Sign Language on the Sword Coast
The Sword Coast is a region rich with history and culture. With the many racial and ethnic groups in the area and the international trade connections through the major cities, there isn't a language you can't stumble across somewhere on the coast. And many of those languages are, of course, not spoken.
While there are regional sign variants all over the coast, four main languages are frequently used.
- Drow Hand Sign
- Forge-Hand-Speak
- Lantanna Sign Language
- Baldur's Gate Sign Language
Speak Fast, Speak Accurate
Sound in the forge is a physical presence as the end of an underground waterfall meets finished ingots. A dwarven master crafter near the cooling pool catches the eye of an apprentice and signals the timing on the next batch. She hurries off to tell the overseer it's going to take longer than expected.
Across a crowded dwarven trading hall, two old friends spot each other. How has the work been, they ask each other. How is the spouse? Are the children growing strong? They catch each other up on the basics of their lives before a bell signals shift change and they go in opposite directions. They never got within a hundred feet of each other.
Forge Hand Speak
Most used by Dwarfs in the clan strongholds of the North. Forge Hand Speak (FHS) was invented for use during the day's work. It has an emphasis on fast communication, and its broad movements are designed to be intelligible across significant distances, including, if necessary, with a weapon or tool in the signer's hand.
Everybody Gets to Talk
A human man is nudged by a construct. He looks up and gestures in its direction, and it gestures back. He nods in agreement and they both continue reading in silence.
A wizened female gnome in a wheelchair speaks heatedly to a friend. "Clearly that isn't going to work, Faer, that's basic artifice, you just have to look at the friction coefficient of water-- "
She is interrupted by wild gestures from her friend, a tiefling with a mechanical eye and the scars of a rebuilt trachea.
"Well yes," she responds, volume climbing. "But M's treatise on variable states was experimental, they said so in the conclusion, if you got that far--"
The argument continues, half signed and half shouted, until the friends take their discussion to lunch.
Lantanna Sign Language
The technologically advanced island of Lantan, far to the south of the Sword Coast, was devastated by the Spellplague a century ago. Those who witnessed the day the plague hit have described the island itself as exploding when arcane reagents (and the island's stockpiled smokepowder) all catastrophically failed. The high numbers of survivors with disabling injuries led the pragmatic Lantanna to a number of assistive inventions to fill the gaps in communication, including a sign language. While magic now works as it should (including healing magic,) Lantanna culture emphasizes assistive devices and rehab after an injury, instead of higher-level healing spells. This has, if you ask them, contributed greatly to them regaining their position as an island of technological marvels.
LSL is a very full-body language, highly reliant on body language and facial expression. Lantanna artificers and arcane crafters learn frequently LSL as a matter of both tradition and precaution in case of accident.
One Language of Many
A gnome woman and a half-orc taking a dray across town carry on a fast conversation via hand motions and much laughter.
A elven teacher at the front of a lecture hall casts Light on the book he's holding, then dispels it. Class attention obtained, he resumes signing the day's lecture, finger-spelling out the new concepts on the topic.
Baldur's Gate Sign Language
Baldur's Gate Sign Language (BGSL) is a natural language developed by the Deaf community of the Gate alongside Common's development by hearing Baldurians. It borrows signs from many other Faerûnean sign languages (including those close to home, such as FHS, and those from further afield, such as Calim Sign Language,) but remains its own distinct language. There is a movement to rename it Common Sign Language, but this is argued against by Deaf communities in other parts of the Sword Coast.
BGSL makes significant use of body language and expression, and both word-signs and finger-spelling (the finger-spelling using Common.) It is probably the sign language most people on the Sword Coast will think of when they picture a Sign Language, due to its depiction in art and drama from the Gate.
Homebrew by Jasmine Stairs
- Sword Coast is Wizards of the Coast
- Drow Lore from R.A. Salvatore
- Forgotten Realms invented by Ed Greenwood
- All mistakes mine, sorry. I'm @snazel on twitter if you want to see me burble about D&D more.