Harmonic Resonance and Investiture: A Unified Field Theory

[JohnTMS He/Him]

For sake of simplicity, assume full spoilers for the Cosmere to date of writing.

Abstract (TL;DR): An observation made in Rhythm of War led to the craft of a falsifiable hypothesis, and a logical, in-universe experiment that can be crafted to test the hypothesis. If the hypothesis is eventually proven true, it allows numerous real-world harmonic and acoustic phenomena to be applied to phenomena derived from Investiture in nearly seamless fashion, from the bottom up.

Scope: There is a critical distinction that must be made regarding the scope of this work. I am not here to assert specific frequencies etc. in terms of raw numbers, e.g. A=440 and similarly derived phenomena. As is with all (western) music, especially for those not of the 2nd Heightening, things will be described and derived, generally, from principles of harmonic relativity. With that in mind:

Observation: 
Rhythm of War, Chapter 15 Epigraph:

Quote

"Logicspren react curiously to imprisonment. Unlike other spren, they do not manifest some attribute—you cannot use them to make heat, or to warn of nearby danger, or conjoin gemstones. For years, artifabrians considered them useless—indeed, experimenting with them was uncommon, since logicspren are rare and difficult to capture.

A breakthrough has come in discovering that logicspren will vary the light they radiate based on certain stimuli. For example, if you make the Light leak from the gemstone at a controlled rate, the spren will alternate dimming and brightening in a regular pattern. This has led to fabrial clocks. When the gemstone is tapped with certain metals, the light will also change states from bright to dim. This is leading to some very interesting and complex mechanisms."

A light blinking in a regular, one could say intervallic period, could be expressed as a number, one that can be converted into an, albeit low, frequency in Hz. Label this frequency as f2.

Take a measurable source of the Pure Tone (for now using real-world terms as opposed to Realmatic, this should clear up shortly), in this case the Pure Tone of what is Investing the logicspren. Take that and use it as a constant, label it f1.

Hypothesis: 

Fundamental, f1 will have a neat mathematical relationship with the pulse of the logicspren, f2. Specifically:

Spoiler

 f1/n=f2

If this mathematical relationship holds true for the logicspren, it can then be extrapolated to say any localized, periodic oscillation of Investiture is a direct translation from the source Intent's frequency.

Therefore, this gives birth to a new principle of Realmatic Theory:

Quote

Static, symmetrical Invested rhythms are deep subharmonics (f2) of a given Realmatic Fundamental (f1), 'low' enough to be perceived across time rather than as a pitch.

 

The Harmonic Series, when translated into musical terms, reflect the series of phenomena known as overtones. This topic alone is a rabbit hole unto itself, so to avoid falling in, let me quickly annotate an additional constraint to the scope of my portion of the discussion; The Harmonic Series, and thusly the possible consequences of Invested action, go on upward infinitely and forever. My discussion on it should not.

Let's take the real-world term pure tone, referring to merely the waveform of a given fundamental pitch, or tone.

Pure Tone, in the Realmatic sense, likely refers to the combination of two things:

1. The Realmatic Fundamental; the Realmatic equivalent to the real-world pure tone.
2. The infinite Invested Harmonic Series resonating off the Realmatic Fundamental in totality.

Below is the same diagram of the Harmonic Series from before, now representing the whole of Realmatic Pure Tone, with the Realmatic Fundamental traced briefly (shoutout to MS Paint):

 

 

Subharmonics and Everyday Sounds: Every sound we hear has a frequency. From the shining overtones of an immaculate choir, booming low brass, and the rat-a-tat-tat of a snare drum; to the whirring of engines, human speech, and rapping one's knuckles upon a desk. There are essentially entire subgenres of music dedicated to making definitive tones out of manipulating ordinary sounds digitally.

 

What are the other implications of this hypothesis, if correct?

 

Singer Rhythms: 

The lateral move of applying this notion of subharmonics to the Rhythms Singers use adds a layer of complexity, as Rhythms seem, per the text, to be almost universally asymmetrical. How then, do they attune to somewhere in the sequence of the respective Realmatic Pure Tone? Let's first analyze the form that is the Singer Rhythm:
 

Like real-world rhythmic patterns, Singer Rhythms have an internal structure, and can be ever repeated. Take, for instance, a relatively simple real-world rhythm that could feasibly mimic that of a Singer Rhythm:

This can easily be split into two sections:

This may produce, when sped up in a similar fashion to that of the hypothesis' logicspren, or that of Gabe the Dog (R.I.P.), the presentation of two oscillating tones.
Tones that, if sped up further, oscillate fast enough to form a dyad, or interval in musical terms.

Dyads, like a properly resonant (lower case) pure tone, or Realmatic Fundamental, also end up 'ringing' their own Harmonic Series, with the segment, or overtone, that becomes acoustically strongest depending on the delta, or interval, of the frequencies in the dyad.

The dyad formed through the expression of the Singer Rhythm, for this framework to hold, would have its strongest overtone be in line with somewhere in the sequence of Realmatic Pure Tone, be it the Realmatic Fundamental, or somewhere else in the Pure Tone.


Resolution of Ambiguity:

This model, however, produces an complex, yet solvable, logistics problem.

If one gives each Intent a specific, unknown to us for the purposes of this work frequency aka Realmatic Fundamental with which Pure Tone rings out of their own infinitely scaling Harmonic Series, one will inevitably run into overlap. That problem suggests the possibility of recipes for in-universe confusion like powers not working as intended, or deriving the wrong Invested Art altogether. The distinct lack of those problems being prevalent at any relevant scale in the Cosmere suggests the system already found a solution.

I propose that this solution too mimics real-world phenomena, in this case harmonic context.

For simplicity's sake, let's take a segment of the series that comprises a Realmatic Pure Tone, and analyze the role of shared frequencies between Intents. In other words, as the Harmonic Series goes on forever, any given Realmatic Pure Tone contains common chord tones with others:

Each of the chords presented here are sharing one tone.

Meaning, put in Realmatic Terms, this ambiguity can be solved with a combination of Intent and Connection.

F major is different from C major is different than A-flat major.

Dominion is different from Ruin is different from Odium, or whichever combination is deemed relevant; despite any similarities or overlap.

Throw this back to the Singer Rhythms. It's no wonder that humans cannot be taught them, they lack the right Connection and/or hardware in the form of gemhearts to attune properly.


