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Difference between revisions of "The Sunlit Man"
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They do so in two major ways. Individually, the locals have access to hoverbikes fast enough to outpace the rising sun. Long-term, they live on hovering airships, most of them roughly the size of houses. Fleets of such ships, called columns, can assemble together into mobile cities for the sake of convenience, with flat surfaces that lock together to form roads. When split apart, some of the ships are devoted to farming, sowing seeds that are then harvested during dawn as the columns travel around the planet.{{ref|name=Preview}}
Three columns are known to exist -- one commanded by a man called the Cinder King, another inhabited by refugees led by a trio of women called the Greater Good, and a little-known northern column, whose inhabitants speak with difficult-to-decipher accent. The people
Aside from the sun, Investiture on the planet manifests through simmering stones which Nomad nicknames the embers. Such embers are used as power sources for hoverbikes and ships. They can also be injected into people by means of a spear, replacing the heart. People implanted with embers -- called ember men and ember women by Nomad -- have parts of their chest burnt away, leaving gaping holes in their ribs and skin, and granting them enhanced reflexes and strength. The ember men and women seem to lose their minds in the process, obeying the wishes of the Cinder King while acting aggressive towards their former friends and loved ones.{{ref|name=Preview}}
== Development ==
{{quote
|I sat down and decided I was really going to push myself to write this last one because I’ve really wanted to get it done in that slot between projects that I knew I had to work on for contractual reasons. Because if I didn’t, I worried I’d never get around to it.
|Brandon{{ref|name=Preview}}
}}
Like the other secret projects, ''The Sunlit Man'' was written during the Covid-19 pandemic, as stopping conventions and international travel gave Brandon more time to write.{{url ref|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a-k6eaT-jQ|text=Kickstarter Announcement Video|site=YouTube}} Unlike the other three, the story was not written as a gift for Brandon's wife Emily. Rather, it was based on one of the first ideas Brandon had for a cosmere story, and one which he had not had the time for beforehand.{{ref|name=Preview}}
The original idea involved [[Hoid]] -- then called Topaz -- waking up on an uknown planet and trying to both figure out its magic system and to recruit its people into a looming interstellar war. As the cosmere developed, however, Brandon realized that Hoid no longer worked as the protagonist of this prospective story. Instead, he turned to Hoid's three apprentices, settling on [[Sigzil]], whom he decided to make a major figure in cosmere's future.{{ref|name=Preview}}
The initial setting was a world that was a sphere eternally rolling on the surface of another planet, forcing its inhabitants to always move. While the idea of a planet rolling on a planet was quickly discarded, Brandon kept the concept of a world where people had to perpetually move or die. This was partially to reinforce the theme of Sigzil/Nomad having to keep moving in order to avoid the Night Brigade.{{ref|name=Preview}}
== Notes ==
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