Ah, whatever. You're arguing for the sake of arguing. Couple of posts ago you agreed that there should be a religion check, then you argued that the uncultured wouldn't know what the symbol or the onyx stand for, now you're arguing that people who are familiar with Shar and her disciples wouldn't recognize/throw a second glance to the onyx or the symbol because -- ah, right, now it's back to the symbol being laughably unrecognizable.
I'll reiterate, whatever. Weird hill to die on -- that's a saying by the way, no need to argue about the semantics of that too -- but you do you.
In order to satisfy my peculiar curiosity, I searched for "onyx" in the three AD&D 2e deities book (arguably the definitive sources on the gods despite their age) in regards to evil deities. Three instances of onyx turned up in Faiths & Avatars: Mask (Neutral Evil), Myrkul (Neutral Evil and dead) and Shar (Neutral Evil). One instance of onyx turned up in Demihuman Deities: Vhaeraun (Chaotic Evil). One instance of onyx turned up in Powers and Pantheons: Velsharoon (Neutral Evil) is noted to be fond of black gemstones, Eshowdow (Chaotic Evil) and Set (Chaotic Evil) considers black gemstones sacred. Basically, a self-professed priest wearing prominent onyx jewelry should at least be given a sideways glance by anyone that hasn't been residing under a rock.