The Novel Nature of Hybrid Shards:

Hybrid Shards, such as Harmony, are said not to be a combination of its original Intents, but more of a novel being, or Pure Tone, derived from them.

Take the Realmatic Fundamental of each Intent involved in the synthesis. Once together they form, like asymmetric Singer Rhythms sped up, a dyad. But rather than changing the tones forming the dyad to align with differing portions of Realmatic Pure Tone; the dyad rings out, of which the strongest overtone formed becomes the new Realmatic Fundamental which will then ring out its novel Pure Tone.

Alternatively, some interaction with combination tones of some sort better reflect the phenomena. However, the specifics of the math even in relative terms, and the descriptions of underlying mechanisms in that realm escape me.

Perhaps that is where my ability as attempted Realmatic translator meets its limit. 

Regardless:

I am fully aware of the sheer massive scale in terms of new information, let alone recontextualization of existing canon, that lies above. I commend beyond measure anyone willing to go through this journey of a post, bearing with my own attempt at putting knowledge we have under new contexts and lights. I can only hope the Surges of Illumination and Progression, so to speak, have served me well.

As with many other theories out there, there's bound to be mistakes, misconceptions, and/or misapplication of concepts and ideas. Regardless of perceived innate error-this has been some of the most fun I've had writing in my entire life.



Journey Before Destination.

[PanLin they/he]

Ooooh maths and music, I'm SO here for it.

First up, I think this is a fantastic theory that really has bones. It's clear you've put a lot of thought into it. Sanderson has put too much emphasis on tones, rhythms and resonance for it all to be meaningless.

 

2 hours ago, JohnTMS said:

Hypothesis: 

Fundamental, f1 will have a neat mathematical relationship with the pulse of the logicspren, f2. Specifically:

  Hide contents

 f1/n=f2

If this mathematical relationship holds true for the logicspren, it can then be extrapolated to say any localized, periodic oscillation of Investiture is a direct translation from the source Intent's frequency.

Something about this feels like a bit of a leap in logic, but I can't quite place why.

Maybe it's simply that, while there is a direct relationship, that formula is too simple (unless n is doing some super heavy lifting)? I think the missing piece is just something around Intent, which is obviously super impactful in the Cosmere and potentially more difficult to represent in a mathematical formula.

 

2 hours ago, JohnTMS said:

For simplicity's sake, let's take a segment of the series that comprises a Realmatic Pure Tone, and analyze the role of shared frequencies between Intents. In other words, as the Harmonic Series goes on forever, any given Realmatic Pure Tone contains common chord tones with others:

I was literally thinking this as I read the previous section; a sign of a very logically constructed thesis imo!

We know that Adonalsium could've been split into any number of Shards; assigning each one a unique set of intervals instead of a single unique frequency gives us a functionally infinite playground, as opposed to being restricted by the Planck frequency (unless there's genuinely a realmatic difference between, say, 440Hz and 440.0000001Hz, which is kind of feasible, if a little unsatisfying). It also means that, for example, both Ambition's and Whimsy's Tone could be played in the key of C, but they would still be wildly different Tones; the important bit is the relative harmonics, not the absolute frequencies themselves.

From this, I wonder if the humble sin wave is Adonalsium's Pure Tone, regardless of the actual frequency, and each of the Shards technically has a Pure Chord, or a Pure overTone (if you want to maintain the terminology used in-world), with the number of component tones related to how fractured that Shard is.

This could also help to explain the purpose of Intent in mortals trying to create Tones. We know that Intent is needed to generate a Pure Tone with opposing polarity, so maybe, with the naturally Invested nature of the Cosmere, one can naturally vocalise a sound that has only the right intervals, something that is impossible to do in the real world.

Also, normally (assuming western notation that is somewhat allergic to microtones), once we hit 13 notes in a chord, that's functionally the same as a 12-note chord. However, the use of Intent means that, for example, someone accurately generating Adonalsium's Tone would literally be creating a pure sin wave, which means an octave is realmatically distinct.

Some extrapolations:

• If Adonalsium had only been split into two, we might expect those two Shards to each have a unique dyad (maybe a major and minor third, or an octave and a fifth)
• In reality, every Shard has a unique hexadecad with 16 component tones
• When Harmony and Retribution ascended, they each collapsed their constituent hexadecads into octads
• Theoretically, one could generate a hexadecad for a Shard that doesn't (but might have, under different circumstances) exist
• Similarly, one could generate a triacontadyad (really testing my knowledge of prefixes here) to imitate the 32-interval Pure Tone of an even more fractured Shard

Without the Shards actually existing, I'm not sure a mortal actually could create those last two examples, similar to how lerasium and atium stopped naturally occurring when Harmony ascended.

It raises some other interesting questions though, using Harmony as an example:

• Do Harmony and Discord have different octads?
• Can a Shard's Pure Tone change over time to reflect changes in its Intent?
• Does Harmony's overTone have any relation to Preservation's and Ruin's, or is it an entirely new set of intervals?
• What happens if Preservation's Tone is generated near Harmony? Would it resonate with that part of Harmony, increasing Preservation's expression within the combined Shard and potentially making it easier to forcibly split him back into Preservation and Ruin?
• Could Preservation's or Ruin's Tone be used to make the splitting of harmonium into lerasium and atium more reliable?
• Further, could someone create an artificial triacontadyad and split lerasium into two new God Metals?

 

2 hours ago, JohnTMS said:

Take the Realmatic Fundamental of each Intent involved in the synthesis. Once together they form, like asymmetric Singer Rhythms sped up, a dyad. But rather than changing the tones forming the dyad to align with differing portions of Realmatic Pure Tone; the dyad rings out, of which the strongest overtone formed becomes the new Realmatic Fundamental which will then ring out its novel Pure Tone.

Alternatively, some interaction with combination tones of some sort better reflect the phenomena. However, the specifics of the math even in relative terms, and the descriptions of underlying mechanisms in that realm escape me.

Perhaps that is where my ability as attempted Realmatic translator meets its limit. 

I got carried away and started to address this above. I don't think your translator has met its limit, I just think this isn't quite the right approach for combined Shards. It sounds like you're contradicting the core of your theory by first saying that intervals are the important part, and then saying that an individual frequency defines the combined Shard (but if I've just misunderstood, please correct me!).

Maybe, instead, the specific overTones of a Shard help to inform (or are informed by? Not sure on the cause/effect here) how compatible two Shards are. Maybe Honor and Odium just happened to share more intervals in common that Preservation and Ruin did, making the resulting expression stronger as a result of more resonant intervals.

