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Description
Ignore me- I'm just gonna delete then re-upload these three sheets because the description glitch is driving me absolutely bonkers and since DA tech support ain't gonna do anything, this seems to be the best fix.

Here we have yet another crusader whom history only remembers a couple paragraphs about. I gotta say, I've been really disappointed when researching these knightly orders. Like I've never been a big Deus Vult sort of gal to begin with, but man popular culture has really set me up to believe there was going to be more medieval legends of lost treasure and dragon slayers with these guys. But no, the knightly orders like the Templars and Hospitallers, they were all… well… just knights. All of their origin stories just amount to a bunch of old farts showing up, begging some other old fart for money, and then getting on with the business of making a total mess of the Holy Land. Sibrand and the Teutonic Knights are annoyingly yet another such case study.

We know pretty much fuck all about Sibrand before his arrival in the Outremer. He enters the historical record accompanying Adolf III of Holstein in the army of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa on their way to the Levant in 1188. Frederick Barbarossa went out like a little bitch, drowning in a river in June 1190 before he even made it to their destination. Adolf's contingency carried on without him, arriving at Tyre in August. Pretty much immediately though, Adolf had to race all the way back to Germany to protect his little corner of the Holy Roman Empire as if that's some kind of achievement. Well shit, Sibrand must've thought, I guess it's up to me to lift the Siege of Acre now.

The problem of course, was that the Siege of Acre was an absolute clusterfuck. Ideally, the Crusaders should've established a unified base at Tyre, but the only thing they hated more than Muslims was each other. Conrad of Montferrat had denied Guy de Lusignan entry to the city because of their competing claims to the crown of Jerusalem, so Guy stomped off, probably grumbled something along the lines of “didn't wanna be in ur stupid clubhouse anyway-” and laid siege to Acre in August 1189, hoping to make turn it into his clubhouse. Saladin could've wiped those frogs off the map, but he was worried about overcommitting when he heard that Frederick Barbarossa was on his way to relieve the crusaders. So instead, Saladin besieged the besiegers until someone else came along to besiege him like some kind of Looney Tunes skit, and since both camps had access to the sea, they were both able to just keep resupplying as they kicked the shit out of one another. In not so many words, it was a meat grinder.

Sibrand clearly wasn't the sort of man who could tackle all of that at once, so instead he carved out a niche where he could help. In September, he established a field hospital in Guy's seaport camp to assist the German-speaking soldiers who had chronic cases of missing limbs and winter ailments. Nowadays that sort of German selectivity raises all sorts of red flags, but here it was more just a matter of convenience the same way you'd probably want a choice of doctor who can communicate in your first language today. Once Richard the Lionheart showed up and blasted the whole siege apart in July 1191, Guy approached Sibrand and awarded his service with a house in the city where he and a few merchants from Bremen and Lübeck could run a more proper hospital. They were henceforth referred to as the Hospital of St. Mary of the German House in Jerusalem despite not… being… in… Jerusalem. Whatever.

This base of operations formed the foundation of what would become the Teutonic Knights, which is why Sibrand is often traditionally referred to as the order’s first Grand Master. Though, the folks at St. Mary weren't recognized as an official organization by the Catholic Church until 1192, and the Teutonic Knights weren't reorganized into a proper military order until 1198. Either way, Sibrand had already fallen out of the historical record, leaving no trace of where, when, or how he died or if he had any impact on the future development of the Teutonic Knights. It's about as frustrating as it is to reach the son of a bitch on that goddamned boat.

Design notes, I learned two things when trying to compile reference images for Sibrand: that this is yet another case of no one putting the man's likeness to paper before 2007, and that apparently the internet is really thirsty for Assassin's Creed's Sibrand. Can't say I understand it, but to each their own. The games lean really hard into making him a full on knight decked out in armor reminiscent of what the Teutonic Knights would later wear, but since they didn't become a military order until after Sibrand vanished from record, and Sibrand's only role in said record is as a battlefield medic, I decided I wanted to lean more into a doctor-ish vibe. I'm sure he could've held his own with a sword as such, but I digress. Unfortunately, that presents a problem: doctors back then didn't actually wear any distinguishing outfits. Hell they didn't even think it was necessary to wash their hands. Even the famous plague doctor getup wasn't actually invented until the 17th century. So I just kinda winged it. I decided that even though the plague doctor uniform is anachronistic, it still has shapes to it which wouldn't necessarily be out of place in the Crusades. The final result is rather simple, but I think it works. He looks like the kind of guy I wouldn't mind serving as my nurse, especially if I had a sword sticking out of my spleen.

