sunheart
The condensed remains of a person's soul, recovered as a stone from where their body was vaporised in the sunlight. The local power source — every ship, every city on this world runs on them. Rebeke's quadcycle is powered by her mother's. STD:TSM:Ch 12
Known facts
- float-near-top-of-magmaAfter the body is vaporised, the resulting sunheart floats near the top of solidifying magma and can be found, roughly where the person was left, by a prospector ship — though it often has to be pried out of the stone.STD:TSM:Ch 12
- acts-as-seed-for-other-powerThe amount of power a sunheart can release is too much to be drawn from any soul alone, even a Threnodite one. Nomad concludes that the soul must act as a kind of seed or starter, drawing power from somewhere else — which is also why the offworlder's Rosharan-soul sunheart was so small; whatever the seeding mechanism is, it did not catch on him.STD:TSM:Ch 20
- drained-formA spent sunheart is a small cylindrical lump of smokestone — eight inches tall, a few across, surfaced with melted-wax ridges — that feels in the hand like cooled glass.STD:TSM:Ch 20
- charged-is-livingAre reckoned alive, by the standards of Investiture, so long as they are charged. A drained sunheart is a corpse and cannot accept a transferred soul; a living one will. Contemplation confirms it casually to Nomad after his earlier experiments failed — and that even a full transfer into a charged sunheart yields only a little flight time, because a Beaconite soul holds about one BEU of Investiture.STD:TSM:Ch 23
- roughly-two-hundred-beu-eachAux estimates an ordinary hovercycle's stone at around two hundred BEUs of Investiture — far less than what powers a full ship, but on most planets enough to reach the Second Heightening, and used here for ordinary locomotion. Aux also estimates that keeping a city the size of Union in the air requires sunhearts cumulatively worth tens of thousands of BEUs.STD:TSM:Ch 24
- harvested-at-maelstrom-shadow-lineThe line where the great maelstrom dissipates and the shadow begins is where freshly forged sunhearts surface in the cooling ground. The Cinder King always guards that boundary and runs the collection himself, since whoever reaches the sunhearts first owns the world's power supply.STD:TSM:Ch 32
- forms-by-soul-resistance-like-an-incandescent-filamentNomad reasons out the physics: Investiture does not normally do anything to an inert sunheart, because the sphere offers no resistance and the world-current simply passes through. A sunheart forms in the first place because a soul *resists* the current as the Investiture tries to flow from sun to core — exactly like an incandescent bulb's filament, which lights up because it is *bad* at conducting and bleeds the current as heat and light. Resistance, not capacity, is the principle that captures the power.STD:TSM:Ch 45
Events
- STD:TSM:Ch 45 An overcharged sunheart on the researcher's workbench — Nomad snatches it when he cannot reach the Dor cell.
- STD:TSM:Ch 47 The sunheart Zellion took from the Refuge gets shaved in two: a sliver for the Dawnchaser's power cell, and the bulk slotted into the back of Auxiliary's shield to drive its expansion into a dome.
- STD:TSM:Ch 50 Hundreds of Union's reserve sunhearts line the corridor walls in slots — Elegy passes them on the descent into the Hall of Burning and thinks of them as a mausoleum of souls.
Backreferences
- factGlowing Eyes
- facthovercycle
- factthis world
- factthis world
- factthe Greater Good
- factGlowing Eyes
- factthe first offworlder
- factGlowing Eyes
- factGlowing Eyes
- facthovercycle
- factsunheart
- factsunheart
- factKhriss's Second Law
- factSigzil
- factsunheart
- factBreath Equivalent Unit
- factElegy
- factCinderheart
- factSigzil
- factElegy
- factthe Dawnchaser
- factBeacon
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 32
- factsunheart
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 33
- factthis world
- factElegy
- factHardy
- factSigzil
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 34
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 35
- factGlowing Eyes
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 36
- factGlowing Eyes
- factthe first offworlder
- factSigzil
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 37
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 38
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 39
- factthis world
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 41
- factBeacon
- factSigzil
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 43
- factSigzil
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 44
- factGlowing Eyes
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 45
- factsunheart
- factTimeTellers
- factsunheart recharge
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 46
- factElegy
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 47
- factAuxiliary
- factsunheart recharge
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 48
- factElegy
- factthe Hall of Burning
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 50
- factElegy
- summarySTD:TSM:Epilogue
- factGlowing Eyes