Personally, I think Shardic Tones becoming less complex as they re-approach Adonalsium is a neater theory that is also more in keeping with the idea that Adonalsium was a stable expression that got mad screwed up (technical term) by the Shattering, but I appreciate I've just come in out of nowhere and taken liberties with your theory, so apologies for that 

 

Also, bonus thought: how does this map to different allomantic metals having different rhythms?

Are they a different set of tones and rhythms entirely, or just modulations and harmonic resonances of specific parts of Preservation's Tone? eg: burning copper emphasises Preservation's overTone's third interval while weakening its seventh, and bronze does the opposite?

Similarly, (spoilers for Emberdark):

Spoiler

what about the different pulses Dusk can sense from the Current's interaction with obstacles?

Again, are they simply modifications of Ambition's Tone?

[JohnTMS He/Him]

On 6/2/2026 at 4:29 AM, PanLin said:

Ooooh maths and music, I'm SO here for it.

First up, I think this is a fantastic theory that really has bones. It's clear you've put a lot of thought into it. Sanderson has put too much emphasis on tones, rhythms and resonance for it all to be meaningless.

Just off the top, thank you so much! Lots of thought and feeling so to speak, the notes I have that birthed all that are just ridiculous.
 

On 6/2/2026 at 4:29 AM, PanLin said:

Something about this feels like a bit of a leap in logic, but I can't quite place why.

Maybe it's simply that, while there is a direct relationship, that formula is too simple (unless n is doing some super heavy lifting)? I think the missing piece is just something around Intent, which is obviously super impactful in the Cosmere and potentially more difficult to represent in a mathematical formula.

I think that leap in logic stems from the lack of ability to use the redefined Realmatic terminology such as the distinction between Realmatic Fundamental and Realmatic Pure Tone, prior to having reason to define them. n being a whole integer just makes the math much simpler, but that would likely only work if the logicspren is 'attuning' to a Realmatic Fundamental, rather than a higher-order frequency elsewhere in its Pure Tone. The mathematical relationship in that case would still let the model function as far as I can tell.
 

 

On 6/2/2026 at 4:29 AM, PanLin said:

We know that Adonalsium could've been split into any number of Shards; assigning each one a unique set of intervals instead of a single unique frequency gives us a functionally infinite playground, as opposed to being restricted by the Planck frequency (unless there's genuinely a realmatic difference between, say, 440Hz and 440.0000001Hz, which is kind of feasible, if a little unsatisfying). It also means that, for example, both Ambition's and Whimsy's Tone could be played in the key of C, but they would still be wildly different Tones; the important bit is the relative harmonics, not the absolute frequencies themselves.

From this, I wonder if the humble sin wave is Adonalsium's Pure Tone, regardless of the actual frequency, and each of the Shards technically has a Pure Chord, or a Pure overTone (if you want to maintain the terminology used in-world), with the number of component tones related to how fractured that Shard is.

This could also help to explain the purpose of Intent in mortals trying to create Tones. We know that Intent is needed to generate a Pure Tone with opposing polarity, so maybe, with the naturally Invested nature of the Cosmere, one can naturally vocalise a sound that has only the right intervals, something that is impossible to do in the real world.

Also, normally (assuming western notation that is somewhat allergic to microtones), once we hit 13 notes in a chord, that's functionally the same as a 12-note chord. However, the use of Intent means that, for example, someone accurately generating Adonalsium's Tone would literally be creating a pure sin wave, which means an octave is realmatically distinct.

This is actually in line with where some of my further reasoning has taken me in my notes; just with a different slant away from say Ambition and Whimsy's tone being in the key of C, for the sake of argument.

Let's do some makeshift Realmatic Music Theory!

Western tuning has our chromatic scale at 12 distinct tones before repeating; 16 Shards of Adonalsium (cherrypicked from His Realmatic Pure Tone), 16 new Realmatic Pure Tones, 16 notes on a novel Hexadecimal chromatic scale?

Now as for the types of chord progressions and new styles of interval this noveau Equal-Temperament Tuning, and thusly all the kinds of music made off of this hypothetical harmonic framework, that is far beyond my current level of diving in. I'm sure someone's played around with the idea musically before, the 20th century had some veeeerrry experimental music, even prior to the popularization of distortion.
 

 

On 6/2/2026 at 4:29 AM, PanLin said:

I got carried away and started to address this above. I don't think your translator has met its limit, I just think this isn't quite the right approach for combined Shards. It sounds like you're contradicting the core of your theory by first saying that intervals are the important part, and then saying that an individual frequency defines the combined Shard (but if I've just misunderstood, please correct me!).

Maybe, instead, the specific overTones of a Shard help to inform (or are informed by? Not sure on the cause/effect here) how compatible two Shards are. Maybe Honor and Odium just happened to share more intervals in common that Preservation and Ruin did, making the resulting expression stronger as a result of more resonant intervals.

Personally, I think Shardic Tones becoming less complex as they re-approach Adonalsium is a neater theory that is also more in keeping with the idea that Adonalsium was a stable expression that got mad screwed up (technical term) by the Shattering, but I appreciate I've just come in out of nowhere and taken liberties with your theory, so apologies for that 

No need to apologize! Taking this concept I just introduced of all Realmatic Pure Tones being squeezed into the range of a single octave, this actually explains that there could be multiple mechanisms for the formation of hybrid Shards. Realmatic Fundamentals that lock well together, while with as not as many voices as in this example, should produce similar results. The absolutely screaming overtone here being the new hybrid Realmatic Fundamental.

Ones that don't mesh as well result in sum or difference tones appearing underneath both Realmatic Fundamentals to make a new one, that while still functional lives in the shadow of the original two. Like Harmony's experience as a Shard, for instance. Funny, that.

On 6/2/2026 at 4:29 AM, PanLin said:

Similarly, one could generate a triacontadyad (really testing my knowledge of prefixes here) to imitate the 32-interval Pure Tone of an even more fractured Shard

Pretty much, yes! However, for simplicity's sake I find the term triad to be interchangable in this context; playing further into harmonic interaction in the Spiritual Realm.

 

On 6/2/2026 at 4:29 AM, PanLin said:

Also, bonus thought: how does this map to different allomantic metals having different rhythms?

Waves of sound transfer through, or resonate, differently depending on the medium they're being transferred through.