Description
Ignore me- I'm just gonna delete then re-upload these three sheets because the description glitch is driving me absolutely bonkers and since DA tech support ain't gonna do anything, this seems to be the best fix.

Here we have yet another crusader whom history only remembers a couple paragraphs about. I gotta say, I've been really disappointed when researching these knightly orders. Like I've never been a big Deus Vult sort of gal to begin with, but man popular culture has really set me up to believe there was going to be more medieval legends of lost treasure and dragon slayers with these guys. But no, the knightly orders like the Templars and Hospitallers, they were all… well… just knights. All of their origin stories just amount to a bunch of old farts showing up, begging some other old fart for money, and then getting on with the business of making a total mess of the Holy Land. Sibrand and the Teutonic Knights are annoyingly yet another such case study.

We know pretty much fuck all about Sibrand before his arrival in the Outremer. He enters the historical record accompanying Adolf III of Holstein in the army of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa on their way to the Levant in 1188. Frederick Barbarossa went out like a little bitch, drowning in a river in June 1190 before he even made it to their destination. Adolf's contingency carried on without him, arriving at Tyre in August. Pretty much immediately though, Adolf had to race all the way back to Germany to protect his little corner of the Holy Roman Empire as if that's some kind of achievement. Well shit, Sibrand must've thought, I guess it's up to me to lift the Siege of Acre now.

The problem of course, was that the Siege of Acre was an absolute clusterfuck. Ideally, the Crusaders should've established a unified base at Tyre, but the only thing they hated more than Muslims was each other. Conrad of Montferrat had denied Guy de Lusignan entry to the city because of their competing claims to the crown of Jerusalem, so Guy stomped off, probably grumbled something along the lines of “didn't wanna be in ur stupid clubhouse anyway-” and laid siege to Acre in August 1189, hoping to make turn it into his clubhouse. Saladin could've wiped those frogs off the map, but he was worried about overcommitting when he heard that Frederick Barbarossa was on his way to relieve the crusaders. So instead, Saladin besieged the besiegers until someone else came along to besiege him like some kind of Looney Tunes skit, and since both camps had access to the sea, they were both able to just keep resupplying as they kicked the shit out of one another. In not so many words, it was a meat grinder.

Sibrand clearly wasn't the sort of man who could tackle all of that at once, so instead he carved out a niche where he could help. In September, he established a field hospital in Guy's seaport camp to assist the German-speaking soldiers who had chronic cases of missing limbs and winter ailments. Nowadays that sort of German selectivity raises all sorts of red flags, but here it was more just a matter of convenience the same way you'd probably want a choice of doctor who can communicate in your first language today. Once Richard the Lionheart showed up and blasted the whole siege apart in July 1191, Guy approached Sibrand and awarded his service with a house in the city where he and a few merchants from Bremen and Lübeck could run a more proper hospital. They were henceforth referred to as the Hospital of St. Mary of the German House in Jerusalem despite not… being… in… Jerusalem. Whatever.

This base of operations formed the foundation of what would become the Teutonic Knights, which is why Sibrand is often traditionally referred to as the order’s first Grand Master. Though, the folks at St. Mary weren't recognized as an official organization by the Catholic Church until 1192, and the Teutonic Knights weren't reorganized into a proper military order until 1198. Either way, Sibrand had already fallen out of the historical record, leaving no trace of where, when, or how he died or if he had any impact on the future development of the Teutonic Knights. It's about as frustrating as it is to reach the son of a bitch on that goddamned boat.

Design notes, I learned two things when trying to compile reference images for Sibrand: that this is yet another case of no one putting the man's likeness to paper before 2007, and that apparently the internet is really thirsty for Assassin's Creed's Sibrand. Can't say I understand it, but to each their own. The games lean really hard into making him a full on knight decked out in armor reminiscent of what the Teutonic Knights would later wear, but since they didn't become a military order until after Sibrand vanished from record, and Sibrand's only role in said record is as a battlefield medic, I decided I wanted to lean more into a doctor-ish vibe. I'm sure he could've held his own with a sword as such, but I digress. Unfortunately, that presents a problem: doctors back then didn't actually wear any distinguishing outfits. Hell they didn't even think it was necessary to wash their hands. Even the famous plague doctor getup wasn't actually invented until the 17th century. So I just kinda winged it. I decided that even though the plague doctor uniform is anachronistic, it still has shapes to it which wouldn't necessarily be out of place in the Crusades. The final result is rather simple, but I think it works. He looks like the kind of guy I wouldn't mind serving as my nurse, especially if I had a sword sticking out of my spleen.