Hello everypony! Here's a list of facts and things to abide by if you want a story to be full canon. You can take what you want and leave others to make your own story, but then it goes into the 'outer' Silver Verse, which is fine.

Magic
* Humans can see unicorn magic with the same glow they have in the show.
* Ponies only see magic when it is very intense, like when Twilight was levitating the ursa minor around.
* Humans that become ponies can still see magic. (Maybe it's mental?)
* All ponies have a sort of magic, but only unicorn magic is obvious, and glows.
** Unicorns can learn 'spells', which is formalized magic done through a specific set of horn glows and twists, allowing them to create effects outside their specialty.
** Creating spells is an arduous process of trial and error, taking anywhere from a month to several years depending on complexity.
*** Most Equestrian unicorns are quite happy using spells given to them, rather than risking life and limb trying to make a new spell.
*** A new spell is considered valuable, and can be sold to an academy or library.
** Contact with a unicorn horn is very distracting. In an intimate setting, it can be a nice thing, but it never helps with spellcasting.
* Non-unicorn ponies do not need extended schooling to master their magic.
* Most unicorns don't bother either.
** Those that do attend an academy, often specializing in the field of magic they most want to learn about.
** Unicorns wanting to attend academy have to pass a test while in grade school specific to the school they wish to attend.
** Many academies expect their students to be versed in the 'magic alphabet', but do offer remedial classes.
*** Unicorn magic is rated by two easy systems.
*** Power. Six stones are provided, each ten times heavier than the other.
*** The average is around 3(or 100 kg). Academy unicorns score around 3.5 on average.
**** Celestia is a six. She has no rating for whatever magic causes the sun to rise or fall.
*** The other scale is light. Brighter lights show greater control, and also help to show throughput. There is no formal scaling for this, making it an informal gauge at best.

Pegasi
* Some pegasi magic comes intuitively, requiring no training of any kind.
** Their ability to treat clouds as solid is the most notable.
** A high degree of resistance to impacts is another, though resistance is not immunity.
* Pegasi do have to learn how to fly. Their inherent magic enables them to fly on wings that are far too small for them, though this magic use does build a hunger.
* Pegasi have to learn how to sense and manipulate weather.
** An untrained pegasi is as clueless as any other pony.
** A trained pegasi can determine what the weather will be, and modify it with extreme precision.
** It requires groups of trained pegasi to control weather over entire towns or cities, and is considered one of the 'traditional' jobs a pegasus might undertake.
*** Unicorn magic is capable of weather manipulation, but many consider it to lack the 'grace' of 'proper' pegasus magic.
*** It's also extremely expensive, limiting the option to larger cities, as unicorns with sufficient training charge handsomely for its use.

Earth Ponies
* Earth ponies are generally strong, and can channel magic to become stronger with practice and training.
* Earth ponies are tough and enduring, capable of withstanding abuse and even the ravages of time better than other tribes.
* An earth pony that is in tune with their internal magic can direct it towards wounds, healing about three times as fast as normal, but requiring about as much extra food.
* With practice, earth ponies can channel their magic through their hooves.
** This is most commonly used to fertilize the ground to make farming more successful.
** It can also be used in combat to strike harder and disrupt a foe's magic balance painfully.

Be Prepared
* Humans that arrive in Equestria may or may not be given leave to bring one object.
** The object must be something they actually own on Earth.
** The object can be a container of other objects, provided they were already in the container at the time the human arrived in Equestria.
** No assurance of ammunition, fuel, power, or anything like that is assured. The object comes exactly as is. Asking for a gun gets you... a gun, which is not as useful as one might hope.
** Extremely heavy objects will be given in a portable version, to be unpacked, once, at the user's discretion.
*** If a human has an object, its relative power and usefulness will give them a 'penalty' in the form of starting location.
*** Dangerous objects are considered heavily penalized, such as swords and guns and things.
*** The harsher the penalty, the worse and usually the more remote the starting location. Come with nothing? You could end up waking up in Twilight's bed to your mutual surprise. Bring a chainsaw and you may appear in the middle of a changeling hive instead.

