Originally Posted by kanisatha
Originally Posted by benbaxter
I went and read more into Shar's cult , and it sounds like SH shouldn't be sharing her worship with you unless she was trying to recruit you. Also, the requirement to become a cleric is indeed pretty terrible, so I better understand where some people's strong feelings are coming from. It reminds me of Mephala or Boethiah from Elder Scrolls.

Based on all the inherent secrecy, it doesn't seem like most people in game would know the Sharran requirements and symbols though (at least without a moderately difficult religion check).
Okay, seems like we can find at least some common ground, which I appreciate.

I would disagree, though, about average FR people's extent of knowledge about Shar. Firstly, I don't think custom Tav is or should be considered average. And furthermore, Shar's monstrocity in the Realms is so enormous that one would have to literally be living under a rock to not know basic things about her, such as her symbols and the extent of her evilness. I mean, it's only been a short few years since she waged a horribly destructive war across a large swath of the Realms in an ettempt to further her nihilism.

Regarding knowing her symbols, I think it's fair that most people wouldn't know much about her at all, but we see based on item descriptions that an onyx stone is associated with her, and Shadowheart wears onyx disks on her armor. So I get the sense that even for the average person, they'd know at least that that is a symbol of Shar the same way an average person in real life knows that a pentagram is associated with Satanism. It's not always associated with that, but it's relatively common knowledge that most people would be somewhat aware of. And when our character knows for a fact she's a cleric, it is not a big leap to make.