Let's say you have Vin swallowing a vial of copper. Burning the metal introduces a new medium for which the resonance of the Investiture to, put reductively, modulate, which order in the sequence of Realmatic Pure Tone is being expressed the most. Burning Steel changes the resonance to either a higher or lower-order partial/overtone in the Realmatic Pure Tone, the rest of the Allomantic metals differing the same.
 

 

On 6/2/2026 at 4:29 AM, PanLin said:

Similarly, (spoilers for Emberdark):

Spoiler

1) Same principle as allomantic metals, different scale, almost certainly a differing Realmatic Pure Tone involved.
2) Modulation of a frequency, absolutely! Believing it to be solely of Ambition is also a reasonable conclusion to draw. I have more thoughts there but I genuinely hesitate to posit on them directly.

 

Edited June 3 by JohnTMS
Clarification on Allomancy at the bottom

[Shatter He/Him]

19 hours ago, JohnTMS said:

For sake of simplicity, assume full spoilers for the Cosmere to date of writing.

Abstract (TL;DR): An observation made in Rhythm of War led to the craft of a falsifiable hypothesis, and a logical, in-universe experiment that can be crafted to test the hypothesis. If the hypothesis is eventually proven true, it allows numerous real-world harmonic and acoustic phenomena to be applied to phenomena derived from Investiture in nearly seamless fashion, from the bottom up.

Scope: There is a critical distinction that must be made regarding the scope of this work. I am not here to assert specific frequencies etc. in terms of raw numbers, e.g. A=440 and similarly derived phenomena. As is with all (western) music, especially for those not of the 2nd Heightening, things will be described and derived, generally, from principles of harmonic relativity. With that in mind:

Observation: 
Rhythm of War, Chapter 15 Epigraph:

A light blinking in a regular, one could say intervallic period, could be expressed as a number, one that can be converted into an, albeit low, frequency in Hz. Label this frequency as f2.

Take a measurable source of the Pure Tone (for now using real-world terms as opposed to Realmatic, this should clear up shortly), in this case the Pure Tone of what is Investing the logicspren. Take that and use it as a constant, label it f1.

Hypothesis: 

Fundamental, f1 will have a neat mathematical relationship with the pulse of the logicspren, f2. Specifically:

  Reveal hidden contents

 f1/n=f2

If this mathematical relationship holds true for the logicspren, it can then be extrapolated to say any localized, periodic oscillation of Investiture is a direct translation from the source Intent's frequency.

Therefore, this gives birth to a new principle of Realmatic Theory:

 

The Harmonic Series, when translated into musical terms, reflect the series of phenomena known as overtones. This topic alone is a rabbit hole unto itself, so to avoid falling in, let me quickly annotate an additional constraint to the scope of my portion of the discussion; The Harmonic Series, and thusly the possible consequences of Invested action, go on upward infinitely and forever. My discussion on it should not.

Let's take the real-world term pure tone, referring to merely the waveform of a given fundamental pitch, or tone.

Pure Tone, in the Realmatic sense, likely refers to the combination of two things:

1. The Realmatic Fundamental; the Realmatic equivalent to the real-world pure tone.
2. The infinite Invested Harmonic Series resonating off the Realmatic Fundamental in totality.

Below is the same diagram of the Harmonic Series from before, now representing the whole of Realmatic Pure Tone, with the Realmatic Fundamental traced briefly (shoutout to MS Paint):

 

 

Subharmonics and Everyday Sounds: Every sound we hear has a frequency. From the shining overtones of an immaculate choir, booming low brass, and the rat-a-tat-tat of a snare drum; to the whirring of engines, human speech, and rapping one's knuckles upon a desk. There are essentially entire subgenres of music dedicated to making definitive tones out of manipulating ordinary sounds digitally.

 

What are the other implications of this hypothesis, if correct?

 

Singer Rhythms: 

The lateral move of applying this notion of subharmonics to the Rhythms Singers use adds a layer of complexity, as Rhythms seem, per the text, to be almost universally asymmetrical. How then, do they attune to somewhere in the sequence of the respective Realmatic Pure Tone? Let's first analyze the form that is the Singer Rhythm:
 

Like real-world rhythmic patterns, Singer Rhythms have an internal structure, and can be ever repeated. Take, for instance, a relatively simple real-world rhythm that could feasibly mimic that of a Singer Rhythm:

This can easily be split into two sections:

This may produce, when sped up in a similar fashion to that of the hypothesis' logicspren, or that of Gabe the Dog (R.I.P.), the presentation of two oscillating tones.
Tones that, if sped up further, oscillate fast enough to form a dyad, or interval in musical terms.

Dyads, like a properly resonant (lower case) pure tone, or Realmatic Fundamental, also end up 'ringing' their own Harmonic Series, with the segment, or overtone, that becomes acoustically strongest depending on the delta, or interval, of the frequencies in the dyad.

The dyad formed through the expression of the Singer Rhythm, for this framework to hold, would have its strongest overtone be in line with somewhere in the sequence of Realmatic Pure Tone, be it the Realmatic Fundamental, or somewhere else in the Pure Tone.


Resolution of Ambiguity:

This model, however, produces an complex, yet solvable, logistics problem.

If one gives each Intent a specific, unknown to us for the purposes of this work frequency aka Realmatic Fundamental with which Pure Tone rings out of their own infinitely scaling Harmonic Series, one will inevitably run into overlap. That problem suggests the possibility of recipes for in-universe confusion like powers not working as intended, or deriving the wrong Invested Art altogether. The distinct lack of those problems being prevalent at any relevant scale in the Cosmere suggests the system already found a solution.

I propose that this solution too mimics real-world phenomena, in this case harmonic context.

For simplicity's sake, let's take a segment of the series that comprises a Realmatic Pure Tone, and analyze the role of shared frequencies between Intents. In other words, as the Harmonic Series goes on forever, any given Realmatic Pure Tone contains common chord tones with others:

Each of the chords presented here are sharing one tone.

Meaning, put in Realmatic Terms, this ambiguity can be solved with a combination of Intent and Connection.

F major is different from C major is different than A-flat major.

Dominion is different from Ruin is different from Odium, or whichever combination is deemed relevant; despite any similarities or overlap.

Throw this back to the Singer Rhythms. It's no wonder that humans cannot be taught them, they lack the right Connection and/or hardware in the form of gemhearts to attune properly.