The Text
* The Text, seemingly omnipotent 'opener of paths', will 'speak' to humans before arriving, but will answer very few questions.
* Only humans that want to come to Equestria will be sent there
* If a human survives and thrives, the text will speak to them again somewhere between a month and three from their arrival.
** The human has the opportunity to embark on a quest, large or small, by asking for a path to be opened to a desired outcome.
** Only one path will be opened.
*** The Text has no apparent morality and will open any path requested of it, though the more grand the end result, the more potentially dangerous the path is to get to it. The human may or may not survive, or simply succeed, at walking the path to their end goal.

Song Magic
* This mysterious force can, and will, affect all native Equestrians.
* Humans are not affected by it and can witness the Equestrians dancing and singing as they get something done or somepony struggles with some internal dilemma or somepony else is just noticing how sunny it is that day.
* Having the body of an Equestrian (Say by being turned into a pony) makes one susceptible to the magic.
** If a human interrupts a song, the song will move around the disturbance if at all possible, simply giving the lines to another performer while the human distracts a singer.
** The singer will be freed of the effects of the song magic while addressing the disturbance, but will be unaware there is a song going on around them, unless they are a changed human.
*** While not reacting immediately, those caught up in the song will remember the human's presence afterwards and can react to it.

Heart Crystals
* A heart crystal, despite its name, can be just about any shape. This gem is worn around the neck of a pony that plans to have significant enhancement or alteration spells cast on them.
* Different qualities of crystal can make spells easier or harder to cast.
* Crystals prevent 'tangling' of spells. While talented unicorns (Like, say, Twilight Sparkle), can cast spells on her friends without such a crystal without fear, a heart crystal makes it safe for less talented souls.
** Tangling causes a spell to weave into a pony's 'aetheric net', which is like the nervous system for their magic.
*** Humans have this network, even if they don't use it a lot.
*** Tangled spells can behave strangely, if at all, they also cannot be dispelled at will, unlike most normal enchantments.
*** It takes a very talented spellcaster to undo a tangle, and patience. Like a knotted ball of yarn, it has to be worked out.
*** Tangles can be painful and harmful to the tangled pony.
* Crystals begin glowing after 'primed' by their user. They glow, visibly to everyone, the same color as that pony's magic.
** A crystal will not change colors if traded after primed.
** Using someone else's crystal gives your magic their resonance in addition to your own.
*** This can be a boon if the crystal is primed by a talented user.
*** This could be bad if a poor user primes a crystal.

Ponies
* Ponies are, by and large, accepting people.
* If a human arrives with a smile, the ponies have little reason to run them off or attack them, though may avoid them out of fear.
* A human that requests meat will be assumed to have a griffon-like palette and offered fish.
* Pointing at a pig and asking for that will get a stern reminder that the pig can understand them and they're making the pig nervous.
* Insistence on eating an intelligent animal is a crime.
** Crime will get a human jailed, where they will be made to feel bad by lecturing law enforcement.
** Sometimes sentences of helping the one you hurt are levied. Knocked over Applejack's salescart? You get to help her make a new one.
** If that doesn't work (You monster), the human can be bumped up to eventually meeting the princesses for the sternest talk of all.
*** The biggest punishment is banishment from Equestria, being sent to deal with one of the other nations.

Diet
* Most ponies are omnivorous but their society limits them to herbivore diets with the exception of eggs and milk.
* Fish is occasionally acceptable, seen as foreign fare and 'griffon food'
* Griffons are omnivores, but are obligate carnivores, requiring meat to remain healthy.
* Minotaurs are omnivores, but tend towards herbivorism
* Dragons are lithovores (gems are tasty) and omnivores.
* There are very few things an Equestrian can shove in their mouth that will hurt them unless outright poisonous, that doesn't mean they want to.

