Solicitation for FAQs and their Answers - Stormlight

[Kurkistan he/him]

Hello my fellow Sharders.

Through some depth of insanity whose true cause we shall never know, Chaos has been foolish enough to grant me a grain of authority. Specifically, I have been commissioned to compile a set of FAQ's, format them prettily, and then reap in the accolades for everyone else's hard work. This decision has been made due to the increasingly large amount of "common knowledge" that newer members don't know about, as well as, obviously, to answer frequently asked questions in a centralized manner.

As I am averse to actual work or mental activity demanded of my own person, I will be following the diabolical synergistic rout of harvesting crowdsourcing both questions and answers from the community at large. In my experience, this is a much better way to get actually useful results than me just locking myself in a room for a month and generating everything myself. The community asks and answers the questions it cares about quickly, responsively, and thoroughly with this kind of setup, and, most importantly, you don't have to place all your faith in one person (who happens to be me in this case) to keep on top of everything forever.

At this point, I could go on a hunt for questions and answers from various threads that already have them, or simply spitball various things I know off the top of my head. But that would both require work from me and deny you, the community, of a valuable opportunity to get used to providing me with your work so that I don't have to do it. So I'll be leaving even the low hanging fruit to you guys.

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Format:
I would kindly request that you write your submissions in the following way:

Q: Why is the sky blue?
A: Sunlight reaches Earth's atmosphere and is scattered in all directions by all the gases and particles in the air. Blue light is scattered in all directions by the tiny molecules of air in Earth's atmosphere. Blue is scattered more than other colors because it travels as shorter, smaller waves. This is why we see a blue sky most of the time.
Source: NASA
Canonicity: SCIENCE!

So, for facts that we actually care about:

Q: Who is Hoid?
A: A character who first appeared in an unpublished work who plays a role in all of Brandon's Cosmere books, to some greater or lesser extent, and is capable of moving between Shardworlds. His methods and goals are inscrutable. See the source for greater detail.
Source: Hoid article on Coppermind
Canonicity: Word of Brandon, in the books

Canonicity, so far as I can think, scales such:
In the books directly
Word of Brandon/Word of Peter
Word of Inkthinker (or anyone else with some role in the making of the work)
Sanderson-implied
-(semi-vague but easily deduceable comment. Like Hoid writing the letter)
Highly-regarded theory
-(So based on Brandon's comments and/or nearly unimpeachable deductions from the books. Like the Letter thread before Brandon's nigh-confirmation of it.)

Anything below this level is highly suspect. We might consider expanding the FAQ later, but we won't include less solid theories for the time being.

There might be some room for sub-divisions, or I might have cut it too fine, but you get the idea. Just some kind of qualifier so that we know which one to go with if there is some possibility of conflict between a FAQ and some new fact or theory.

You don't have to include canonicity or even a source for me to use a Q&A, but I and everyone around you would vastly prefer it, as it just makes everything easier down the road.

Aims:
I would like to see this FAQ cover a broad range of questions, from the simple "what's a shard?" to the more complex questions about Intent and Realmatics, with everything in-between for questions about individual series (such as how the 16-rule works in you-know-what-series, Cadmium/Bendalloy being swapped for you-know-what-metals, restrictions on Forging, etc.). Depending on how things go, it could end up being a big mondo-thread with a lot of subdivisions or spread out over various series-centric boards. The key is to get the content, though, and that's what I'm asking you guys for.

I'll have posted this in every board, and will watch them all carefully and start collating the results once they reach critical mass. After the initial FAQ is created, I would like it to be updated on a fairly regular basis. As to how much information the FAQ should cover, I don't think anyone wants a second Coppermind. Relatively simple questions, relatively simple answers: just let people who are new or have been out of the loop know what everyone else takes for granted.

And so now I leave it to you. Thank you in advance for your helpful (and excellently formatted) submissions.

 

P.S. This organization (meaning me with Chaos behind me wielding a big stick) reserves the right to reject, edit, or rephrase any submission in service of the goal of most clearly conveying useful information to the user-base. Though that would take work, so I'd prefer not to have to do it too often.

Edited April 11, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Morsk he/him]

I love the word "canonicity". It only gets 250k matches on Google, far less than most typos. But it's the correct spelling!

Q: What's the point of these fabrial sketches with Alethi handwriting?

A: Navani is a fabrial inventor, and these pages are from her notebook. The Alethi writing translates phonetically to English, giving real information about fabrials, including the ones shown in the illustrations. For example, fabrials are made by trapping spren inside gems.

Source: "Navani's Notebook" is the name given to these illustrations in the table of contents.

Source: The Coppermind has English-translated images of the pages. This is the easiest way to read them.

Source: The original thread where a fan translated the pages includes descriptions of the entire process, and replies from Peter confirming its accuracy.

Canonicity: In the book. Even if it does take heroic efforts to translate!

Also let me be the first person to say that obviously editors have to rephrase things, and I couldn't care less if you change what I wrote. Thanks for all this work!

Edited April 11, 2013 by Morsk

[Kurkistan he/him]

^Thanks. It is an awesome word. Just a note, if it wasn't obvious: We do reserve the right to rephrase if, we judge it to improve clarity. Thanks for being chill with that.

[rags]

I have been luking around on these forums for more almost year now and I did not know about this Alethi handwriting........Great idea, Kurkistan and thank you Morsk for sharing that tidbit with us......

[Kurkistan he/him]

It wasn't my idea originally, really. The sentiment has been floating around for awhile, then Phantom brought it up, I bragged, and Chaos commissioned me.

[Morsk he/him]

Q: Who's that on the cover of Way of Kings?

A: It's Dalinar and Eshonai. Eshonai is the female Parshendi Shardbearer who fights Dalinar and Kaladin in Chapter 68. She also appears in an earlier chapter, where Dalinar sees her across a chasm. That scene is the one on the cover.

Source: Second Eshonai Reading. The reading is from Stormlight-2, so it's a spoiler for that book. Brandon explains the cover in the introduction, before he starts reading.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Morsk

[Kurkistan he/him]

Thanks, added.