In the last article we looked at Keyanna Lance’s everyday clothes and her battle armour, in this article we are going to look at some of her equipment and accessories.

Equipment bag.

This first image shows a full set of clothing intended for, Kasume Cansake from my early ‘Learning To Fly’ story. I have included this image because of one item above the clothes. I’m referring to the circular device which appears to have six buttons. Even at this early stage I intended that piece of technology to be a portal device, which allowed my characters to communicate regardless of location. The idea of a device that bypassed the normal dimensions and accessed a subspace, meant that my characters could keep in touch whilst on the move or deep underground. I later expanded that idea to create the So-do gates, a device that can transport matter from one gate to another instantaneously by manipulating subspace.

Keyanna would be totally lost on her journey without access to her So-do bag, which contains a small portable So-do gate. There are limitations to these portable So-do gates as living matter cannot pass through them. Only the giant, fixed, So-do gate allows the transportation of living matter. Keyanna explains this to Mark Bellnett by saying that if you took a live chicken and passed it through her So-do bag, you would get back a dead chicken, a perfectly intact and quite edible chicken, but undeniably dead.

As part of my world building, I wanted to make sure there were limitations even on the Arten technology, as it’s no fun to tell stories about people who are simply too powerful, or too well-equipped.

Personal shield.

This image shows the personal shield generator that was worn by Keyanna when she first sets out on her quest. I tried to show the internal workings of the shield, but my technical drawing abilities as a teenager were limited. I’ve later realised that the interior of the shield generator would be too difficult to draw. As it is a dimensional shield manipulator, parts of it would pass through others and some aspects of the generator wouldn’t always exist in the same place at the same time. I do still hold with the overall design of the outer casing, with the eight-petalled lotus flower, and in the centre, the three rings of Art. I always imagined the generators having a simple finish of dark brushed aluminium.

Keyanna Lance wears a pair of these shield generators mounted on her gloves. Mark Bellnett has a personal shield generator of his own, but he has it mounted on a leather strap across his chest and is often covered by his jacket, as he likes to keep it a secret.

I got the idea for these little shield generators from a favourite anime called ‘Outlaw Star’, which was also the inspiration for the caster gun.

Water canteen.

This early idea came from the little red sketchbook and was reused in book one when Keyanna met the forest spirits. When she was given the gift of the healing water, she places it in her water canteen. The circular metal canteen is coated in leather made from the hide of a mountain deer and was created by Keyanna’s best friend Kirsty, as a gift to help her on her journey. The water canteen Keyanna carries bears her family coat of arms, which is a black, eight pointed star, on a white background, with the Silver Star Lance, straight down the middle. Although on the canteen there is no colour, it is just carved into the leather.

One Earring.

The final accessory I’m talking about in this article, is Keyanna’s single earring. As a teenager I also had a phase where I wore a single earring, a personal favourite of mine was an amber earring with silver decorations. I’ve described Keyanna’s earing as being like blue amber, with darker flecks permanently in motion within the blue. I changed the material to crystal with moving particles within, as I intended this type of jewellery to be worn by all the inhabitants of Hamarot. I’ve described in the first book how Keyanna uses her crystal like a key whilst she is trying to gain entry to the Hermitage. Most of her family and friends wear their access crystal like a pendant, but Keyanna being absent-minded, lost her several times and decided to have it permanently attached to herself as an earring with a solid steel ring through her ear. I’ve never described the process that set the ring into her ear without leaving a scar, but Keyanna does regret this decision near the beginning of book three.