diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 770fb369e..3898456fe 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -63,6 +63,9 @@ and use the latest head.
 See the [TROUBLESHOOTING](doc/TROUBLESHOOTING.md) guide for solutions to possible
 problems.
 
+See the [FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS](doc/FAQ.md) for answers to the most common
+perplexities.
+
 ## Developers
 
 ##### DOCUMENTATION
diff --git a/doc/FAQ.md b/doc/FAQ.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..161a44fa9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/FAQ.md
@@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
+# FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
+
+
+##### Why does it say IRCd everywhere?
+
+This is a long story which is not covered in full here. The short version
+is that this project was originally intended to implement an IRC federation
+using an extended superset of the rfc1459/rfc2812 protocol. This concept went
+through several iterations. The Atheme Services codebase was first considered
+for development into a "gateway" for IRC networks to connect to each other.
+That was succeeded by the notion of eliminating separate services-daemons in
+favor of IRCd-meshing for redundancy and scale. At that point Charybdis/4 was
+chosen as a basis for the project.
+
+Around this time, the Matrix protocol was emerging as a potential candidate
+for federating synchronous-messaging. Though far from perfect, it had enough
+potential to outweigh the troubles of inventing and promoting yet another
+messaging protocol in a wildly diverse and already saturated space.
+
+Somewhile after, the original collaborators of this endeavor became
+disillusioned by many of the finer details of Matrix. Many red-flags observed
+about its stewards, community, and the overall engineering requirements placed
+on implementations made it clear this project's goals would never be reached in
+a timely or cost-effective way. Coupled with the political situation and
+death-spiral of IRC itself, the original collaborators disbanded.
+
+One developer decided to continue by simplifying the mission down to just
+creating a Matrix server first, and worrying about IRC later, maybe through
+TS6, or maybe never. This reasoning was bolstered by the ongoing poor
+performance of Matrix's principal reference implementation in python+pgsql.
+Today there is virtually nothing left of any original IRCd. The project
+namespaces like "ircd::" and IRCD_ remain but they too might be replaced by
+"ctor" etc at some time in the future.
+
+
+##### Why is there a SpiderMonkey JavaScript embedding?
+
+One of the goals of this project is realtime team collaboration and
+development inside chat rooms. The embedding is intended to replace the
+old notion of running a "bot" which is just a single instance of a program
+that some user connects. The embedding facilitates a cloud-esque or so-called
+"lambda" ecosystem of many untrusted user-written modules that are stored
+and managed by the server.
+
+*The SpiderMonkey embedding is defunct and no longer developed. It is planned
+to be succeeded by WASM.*