warm to the idea of the resumption of Hansa privilege for the city. The Hansa had been gone for almost a decade by now, their old clients having found new business opportunities or simply left. The merchants still around had been trading in the city without having to compete with Hansa privileges for a while now, and were beginning to enjoy an ease of operation when the ubiquitous threats of the Hansa were few and far between. And the typical pity and goodwill they were accustomed to following previous ousters was much dimmer this time around, as unlike those other situations, they hadn't been expelled from the city. Burghers were far less sympathetic to a loss of privilege than they were to a tyrannical eviction. And so after a week of action against the Fugger-minded, the Hansa realized that this was going to take longer than they had hoped.

And time was not on their side.

The protracted efforts of the Hansa in Rostock meant that word of their actions was able to make its way all the way to Augsburg, and thus to Jakob Fugger, who contrary to expectation did care about maintaining the oversight over the city he had been given. Reaching out to some of the more high-level contacts of his that had been removed from the city, he was able to gather a picture of the situation, which he took as a simple organized crime problem to be combatted and stamped out. Mustering a group of mercenaries of his own, he headed north towards the city, armed with a Ducal dispensation to reestablish control over Rostock.

Arriving ten days after the Hansa began their efforts, Fugger found the city to be on the precipice of madness. Hanseatic mercenaries were losing confidence by the day as more and more individuals seemed to warrant expulsion, and city guards were becoming less and less willing to stand by as their own friends and family seemed to suddenly be under threat from the impromptu inquisition. But neither mercenary group was looking to fight each other, at least not yet, and so both simply remained around their respective camps as their leaders decided how to handle the situation.

Initially, both sides picked the same weapon for their duel - money. Bribes began pouring into the city, aimed at high-ranking members of the guard, the government, merchant guilds, and more. Unfortunately for the Hansa, Fugger came loaded with bigger pockets, and they had used up much of their goodwill on their inquisitorial campaign. Panic started to set in among the Hanseatic ranks, who began to feel the situation slipping from their grasp. They had to make a play, and they had to make it soon.

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