#thorass

[wolverinedoctorwho]

So...I *may* have gone a bit mad with curiosity and translated every sign I could read in the Last Light Inn.

Few notes:

* On a couple of the signs, they used a different letter for T than I'd seen on the wiki. Not sure why this is.

* There are duplicates/mirrors of these signs around the Inn. The first time I saw the "cheapest fermented ooze" sign it was backwards.

* I'm using the Thorass alphabet shown on Forgotten Realms Wiki to decode these. Not all of the letters look exactly how they do on that chart, much like real writing. (Took me ages to realize the second "O" in "ooze" wasn't an "M".)

* As noted on the drinks menu picture, the narration doesn't really say what's on the boards. There's a copy of that drinks menu downstairs that the narration claims says "an ale between friends is worth ten cups of tea".

* The pictures I got of these signs aren't the clearest, because I took them to show the signs in general. It was much easier to see the signs on my screen, where I could twist the camera around more! So sorry to anyone trying to check my work.

I also found this Meat sign, but I couldn't get a good look at it bc of the cobwebs. So if anyone can get a clear shot of this one lmk

[artemis-entreri]

[[ A trap that a lot of us seem to fall into is the assumption that because Common, or any fantasy language, happens to sound like English, that it must have evolved similarly to English. While the Thorass alphabet happens to directly correlate letter by letter to the English alphabet, this is due more to the fact that linguists did not work on the FR franchise than that Common evolved the same way English did. While Ed’s awesome in many ways, he’s not a linguist like Tolkien was, and unlike Tolkien, he didn’t construct entire fictional languages for his lore-rich world.

The Forgotten Realms is part of a multiverse that ties together many different universes, which includes our own and, yes, also includes those of your other favorite franchises. Visitors from other universes came and went a fair amount throughout Realmsian history, so if anything, the evolution of a trade tongue in such a world should be far more complex and untraceable than the evolution of languages in our world. Imagine what it’d be like to be a linguist in a world in which the roots of a language often literally magically disappeared, i.e. due to a race of people entirely leaving the planet/universe. That probably makes being a linguist a not very popular profession, especially since the ravages of time wiping away parts of history is already difficult enough to contend with in a planet without dimensional travel. >_>

It might be lazy game design, but hey, it’s the world’s canon. I’m personally a fan of it because, to me, it illustrates the insignificance of one race of people in an infinite universe. Also, as someone who too often tries too hard to get to the bottom of things, this design choice to me is a reminder that sometimes, things are going to be just too complex, and we should just enjoy what those things have evolved to become rather than trying to be, metaphorically, that Realmsian linguist attempting to establish an impossible etymology. ]]

[wolverinedoctorwho]

[Collective ID: a collection of posters from Baldur's Gate 3. The text on each poster is in Espruar, the Elvish script in Dungeons and Dragons. /End ID]

Awhile ago I translated a bunch of signs I found in the Last Light Inn, and I've just entered Act 3 so now I've got plenty of new signs to look at! I wasn't expecting so much of the signage to be in the Elvish script, I wonder why that is. I'm not as fluent with the alphabet as I am with Thorass, and some of these posters were really stinking tiny haha. (I recommend having Shovel or a short Tav split from the group to get closer to things!). I was pleased to see the Circus of the Last Days poster does actually say "The Circus of the Last Days" on it, even if it doesn't visibly say all the other stuff the narration claims it does.

There are a couple of signs in Thorass I've found so far:

[Collective ID: Two blackboards with text written in Thorass, the Common script in D&D. /End ID]

The Flaming Fist sign on the right fits pretty well with the narration, which says something about the area being an active crime scene, but the "buy now cheap" sign on the left is narrated as being a sign asking for donations for refugees, so that's a funny sign to use for that 😆

Definitely gonna be keeping an eye out for more things to decode, lemme know if there's any you'd like me to squint at!

[wolverinedoctorwho]

Got bored during podcast-and-gem-painting time and wrote the names of the main cast of Dungeons and Daddies Season 1 in my Thorass Journal. (For the uninitiated my Thorass Journal is a sketchbook where I aim to write only in Thorass, the alphabet used in Faerûn of Dungeons and Dragons.)

Translation in Alt Text!

[katzenprince]

COURTESY OF FRIKADELLER

guys i cant this panel its thor hitting the guy but they had to give us a glorious shot of his ass