Killsuits

SPOILERS: I'm chatting about my book. You have been warned.

At left is a drawing I worked on and never finished. Hence the "missing background". He's cartoony. I drew it probably ten years ago, I think (maybe longer than that). I honestly can't remember. Don't be cruel people!

Anyway, consider this my "concept art". I have other concept art sketches...some in color...some in black and white...that I've done over the years to help me visualize my characters.

This is what Kolin could look like (it's difficult to find the right picture in my mind). He's the guy that Jordan (my protagonist in SLIPSTREAM) falls in love with (yes there are gay people in my book...run away now). They do gay things together too...not just picking out window treatments.

Kolin kills people for money. He's really good at it too because he's had lots of practice. The suit he's wearing is called a killsuit. It's one of the gadgets that my friend Donna Hole alluded to that I use in my book when she reviewed it. So what is a killsuit? Well it's something that you wear when you intend to kill people. Kolin's a professional assassin. He uses guns, swords, knives...he's really good at murdering folks.

It's a very special piece of equipment that has many properties mostly associated with the metal it's made from.

1. It's tailor-made so that it fits like a glove. Rather than a boot, the individual toes are separated so that the person walking can get a sense of the unevenness of the ground. All the information is relayed up to the helmet which isn't pictured in the drawing. I imagine it looking kind of similar to the way a mantis-head looks, with a visor of glass. All the suits controls are chosen via a tongue pad in the helmet. You stick your tongue out and select buttons that sit right in front of your mouth.
2. It's made of corobidian. This is a fictional Avalonian metal. It's a superconductor so you have to wear grounding arm and leg bands. Otherwise just moving around generates electricity. You run around and lightning coils around your body. Corobidian is really light...light as a feather...but stronger than any known metal. It takes tremendous heat and power to forge so suits are incredibly expensive. If it gets superheated, it can give off a fume which is a deadly poison.
3. The arms are supposed to contain weapons. On one side is an energy net. On the other is a blade that can be ejected from a casing. All weapons are made of cibrian metal. This is another fictional Avalonian creation. Unlike corobidian, cibrian is extremely hard. It's heavy, so unsuitable for armor. But any wound it creates will never heal. Ever. If you get cut by a cibrian blade, you will bleed to death. It's just that simple. There are no exceptions. I don't even use magic or anything like that to get around this rule. Cibrian inflicts permanent damage. Period. End of story. Also a sword made from cibrian is likely to never break. I can't foresee a future where I will go around this rule. And thus far, I haven't explored using cibrian bullets yet. And cibrian cuts through all other metals EXCEPT another cibrian blade.

Anyway, I use these suits extensively in the first book, SLIPSTREAM. Each suit has a color that is matched to the person and it alternates with the color black.