The Novel Nature of Hybrid Shards:

Hybrid Shards, such as Harmony, are said not to be a combination of its original Intents, but more of a novel being, or Pure Tone, derived from them.

Take the Realmatic Fundamental of each Intent involved in the synthesis. Once together they form, like asymmetric Singer Rhythms sped up, a dyad. But rather than changing the tones forming the dyad to align with differing portions of Realmatic Pure Tone; the dyad rings out, of which the strongest overtone formed becomes the new Realmatic Fundamental which will then ring out its novel Pure Tone.

Alternatively, some interaction with combination tones of some sort better reflect the phenomena. However, the specifics of the math even in relative terms, and the descriptions of underlying mechanisms in that realm escape me.

Perhaps that is where my ability as attempted Realmatic translator meets its limit. 

Regardless:

I am fully aware of the sheer massive scale in terms of new information, let alone recontextualization of existing canon, that lies above. I commend beyond measure anyone willing to go through this journey of a post, bearing with my own attempt at putting knowledge we have under new contexts and lights. I can only hope the Surges of Illumination and Progression, so to speak, have served me well.

As with many other theories out there, there's bound to be mistakes, misconceptions, and/or misapplication of concepts and ideas. Regardless of perceived innate error-this has been some of the most fun I've had writing in my entire life.



Journey Before Destination.

whoa. This seems pretty solid to me. I'm tired, so I don't have much stuff to add, but we'll see if I think of some stuff tomorrow.

[JohnTMS He/Him]

On 6/2/2026 at 1:23 AM, JohnTMS said:

The Harmonic Series, and thusly the possible consequences of Invested action, go on upward infinitely and forever. My discussion on it should not.

This is where it begins to feel like me putting on my aluminum-lined hat, as it were. A thought that just crossed my mind.

If Realmatic Pure Tone 'goes on forever', then couldn't one argue that in the Spiritual Realm, there is "perfect information" present for any given Pure Tone? While the specific calculus of the litany of options with my limited understanding there prevent me from hammering down the details, I'm aware of a slant to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle that can be applied to the realm of time-frequency analysis, Fourier analysis, whichever discipline one decides is most accurate, known as the Gabor limit.

So if you have a realm that for the most part could be described as frequencies, i.e. a frequency domain with perfect information on frequencies and amplitude, would that same realm have zero time domain whatsoever? 

Ergo, the Spiritual Realm seems timeless in nature because it is timeless.

 

Spoiler

What does this mean for the concept of Fortune? Just the infinite expanse of the frequency domain (Spiritual Realm) filtered, oh look another signal processing term how neat, through a combination of 1) the Pure Tone/phenomena derived from it utilizing it, for example the Atium-Electrum alloy and 2) futher filters, or limits on bandwidth so to speak for possible futures, the extent of which dependent on the user?

Oh, storms what have I done

 

[Pagerunner he/him]

I appreciate you posting this topic. It's one I've tossed around a lot since Rhythm of War, but I keep derailing all my writeups by getting into suppressors and Enlightening and all these complex interactions that happen in that book, and I have a hard time actually figuring out how to start it. I've got a few big areas I'd like build on your thought:

The Frequencies of the Tones

First of all, there isn't a sixteen-note scale for the Shards. It was Brandon's initial intent, but it doesn't work, so it's not happening:

Quote

Questioner

You did, in your last Q&A, mention you weren't super big on music theory. So did you know, beforehand, when you were designing pure tones, one aligning with all the different Shards, that in your standard octave you have twelve tones, meaning that four Shards and another four are gonna be paired up? Or are you kind of departing from...

Brandon Sanderson

This is part of where I kind of got into trouble with my music theory. I'm like "what if I had a sixteen note scale?" And then I talked to all my music theory people, and they're like, "Well, this and this and this and this." And I'm like, "Oh..." You can't just make a sixteen note scale. It doesn't actually work like that. And so, in this case, there are going to be some tweaks, some things that are there. But this is part of when I kind of talked about how it wasn't quite working the way that I'd imagined way back when, once I talked to people who knew music theory. But I do have how it's going to be going forward.

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 14, 2022)

But I think it is a very good question to dive into anyways: what are the actual frequencies? I think the popular theory is that it's a scale-and-some-change, that there are twelve notes in a chromatic scale and then four Shards that are the beginning of the scale in the next octave. (So, for example, C through the next E-flat.) This has a lot of potential for harmonic Shards that get along (that might share the same note on different octaves) and dissonant Shards that would be opposed (who could be a half-step apart, and have a lot of musical tension). The big problem I have with that is that it's going to put a lot of constraints on the actual Shards themselves, if we were to attempt to map Shards to pitches. Every Shard would need at least two very dissonant Shards (for the half-step above and below, and then any for that octave-and-a-half-step), and then you'd have to consider the fifths as being fairly well aligned, and man that's a lot to keep straight and we're just getting started. Based on the WoB above, I don't think Brandon designed the sixteen Intents around a chromatic scale; he's doing it the other way around, coming up with the Shards and then fitting them to pitches somehow. So either a) most of the musical relationships wouldn't actually matter, beyond maybe the octaves, or b) the notes are not using the chromatic scale.

I wouldn't mind a digression into the nitty-gritty of why we have the twelve notes we do in western music, but I'll keep it at the level you presented it above: the harmonic series, where you have a fundamental frequency and use multiples of that frequency for your harmonies. But instruments that we play don't rely solely on the harmonic series to play a full scale: they all need to change the fundamental (whether hitting different drumheads on a timpani, moving your hand up on a string on a violin, or depressing a valve to add tubing to a brass instrument). The harmonic series defines the scale, true, but an instrument that only uses the harmonic series (like a bugle) can only play a selection of notes. I think that's a second option, that the Shardic tones are like a bugle. So that would give you four octaves (say, 110 hz, 220 hz, 440 hz, 880 hz, 1760 hz for your A's) and then a selection of notes within that range (330, 660, and 990 hz being being Es; 550, 1100, and 1650 being D-flats, 770 and 1540 being G's, and then I think an E-flat and an A-flat to round out the last few primes [with the associated minor changes to make it actually sound good because music is crazy]). I think this does a good job of giving us a wide range for the tones, rather than cramping them together in a single octave, and it's a little simpler to try to harmonize Shards. The ones nobody likes (like Odium and Ruin) can get the dissonant multiples of 7/11/13, and then you have a few groups of 'good' Shards that all fit into a major chord.

