My name is Iosu Palacios (32) and I’m a Spaniard currently living in Bremen. I came to Germany for the first time in 2011 to take part in the Drachenfest where I founded the Tercio in the blue camp. Since the very beginning I looked to you guys with wonder and not little amount of envy. So much so that in 2014 me and another friend got made couple of Landsknchet outfits to join you in a couple of battles. It was fun fighting near you the previous years but fighting with in the formation was such a unique experience. We enjoy all of it. Every. Single. Moment.
In 2015 we came to Drachenfest with some new weapons we were really excited to show you. Sadly, the lack of time for preparations and some other issues made it impossible to apply to your camp, so we joined the Silver camp with other Spaniards. Somehow though we manage to get some gigs with you people that made our day that year.
(If somebody here got hit by a round wee shoot in to you in the last battle we are really sorry ;D, you could call it aggressive marketing if you will XD)
So enough introduction, now I’m going to remove your collective cock out of my mouth and stand up again. Let’s get to busyness.
We want to apply to the camp for 2017 so, with your help, one year should give us the buffer time to set ready our Landsknecht group up to your standards.
I would like to start with the things that we already have: The weapons.
We want to play an arquebus regiment. Though in 2015 the system worked beautifully (these arquebuses actually shoot a foam bullet up to 10 meters and have a reload ratio of about 20-30 seg per shoot) there was A LOT of room for improvement towards the looks.
That’s what we did this year and you can see the result here.
And a video of performance
Additionally, we got those little ones that we call hand cannons. As you will see in the video bellow they are quite devastating in close range, and a good fun to use ;D.
We got currently 7 arquebuses ready to go and a couple of hand cannons which bring me to the next topic, the size of the regiment and the concept.
Since there is still one year to go we don’t know for sure how many people we may have with us but I would say a minimum of 7 and a maximum of 20 aprox. We have half a dozen halberds as well, so most certainly either we can join at night actions with those (the arquebuses are useless at night) or have the extra people using them in combination with the arquebuses (that we could discuss later in the thread)
The concept of the group would be in short a “penal regiment”. Originally the group was formed by soldiers that where convicted as rowers in a Spanish galley. The ship wrecked after a difficult combat with the Turks and the convicts took over the crew. Without the option of going back to Spain where they will certainly have got hanged, they resolved to take their chances somewhere else. With the clothes, weapons and supplies of the ship their appearance was that from real Spanish soldiers, so they took advantage out of it and they started to sell their services to local lords.
The mercenary business is a profitable one and nowadays the regiment it’s known as the Gallows Birds and it’s already a solid regiment of arquebusiers. New recruits are added to the original bunch as long as they can probe (usually through penitentiary tattoos) that they have been in prison, no questions asked about their story. Actually If you dare to ask there is not a single one of them that went to prison upon their own sins, conspiracies, scams and bad luck, among others will be the arguments they will come with about their current situation.
Key features would be a XIII tattooed in the forehead among other penitentiary tattoos.
We won't accept only Spaniards, it's quite sure that some German friends will join.
Regarding the clothes I wanted to show you some references. They resemble quite well what we are aiming for as a group towards equipment and costume. We will still keep in mind in all time your style guides of course :).
This one is basically what we are using as a main source of inspiration, for the basics.
And some historical sources
http://special-1.bl.uk/treasures/fest…092&strPage=009
And that's basically the project for next year. We are really looking forward to read your thoughts on it and work with you so we can be up to the test 
Viele Grüße!
thanks! We are looking forward to it.
