HEMA Penzance has a sponsor. Wilderness Interactive, the company of our clubmate Jake Arthur Traynor, has bought the club the thing every small HEMA club wishes it had and almost none can afford: enough proper kit for everyone in the room to fence.
Steve and Andrew have run this club for free since 2014, and they still do. Nobody gets paid here, and nothing about that changes. What changes is what is on the rack when you walk in.
What has landed, and what is on its way
Nine full sets of SPES protection for the forearms, elbows, shins and knees, the kind with plates inside that let you take a full-speed cut to the arm and feel nothing. A loaner armoury of fencing jackets in men's and women's sizes, with more sizes on order after the first night showed us who did not fit. Chest protectors and throat protectors for everyone. Nine masks and ten pairs of Firestone gloves, on their way from HF Armory as we write. Eight Krieger S6 sabres, the sabre every fencer at Akademia Szermierzy in Warsaw uses, plus a heavier one for UK tournaments, and a pair of sail daggers for the brave. Nine steel longswords for the rack are next.
Why
Because the cost of the basic gear is what stops people. You can come for your free first lesson and love it, and then find that a mask, gloves and a jacket cost more than a month's rent. So people go through the motions in paired practice without ever really fencing, and the ones who would have stayed drift off. With loaner kit, a new member can hit and be hit in their first weeks, and that is the whole point of the art.
The first night on the new gear was Tuesday the 8th of September. Jake called it the best HEMA night of his life. Aaron, who joined us this summer, wrote under the video that it was the best time of his, and that he was sure next Tuesday would somehow top it. That is what the gear is for.
Who the sponsor is
Wilderness Interactive is Jake's company. It does marketing and builds websites, and it built this one. It also has a game in development called Vagabond: a historical RPG in the vein of Mount and Blade, with actual swordfighting based on HEMA rather than the usual button mashing. Sponsoring the club is marketing for Wilderness Interactive, and it is also, in Jake's words, a work trip: what are we doing? We are going to do sabre. Team building.
What it makes possible
A sabre night, for a start, and more sparring than one evening a week can hold. We are looking at halls for two extra sessions and somewhere to keep a growing pile of steel. Jake's ambition, stated in the club chat and repeated here so we have to live up to it: let's be the best equipped club in the UK, and make HEMA people come and visit us from far and wide. We do live in a nice place for a holiday.
If you have been putting off your first lesson because of the kit, you can stop now. Tuesday, 7pm, Penzance Leisure Centre. Everything you need is on the rack.