Heard down the grapevine a few hours back that there was an argument about Promus' supposed monopoly on speech, so I'll come in and give my thoughts.

Firstly, there are two reasons his CS stated he alone creates speech (OOC I don't mind too much if somebody else wanted to spend the MP to bypass him; I just raised a deal about this earlier when other gods made verbal and written speech on the first turn and before even Promus could act)
A) It allows me to remain relevant with such a niche portfolio
B) It opens the door to Promus helping out a civ after he gies them speech and starts to notice them. Put simply, I figured it'd lead to a lot more collaborative effort.

The funny part is that nobody has ever asked me to give their dudes speech. I've approached a few people about granting speech out of my own interest, but for to give one example I have no clue if [@dragonmancer] wants his dragons to ever run around talking.

All it'd take is a simple @mention on this thread or a PM sent to me if somebody wanted me to get on to giving someone speech, and I have 5 heroes and a god capable of granting speech so you'll hardly ever be stuck waiting long on me and there are options for collabs. Or if you don't even want to collab, I could just write a two or three paragraph standalone post where one of my guys grant speech. With all that in mind I can only speculate as to why any drama went down.

Anyways, I'll reiterate the constraints on Promus' power. There are several big workarounds:
1) Promus' portfolio only includes verbal speech and sign language falls entirely outside of it. We've even got precedent for a major species naturally getting sign language, with the Urtelem in Divinus Mk. 2.
2) Telepathy or something similar. Orfai has already done it, and I have no qualms with it. Just be aware that if you do that without telling me anything to the contrary, I'll assume that you want to develop the species on your own and then respect that by not having Promus go anywhere near them. It shuts him out in a way anyways, by removing the aforementioned reason B for having his speech powers.
3) The fact that you can go through any of his heroes, if there's an IC reason you would avoid Promus himself.