But, the one I go with is purely based on vibes. Three octaves of the pentatonic scale gives us sixteen notes, and it's (relatively) harmonically pleasing for any of them to go together. If I recall correctly, this scale is also based on the harmonic sequence, but without a need to space the notes evenly across like the 12-note chromatic scale, so you don't need to incorporate some of the more dissonant multiples. I like it because I don't think that any of the Shards are truly dissonant, since they were all part of Adonalsium's "divine virtues" but are now "without context," so I like how this doesn't have any really harsh dissonance like an E and an E-flat.

The Shape of the Rhythms

This is where I'm going to greatly disagree with your interpretation. I don't believe rhythms are sine waves or dyads or anything like that; I think they are complex piecewise functions that become the amplitudes of sine waves, while the tones are the frequencies. A manifestation of Investiture (whether they be Stormlight or allomantic powers) is defined by a waveform with both frequency (tone) and amplitude (rhythm).

We can get order-of-magnitude estimates for frequencies just from assuming that sound works in the cosmere like it works on Earth. For tones to be heard as pitches, we'll generally say that they fall in the range of the piano (27.5 hz to 4000-ish). There is a periodicity to the rhythms, but even a fast rhythm is going to be single-digit cycles per second. Two pitches will give you an overtone together; but a metronome and pitch won't make an overtone. The metronome is just too slow. So that's why I don't think you can look at rhythms in terms of a second frequency that's a harmonic of the Shard's tone.

I've got some images from one of my abandoned writeups; let's see if I can get them embedded. Here's an example of a simple piece of music with both rhythm and tone:

Here's the rhythm represented as a piecewise function with the magic of math:

And then given a pitch (or its tone):

That's more what I feel is going on: the Command is defining the broad shape of the overall wave, while the Intent of the Shard powering the system specifies the frequency of the wave. You can't just mix and match any old rhythm with any old tone; in the example I threw together, you've got discontinuities. So there is a little bit of a relationship between the periodicity of the rhythm and the frequency of the tone; you need any of your step changes to happen at a node when the sine wave is at 0, so amplitude step changes are continuous. (That will explain why the surges work slightly differently depending if they're of Odium or of Honor; they're very similar broad shapes, but subtly changed to match the tone.) But even though the rhythm's pattern will need to reflect the tone's frequency, it's not in a way that will produce resonance or overtones.

Combining Shards

We actually see the tone of a combined Shard from Venli's perspective. It's not the Tone of War that I'm thinking of: it's Odium and Cultivation (which I think we've been calling the Tone of Freedom):

Quote

The tone snapped into her mind, Cultivation and Odium mixing into a harmony, and it thrummed through Venli. She opened her eyes as power spread from her through the stones. They began to shake and vibrate to the sound of her rhythm, liquid, forming peaks and valleys in time with the music. The floor, ceiling, and walls before her rippled, and a trail of people formed from the stone. Moving, alive again, as they strode away from pain, and war, and killing.

It's a single tone that is two other tones mixed into a harmony. What does that even mean? A tone can't be a harmony, so it has to be a harmony in context of all three tones, Cultivation/Odium/Freedom.

Is Freedom an overtone? That might cause some trouble with some of our scale options I presented above. (What if Cultivation was C, and Odium was C#? What if Cultivation was C, and Odium was an octave higher?)

Is it a third note that is in harmony with both, but not necessarily an overtone? (Like if Cultivation was C and Odium was G, then Freedom could be E.) That might also step on some toes for the scales, but that's why I liked the pentatonic scale, because you had the most room to play around in.

But the biggest trouble is going to be the sheer number of notes. If you assume that each Shard has its own unique tone (16), and then you assume that each Shard pair has its own tone (16*15/2), then you've got 136 notes, which is over 11 octaves. If we take our lowest note on our piano (A, 27.5 hz), and we allow a half step for each Shard or paired Shard, then we're going to reach over 27,000 hz, which is outside the range of human hearing. Even if we start using microtonal stuff, it's still going to get extremely cluttered, and I can't imagine we'll be able to give each Shard combination a unique tone if we try to meaningfully apply harmony.

So, just by crunching the numbers, we can see that we're going to have to reject the idea of new tones for combined Shards. Even though the text describes it as a single tone, it will have to be understood as multiple tones together. Maybe something like this:

[Master_Moridin he/him]

I aint got the background in music theory to address all of that, but this here

On 6/2/2026 at 3:23 AM, JohnTMS said:

the Pure Tone of what is Investing the logicspren

I'm curious where this comes from? The epigraphy you quoted describes how the logicspren blinks in a pattern in response to Light leaking out of the gemstone at a controlled rate. It makes no mention of the logicspren being Invested by something in this process, or that the type of Light corresponds to the pattern of blinking.

[JohnTMS He/Him]

19 minutes ago, Master_Moridin said:

I'm curious where this comes from? The epigraphy you quoted describes how the logicspren blinks in a pattern in response to Light leaking out of the gemstone at a controlled rate. It makes no mention of the logicspren being Invested by something in this process, or that the type of Light corresponds to the pattern of blinking.

To say that I'm arguing that something is specifically investing the logicspren and I'm needing to know what kind of Light is involved misses the crux of the argument.

Spren don't get Invested. They are Investiture. Investiture, as we know, has different Intents, Pure Tones if you will, post-Shattering. If logicspren are comprised of say, for sake of argument remnants of Honor's Investiture, the rate at which it's pulsing, i.e. the gears of the literal clock that logicspren got turned into would be timed to whatever Investiture it is comprised of.

Under this framework, whatever the rate that the logicspren blinks at, if it were instead comprised of Odium's Investiture, and leaked Voidlight, would change to reflect the Intent of the Investiture involved.

[Master_Moridin he/him]

15 minutes ago, JohnTMS said:

To say that I'm arguing that something is specifically investing the logicspren and I'm needing to know what kind of Light is involved misses the crux of the argument.

Spren don't get Invested. They are Investiture. Investiture, as we know, has different Intents, Pure Tones if you will, post-Shattering. If logicspren are comprised of say, for sake of argument remnants of Honor's Investiture, the rate at which it's pulsing, i.e. the gears of the literal clock that logicspren got turned into would be timed to whatever Investiture it is comprised of.

Under this framework, whatever the rate that the logicspren blinks at, if it were instead comprised of Odium's Investiture, and leaked Voidlight, would change to reflect the Intent of the Investiture involved.