Royalty
* Celestia is of the kind mother and protector variety of Celestia, with her light-hearted pranking sub-thread.
** She is not a cruel dictator.
** She truly loves her ponies as her children.
*** She will lose her little mind when something poses a true threat to them.
* Luna is a displaced ruler from a harsh time.
** She means well and is generally kind, but is mired in outdated social norms.
** She desires intensely to be relevant to modern Equestria.
** She finds the dreams of humans to be intoxicatingly confusing and haphazard compared to the relatively simpler dreams of ponies.
** She is not as repulsed by violence as many others, including her sister. A good fight is as likely to excite her as anything else.
** She desires to finish her lunar tribes project. See Lunar Tribes section.
* Cadance is the shipping princess.
** Content in her Crystal Empire, Cadance can see the bonds of love between ponies, or humans, and identify what variety they take.
*** This means determining 'love for a spouse' from 'love for a sibling' from 'love for a pretty object' and so on.
** Cadance can manipulate these threads, temporarily enhancing or cutting off these threads.
*** An enhanced thread causes the ponies on both sides of the thread to act on the thread freely, lowering inhibitions.
*** This does not always mean kissing or confessions of love. If two ponies see each other as siblings and love that way, they may rush out to do something fun together, or share a conversation about a past familial event they'd been neglecting, rather than hug and kiss.
*** Cut threads cause a muting of these feelings.
*** The threads will recover on their own in either event, though actions taken during the threads manipulation may cause them to remain stronger or weaker.
** Cadance wishes the best for Equestria, her aunts (Celestia and Luna), and most everyone else.

Lunar Tribes
* Lunar Pegasi are the original, but were intended to be the first, not only.
* All lunar ponies share a few traits, namely darkvision and slit eyes, enhanced hearing and tufted ears, and lastly fangs.
** Lunar pegasi have batlike wings instead of bird ones.
** They hate being called bat ponies. Thems fighting words.
* The lunar tribes view Luna as their progenitor, sometimes calling her the 'all-mother'.
* In rare throwbacks, the bite of a lunar pony can transmit strong feelings they are experiencing.
** In battle, the magic involved goes specifically for fear, striking terror into the victim being bit.
*** This can kill a pony with fright, but is not assured.

Reproduction
* Mares go into 'heat', which they do not call heat.
** Mares do not become sex-obsessed fiends during this time, though may engage more easily than other times, like human females.
** Medicine is available to render a mare barren during her heat.
*** Many mares simply abstain during their heat.
** Stallions can detect when a mare is receptive and will react.
*** Like females, they are not obligated to act on this signal. They are not animals.
* Most ponies form monogamous pairs between a male and a female.
* Female pairings are not uncommon.
* Male pairings are discriminated against, in part due to the lesser amount of males to go around.
* Country and old-school nobility ponies engage in herding.
** Herds form around a stallion.
** The first female the stallion bonds with is the first wife, who will seek other suitable females.
** All other females are 'secondary wives'.
** A herd can have up to five females, but this is exceptionally rare. Most have 3-4 members, including the stallion.
*** A female who is dissatisfied with a herd may leave it. This could be due to difference of personality, or simply not getting enough time and love from the stallion and/or other members of the herd.

Changelings
* To those with properly tuned eyes (humans), their magic has a very distinctive green glow that reveals them when shapeshifting or using magic.
** More experienced changelings can disguise their color, which also disguises them from other magic that would detect changelings.
* Changelings come in several castes that offer very little mobility from the one a changeling is born into.
** Drones are the most common, sent out on various duties or serving as guards or whatever they're good at. Intelligence varies from smart dog to moderately intelligent pony. They are considered gender neutral, not participating in the act of reproduction, but are actually capable of doing so as a male or a female.
** Queens are the rulers of hives. They are typically female cast, but are capable of being male if they so choose. Their orders cannot be ignored by drones and override all others save that of another queen.
** Leaders are sub-queens. They, like drones, do not usually participate in reproduction, but typically do select a gender they prefer. They are generally intelligent, and can order drones around. They feel obliged to obey queens, but can choose to ignore an order or subvert it.
** Breeders are all male, typically of low intelligence, and spend their time in the hive. Their only purpose is to help the queen make eggs.
* A unicorn can become a changeling with over dependence on shape-shifting magic and/or not using a heart crystal.
* A changeling can, in theory, be restored to a pony by careful weaning off of changeling magic and the giving of a heart crystal.
* Changelings will become 'holed' when allowed to be hungry.
* Forceful stealing of love will agitate the holes, making them linger even when satiated.
* Being holed prevents restoration, if such is a target, but does not much otherwise impede a changeling.

