Shar (goddess)

Forgotten Realms Deity|fgcolor=#fff


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name=Shar
title=Mistress of the Night,
Nightsinger, Lady of Loss
home=The Plane of Shadow
power=Greater
alignment=Neutral Evil
portfolio=Dark, night, loss, forgetfulness, unrevealed secrets, caverns, dungeons, and the Underdark
domains=Cavern, Darkness, Evil, Knowledge, Envy, Pride, Night
alias=
super= None

Shar, 'Mistress of the Night', 'Nightsinger', 'Lady of Loss', or 'The Darkness' is a fictional deity in the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms campaign setting. She is the evil counterpart to her twin sister Selûne, and presides over caverns, dark, dungeons, forgetfulness, loss, night, secrets, and the Underdark. Shar is an ancient goddess, formed together with her sister at the beginning of time, out of the empty nothingness that existed before gods or mortals. Among her array of twisted powers is the ability to see everything that lies or happens in the dark.

Shar is a Neutral Evil Greater Power whose symbol is a black disk with a deep purple border. Her divine realm is the Palace of Loss in the Plane of Shadow.

Publication history

Ed Greenwood created Shar for his home Dungeons & Dragons game.Fact|date=August 2008

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition (1977-1988)

Shar first appeared within Dungeons & Dragons as one of the deities featured in Ed Greenwood's article "Down-to-earth Divinity" in "Dragon" #54 (October 1981). [Ed Greenwood, Dragon magazine #54 - "Down-to-earth divinity" (October 1981)]

Shar later officially appeared as one of the major deities for the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, in the "Forgotten Realms Campaign Set"'s "Cyclopedia of the Realms" booklet (1987). [cite book | id =ISBN 0-88038-472-7 | title = Forgotten Realms Campaign Set | author = Ed Greenwood, Jeff Grubb and Karen S. Martin | year = 1987 | publisher = Wizard of the Coast]

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition (1989-1999)

Shar was described in the hardback "Forgotten Realms Adventures" (1990), the revised "Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting" (1993) in the "Running the Realms" booklet, [cite book | title=Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting | author = Ed Greenwood | year = 1993|id = ASIN B000K06S2E ] and "Faiths & Avatars" (1996). [Martin, Julia, and Eric L Boyd. "Faiths & Avatars" (TSR, 1996)]

Her role in the cosmology of the Planescape campaign setting was described in "On Hallowed Ground" (1996). [McComb, Colin. "On Hallowed Ground" (TSR, 1996)]

Shar's role in the ancient history of the Realms is described in "Netheril: Empire of Magic" (1996).

Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 edition (2000-2002)

Shar appears as one of the major deities of the Forgotten Realms setting again, in "Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting" (2001), [cite book | title = Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting | author = Ed Greenwood et al. | year = 2001 | publisher = Wizard of the Coast | id = ISBN 0-7869-1836-5 ] and is further detailed in "Faiths and Pantheons" (2002). [Boyd, Eric L, and Erik Mona. "Faiths and Pantheons" (Wizards of the Coast, 2002)]

Clergy

The clergy of Shar is a secretive organization that pursues subversive tactics rather than direct confrontation with its rivals. In addition to her clerics, Shar maintains an elite order of sorcerer monks who can tap Shar's Shadow Weave. Among her worshipers are the Shadovar (the citizens of Shade Enclave—a floating city which is home to the survivors of ancient Netheril who fled into the shadow plane before Karsus's folly). Shar holds power over all who use the Shadow Weave, a creation of that has made her the eternal enemy of the goddess of magic Mystra. A terrible war brews between the two powerful deities. Shar's agents work to murder Selune's avatars whenever possible.

Orders

*Shar has a secret order called the "Dark Justicars". In order to gain admittance to the order, a priest of Shar has to have killed a priest of Selûne.

*Shar's secretive monastic order is referred to as the "Order of the Dark Moon". They tap into the Shadow Weave through their powers of sorcery.

*The Avatars of Shar, or the "Nightbringers" are the elite Sharran forces. They are spirits that infest hosting bodies, possessing them and using the bodies as puppets. Once one is infected with a Nightbringer, that person fuses to being as one with the Nightbringer gaining the strength and beauty of Shar. Only females are selected as hosts for the Nightbringers. Though their (Nightbringers) numbers were large within the Avatar Wars, their numbers fell to the hundreds in modern day settings of Forgotten Realms campaigns. There is a male nightbringer in The Twilight War series (Kemp, Paul S.) named Rivalen.

Literature and Games

*Mistress of the Night (2004), by Don Bassingthwaite and Dave Gross is the second book in the "Forgotten Realms" series, "The Priests". It is about the worshippers of Shar.
*In the computer game Baldur's Gate, a Drow cleric named Viconia DeVir is a priestess of Shar. The character can join the party. Viconia also can join the party in the computer game . She follows Shar as her personal deity after she renounced Lolth and was exiled from the Underdark.

External links

* [http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=fr/fx20010221b Sneak Peek: Shar] by Sean K. Reynolds, Wizards of the Coast designer
* [http://www.sorcerers.net/Worlds/FR/45.php History of the Sisters of Light and Darkness]

References