Ah, see your use of the phrase "Investing the logicspren" did not read to me as meaning "the Investiture a logicspren is made of".
I also don't see reason to believe that the Investiture a logicspren is made of is what dictates the pattern of blinks, though it's certainly possible. Just as likely the rate the Light leaks out of the gemstone is what determines the blink pattern.
From what I can understand of the rest of your original post, the harmonic series idea seems really interesting as a possible way of modeling how the tones can relate to others.

[JohnTMS He/Him]

3 hours ago, Pagerunner said:

I appreciate you posting this topic. It's one I've tossed around a lot since Rhythm of War, but I keep derailing all my writeups by getting into suppressors and Enlightening and all these complex interactions that happen in that book, and I have a hard time actually figuring out how to start it. I've got a few big areas I'd like build on your thought:

The Frequencies of the Tones

First of all, there isn't a sixteen-note scale for the Shards. It was Brandon's initial intent, but it doesn't work, so it's not happening:

But I think it is a very good question to dive into anyways: what are the actual frequencies? I think the popular theory is that it's a scale-and-some-change, that there are twelve notes in a chromatic scale and then four Shards that are the beginning of the scale in the next octave. (So, for example, C through the next E-flat.) This has a lot of potential for harmonic Shards that get along (that might share the same note on different octaves) and dissonant Shards that would be opposed (who could be a half-step apart, and have a lot of musical tension). The big problem I have with that is that it's going to put a lot of constraints on the actual Shards themselves, if we were to attempt to map Shards to pitches. Every Shard would need at least two very dissonant Shards (for the half-step above and below, and then any for that octave-and-a-half-step), and then you'd have to consider the fifths as being fairly well aligned, and man that's a lot to keep straight and we're just getting started. Based on the WoB above, I don't think Brandon designed the sixteen Intents around a chromatic scale; he's doing it the other way around, coming up with the Shards and then fitting them to pitches somehow. So either a) most of the musical relationships wouldn't actually matter, beyond maybe the octaves, or b) the notes are not using the chromatic scale.

I wouldn't mind a digression into the nitty-gritty of why we have the twelve notes we do in western music, but I'll keep it at the level you presented it above: the harmonic series, where you have a fundamental frequency and use multiples of that frequency for your harmonies. But instruments that we play don't rely solely on the harmonic series to play a full scale: they all need to change the fundamental (whether hitting different drumheads on a timpani, moving your hand up on a string on a violin, or depressing a valve to add tubing to a brass instrument). The harmonic series defines the scale, true, but an instrument that only uses the harmonic series (like a bugle) can only play a selection of notes. I think that's a second option, that the Shardic tones are like a bugle. So that would give you four octaves (say, 110 hz, 220 hz, 440 hz, 880 hz, 1760 hz for your A's) and then a selection of notes within that range (330, 660, and 990 hz being being Es; 550, 1100, and 1650 being D-flats, 770 and 1540 being G's, and then I think an E-flat and an A-flat to round out the last few primes [with the associated minor changes to make it actually sound good because music is crazy]). I think this does a good job of giving us a wide range for the tones, rather than cramping them together in a single octave, and it's a little simpler to try to harmonize Shards. The ones nobody likes (like Odium and Ruin) can get the dissonant multiples of 7/11/13, and then you have a few groups of 'good' Shards that all fit into a major chord.

But, the one I go with is purely based on vibes. Three octaves of the pentatonic scale gives us sixteen notes, and it's (relatively) harmonically pleasing for any of them to go together. If I recall correctly, this scale is also based on the harmonic sequence, but without a need to space the notes evenly across like the 12-note chromatic scale, so you don't need to incorporate some of the more dissonant multiples. I like it because I don't think that any of the Shards are truly dissonant, since they were all part of Adonalsium's "divine virtues" but are now "without context," so I like how this doesn't have any really harsh dissonance like an E and an E-flat.

The Shape of the Rhythms

This is where I'm going to greatly disagree with your interpretation. I don't believe rhythms are sine waves or dyads or anything like that; I think they are complex piecewise functions that become the amplitudes of sine waves, while the tones are the frequencies. A manifestation of Investiture (whether they be Stormlight or allomantic powers) is defined by a waveform with both frequency (tone) and amplitude (rhythm).

We can get order-of-magnitude estimates for frequencies just from assuming that sound works in the cosmere like it works on Earth. For tones to be heard as pitches, we'll generally say that they fall in the range of the piano (27.5 hz to 4000-ish). There is a periodicity to the rhythms, but even a fast rhythm is going to be single-digit cycles per second. Two pitches will give you an overtone together; but a metronome and pitch won't make an overtone. The metronome is just too slow. So that's why I don't think you can look at rhythms in terms of a second frequency that's a harmonic of the Shard's tone.

I've got some images from one of my abandoned writeups; let's see if I can get them embedded. Here's an example of a simple piece of music with both rhythm and tone:

Here's the rhythm represented as a piecewise function with the magic of math:

And then given a pitch (or its tone):

That's more what I feel is going on: the Command is defining the broad shape of the overall wave, while the Intent of the Shard powering the system specifies the frequency of the wave. You can't just mix and match any old rhythm with any old tone; in the example I threw together, you've got discontinuities. So there is a little bit of a relationship between the periodicity of the rhythm and the frequency of the tone; you need any of your step changes to happen at a node when the sine wave is at 0, so amplitude step changes are continuous. (That will explain why the surges work slightly differently depending if they're of Odium or of Honor; they're very similar broad shapes, but subtly changed to match the tone.) But even though the rhythm's pattern will need to reflect the tone's frequency, it's not in a way that will produce resonance or overtones.

Combining Shards

We actually see the tone of a combined Shard from Venli's perspective. It's not the Tone of War that I'm thinking of: it's Odium and Cultivation (which I think we've been calling the Tone of Freedom):

It's a single tone that is two other tones mixed into a harmony. What does that even mean? A tone can't be a harmony, so it has to be a harmony in context of all three tones, Cultivation/Odium/Freedom.

Is Freedom an overtone? That might cause some trouble with some of our scale options I presented above. (What if Cultivation was C, and Odium was C#? What if Cultivation was C, and Odium was an octave higher?)

Is it a third note that is in harmony with both, but not necessarily an overtone? (Like if Cultivation was C and Odium was G, then Freedom could be E.) That might also step on some toes for the scales, but that's why I liked the pentatonic scale, because you had the most room to play around in.