Twilight Sparkle
* Yes, she gets her own section.
* No, she is totally not my favorite book horse.
* Shut up.
* Twilight is researching the origin of the humans and how to access their home world.
** She is aware the human world beyond the mirror portal is similar, but not the same.
** She has a brony named Jake living with her. If one can get past his fanboyish nature, not a bad guy.
** Twilight can detect humans in a wide radius with a specially crafted spell, allowing her to track down newly arrived humans.
*** If you're lost in the Everfree, she may show up to rescue you, but that is not assured. She does not cast the spell every day, as it is draining.

Discord
* Knows more than he's letting on about the arrival of the humans.
* He is amused by their presence, but will tolerate not their interference if they get pushy around his friends (especially Fluttershy, but the rest of the mane 6 as well).
* He is not violent, but he can do a lot without being violent.
* Tends to treat others as he is treated. A polite human is treated politely, while a rude one is treated rudely.
* Everyone is assumed to be able to take a joke.

Not sure if others would find it helpful or not. But I have noticed in your stories that some readers question what age everypony is meant to be as in a maturity sense. I and a huge horse and pony nerd. I'm willing to help out with that if you'd like ^^

4218049 Do you mean in terms of OCs or show characters?

I know that cartoon portrays age differently. Thats a given. I meant as a general guide for real pony and horse age comparisons to better judge maturity even if an OC appears to look like say a colt or filly.

Updated with changeling info.

That is only if you think it will be helpful

Updated with Twilight and Discord info. Feel free to leave a reply if you think of a topic I've failed to cover.

4218429 Fair enough! How do you like the info so far?

Helpful gives a good overview of the basics. Headcanon excepted lol. Here is some horse/pony info to take as you will. Maybe it will be helpful too...maybe lol.

The following terminology is used to describe horses and ponies of various ages:

Foal: a horse of either sex less than one year old. A nursing foal is sometimes called a suckling and a foal that has been weaned is called a weanling. Most domesticated foals are weaned at five to seven months of age, although foals can be weaned at four months with no adverse physical effects.
Colt: a male horse under the age of four. A common terminology error is to call any young horse a "colt", when the term actually only refers to young male horses.
Filly: a female horse under the age of four.
Yearling: a horse of either sex that is between one and two years old.
Mare: a female horse four years old and older.
Gelding: a castrated male horse of any age.
Stallion: a non-castrated male horse four years old and older.

And for fun if one is curious hehe ^^

http://www.had2know.com/pets/horse-age-human-age-conversion.html

4218590 But how much actual canon has given support to... any aging scheme, other than Grannie Apple being AMAZINGLY OLD?

I just noticed other readers were a little lost with how a pony and horse age...then again these ponies are based on a cartoon so...I guess nevermind...

4218688 You are kind to offer. Do you have canon facts that you want added to the doc that I might have missed?

Not really just went on a horse nerd thingy silly me

At a glance, there really needs to be a section on magic here. Between aetheric nets, heart crystals, that only humans can see magic "colors," etc., there's quite a few rules there.

4219545 Magic section added at the top. Did I miss anything?

4219623 You might want to add something about how creating new spells is a major endeavor for most ponies.

4219630 Good call! I just added a heart crystals section. Let's do the spell creation now.

4219623 It might be useful to know who the new human ambassador is, actually.

4220090 There isn't one, currently, though Celestia is likely to prod Silver with questions about humanity, he no longer has any official say on such matters.

Maybe YOUR character could become the next one?! That'd be neat.

4221146 The words would have to flow first.

Also; any word on earth pony and pegasus canon?

4226802 Done! Earth and pegasi posted.

Song Magic section added.

So, random canon question:
with all the shapeshifted crossbreeding going on: uh... how does that work?
More specifically:
Transformed individuals like Silver: does their pre-transformation race have any bearing on children they have while transformed? Is this case-by-case depending on the details of the transformation?
Disguised changelings: is the answer any different for them? I.e. can a disguised changeling mate with normal pony to produce normal pony (or even with each other)? (Does being holed affect the answer at all?)
And in your canon is non-transformed human-pony hybrid conception even possible? How about non-disguised changeling/pony hybrid?

Sorry if this is potentially spoilerific.

4227958 Ooo! Diet. We know that lunar ponies are omnivorous, but a lot of fanon debates on the omnivorous state of the regular (solar?) ponies. Most agree on ovo-lacto vegetarians, but a lot of them consider pegasi pescatarians. Word of God?

