Despite its proximity to the lands of the Moot and the Stronghold of Zhufbar, Halflings and Dwarfs are virtually nonexistent there. Technologically, the land lags behind the rest of the Empire in terms of proper infrastrature and even the barest levels of education, where the commonfolk of Sylvania are still a highly superstitious lot that is still treating gunpowder as a new frightening technological marvel. The emergent middle class of the Empire scarcely exists here, and an unbridgeable gap between the peasantry and the nobility persists, one that out shadows those within the lands of even Bretonnia. But perhaps the greatest feature about this backwater region of the Old World is that it is considered the rightful domains of the Vampire Counts of the Von Carstein bloodline.