But the biggest trouble is going to be the sheer number of notes. If you assume that each Shard has its own unique tone (16), and then you assume that each Shard pair has its own tone (16*15/2), then you've got 136 notes, which is over 11 octaves. If we take our lowest note on our piano (A, 27.5 hz), and we allow a half step for each Shard or paired Shard, then we're going to reach over 27,000 hz, which is outside the range of human hearing. Even if we start using microtonal stuff, it's still going to get extremely cluttered, and I can't imagine we'll be able to give each Shard combination a unique tone if we try to meaningfully apply harmony.

So, just by crunching the numbers, we can see that we're going to have to reject the idea of new tones for combined Shards. Even though the text describes it as a single tone, it will have to be understood as multiple tones together. Maybe something like this:

I completely get getting hung up on the little things, and that leading to an ever-cycling delay on things, don't beat yourself up about that for a second!

I appreciate this reply immensely, and in vast swaths I'm in agreement with you! 16-TET was just a fun idea anyway, not core to the framework; as Brandon wished I would've preferred if it could have been so lol.

But I think a combination of my secondary restraint regarding the infinite nature of the Harmonic Series, and that of my metaphoric use of harmonic context to explain the interaction with said infinity has led to a major misunderstanding.

This video does a much better job of explaining these concepts than I ever could. I highly recommend giving it a full watch if you're at all keen to it, but I'll also be referring to timestamps of it from here on out:

2:33-About 4 Minutes

This part is more vibes for me than anything else, but I see the figure above as the relationship that the logicspren shares with higher-order frequencies when exposed to certain stimuli.

1:49-2:28

The correlation between a Realmatic Fundamental or somewhere in its Pure Tone, and low-frequency temporal pulses such as claps, stomps, or the blinking rate of a logicspren, can be explained in a similar fashion.

My initial thought of ringing Dyads to produce the Invested nature of Rhythm, as opposed to just performing as a musician, may be a step too complicated under this framework, actually. If a short signal, such as Rhythm, can correlate with such a wide range of frequencies, then attunement is likely manipulated in two ways:

1) The Rhythm itself varying

2) Intent and Connection

Think of asking a person with perfect pitch what note a clap makes. Provided they were forced to answer, not just shrugging their shoulders: depending on how they were listening, or the Intent of their ear if you will, any and all answers could and would be correct.

So Intent on the user's end cover's where in the frequency band the attunement goes, and Connection anchors the user to the right Realmatic Pure Tone, or Intent.

8:44-10:21

 

Quote

"But in practice, there's all sorts of different objects in the field...locations of multiple objects extremely ambiguous...Instead, a more precise understanding of how far away all these things are would require having a very quick little pulse confined to a small amount of time.

Spoiler

This concept can be mapped onto Space-Age Cosmere navigation, as of Isles of the Emberdark, at least!

The Grand Knell pulses out at a continuous rate, each confined in time. Allowing the implementation of the Doppler effect to more directly allow Navigators to more directly detect objects, etc., that are in the way between their current position and the Knell.

The entire segment on Quantum Mechanics/Special Relativity:

This is where things have to be scaled in terms of approaching infinity, though this video does not cover the topic. 

Take the above figure as a different way to represent Realmatic Pure Tone, with the balls getting smaller with less mass now representing each higher-order frequency as the figure expands outwards.

If you take the infinite expanse of Realmatic Pure Tone, or rather a space that has infinite information on it such as the Spiritual Realm, and equate that to an infinite number of discrete pulses in time, does that not make time itself infinite in the Spiritual Realm?
 

[JohnTMS He/Him]

22 hours ago, JohnTMS said:

I completely get getting hung up on the little things, and that leading to an ever-cycling delay on things, don't beat yourself up about that for a second!

I appreciate this reply immensely, and in vast swaths I'm in agreement with you! 16-TET was just a fun idea anyway, not core to the framework; as Brandon wished I would've preferred if it could have been so lol.

But I think a combination of my secondary restraint regarding the infinite nature of the Harmonic Series, and that of my metaphoric use of harmonic context to explain the interaction with said infinity has led to a major misunderstanding.

This video does a much better job of explaining these concepts than I ever could. I highly recommend giving it a full watch if you're at all keen to it, but I'll also be referring to timestamps of it from here on out:

2:33-About 4 Minutes

This part is more vibes for me than anything else, but I see the figure above as the relationship that the logicspren shares with higher-order frequencies when exposed to certain stimuli.

1:49-2:28

The correlation between a Realmatic Fundamental or somewhere in its Pure Tone, and low-frequency temporal pulses such as claps, stomps, or the blinking rate of a logicspren, can be explained in a similar fashion.

My initial thought of ringing Dyads to produce the Invested nature of Rhythm, as opposed to just performing as a musician, may be a step too complicated under this framework, actually. If a short signal, such as Rhythm, can correlate with such a wide range of frequencies, then attunement is likely manipulated in two ways:

1) The Rhythm itself varying

2) Intent and Connection

Think of asking a person with perfect pitch what note a clap makes. Provided they were forced to answer, not just shrugging their shoulders: depending on how they were listening, or the Intent of their ear if you will, any and all answers could and would be correct.

So Intent on the user's end cover's where in the frequency band the attunement goes, and Connection anchors the user to the right Realmatic Pure Tone, or Intent.

8:44-10:21

 

The entire segment on Quantum Mechanics/Special Relativity:

This is where things have to be scaled in terms of approaching infinity, though this video does not cover the topic. 

Take the above figure as a different way to represent Realmatic Pure Tone, with the balls getting smaller with less mass now representing each higher-order frequency as the figure expands outwards.

If you take the infinite expanse of Realmatic Pure Tone, or rather a space that has infinite information on it such as the Spiritual Realm, and equate that to an infinite number of discrete pulses in time, does that not make time itself infinite in the Spiritual Realm?
 

All of that to say, after some thought:


I posit one can take all the above, and apply the concepts to add the following descriptions to each realm:

Spiritual: Frequency domain
Physical: Time domain
Cognitive (vibes): Blend of the two, dependent on the mediators of Intent and Spiritwebs; expressed similarly to Special Relativity.

I'm beginning to get attached to thinking of it this way:

• The Spiritual Realm is the event horizon of a Singularity; the Singularity being that of the realm of the God Beyond, never to be touched.
• The Physical Realm is just standard spacetime, if you will.
• The Cognitive Realm acting as the accretion disk, matter (Investiture) getting thrown about in strange and wacky ways.