4227958 Also; I was skimming through the older stories for research and I noticed a possible continuity error. Going by the discussions with Night (and I think Luna), and the canon post, ponies aren't aware of song magic really, but Humanway (and I'd assume Ways and Travels) has a mechanics for Song Magic... how'd that happen?

4230129 that is pretty easy. It is just a story and nothing more. No one believes a game mechanic can be a real thing perhaps on some subconscious level they are aware that something is going on but this has never come up and actual day today thinking because I can't see it feel it hear it another way. This was transcribed on my phone so I apologize for any horrible typos that may have offended your ocular orbs.

4230144 Ah. That makes sense. Many thanks.

Diet added!

4229477 It is pretty spoilerrific to be sure! Not sure how many of these I want to answer, hrm.

4217750

Question- If somebody had an object in a video game, would they be able to being that? Probably not, or if they did it would be like the Sord (Yes, the typo is intentional, because for this item it isn't a typo,) from Homestuck.

4305025 The basic restriction is that you can't own something that you couldn't... normally own. If you want to finagle getting, say, a sword, sure, you can have a sord, but it won't be a magic sword, since humans don't have magic swords. Makes sense?

The Text would also get irate about things like tanks. That would result in a very very short run.

Though if you want to write something that breaks the rules, there's always the Outer Silververse.
I had a lot of fun with Equestria Diaries, which certainly breaks that rules in half.

4305077
So they couldn't get an unobtainium sword, but they might be able to get a sword made from titanium from modded minecraft? Or, with a Batman game, the Batcomputer, because it's technology has always been scientifically possible?

4309086 What would a batcomputer be besides... a computer with marketing?

4309117 A quantum supercomputer.

4309152 That is outside the reach of a normal individual, unless you happened to be a quantum engineer that was working on such things. See the tank statement above. Don't anger the Text.

pokes David about including what was talked about

1. No SilverVerse stories had been posted before David was taken across
But also
2. Zebra shaman seemed able to ignore song magic (according to Zecora)

ouldC a container be something like say... a truck? I wouldn't expect anything in the bed to qualify as 'in' the truck, but everything in the cabin would count, right?

Also, has anyone landed in or near Saddle Arabia yet? What about the minotaur provinces? Or country, whatever they call it. Hey David, heres something to maybe edit in, What are all the various countries/provinces/otherwise surrounding Equestria, in relation to Equestria?

4217750
A question about Pegasi, (and Luna Pegasi) could they be able, with training, generate and manipulate electricty? If so... it gives me ideas, quite a few infact...

Another about Equestrian Magic, does it obey the four fundamental forces of physics? I mean, generally.. (gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces) if so, many of my ideas, have both very very awesome and terrifying, very very terrifying implications.

An example, if a fomer human-turned Pegasi.. could generate and manipulate electricty and they had enough control... they could in theory turn a Bit into a Bullet

I'm not really sure if natural Equestrians are that well versed in things like Advanced Electromechanical Engineering, Chemistry, (I mean on a molecular level) and other things of that nature. I mean look at Silver Lining... he made a new spell using highschool scientific knowledge, and perhaps higher .. well, you get the gist, and lets not go into ideas of fire + hydrogen, or aluminium and iron oxide dust.. to name a few.. or in other words.. BOOM!! and, OH GOD!! IT BURNS, AHHHHH!

5133603 No one has selected those places, but I'd love to see such! Do it!

5207700 Pegasus magic manifests over mastery over the atmosphere. They can create and stop wings, control and rest on clouds, and other such tricks. They can't create a charge where there is none at all, but they can bring a cloud over and encourage it to let loose its charge without much effort. Unlike cheating unicorns, they have to obey more rules. Also unlike cheating unicorns, their magic is pretty reliable and dependable and what they do today will always work, barring an accident like a professional runner tripping. It could happen.

If a human chooses to tale their land, fenced in area they own, and all on it would it work? The land could be considered the container, the fence around, so it might work. What would the consequences of having your 2 1/2 acres of fenced in land, including your house, being dropped in Equestria and maybe near Ponyville be?

5588088 I entirely missed this. It depends on what's in the house. If it's basically JUST the house, near a town is possible. If they have a computer, a car, or other technological goodies, that would push them away.

. Male pairings are discriminated against

Like are we talking full on hate crime level discrimination and bigotry?