Shar

Shar
Alignment	Neutral Evil
Divine Rank	Greater Goddess
Pantheon	Faerun
Portfolio	Darkness, Secrets, Loss, Caverns, Night
Domains	3E: Cavern, Darkness, Evil, Knowledge. 4E: Darkness, Knowledge, Undeath. 5E: Death, Trickery
Home Plane	2E: Hades, 3E: Shadow Plane, 4E: Astral Sea
Worshippers	Assassins, Monks, Rogues, Anarchists, Nihilists, anyone who uses the Shadow Weave.
Favoured Weapon	Disc of Night (Chakram)

Shar is the goddess of darkness in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting.

Being the opposite of light, she is invariably an evil deity and one of the major players of the Realms. Sure, Bane and Cyric get more screen time and are generally seen to be more diabolical, but Shar is quietly competent and probably succeeds in being the true BBEG of the setting with the subtler, long term plans.

History

Shar was created by Ao at the dawning of the material universe. In the beginning there was only Shar and her sister Selûne, who represented two opposing cosmic forces. However, since not much was going on in the empty universe and since both were fairly innocent at the time there wasn't much animosity between them.

Since Ao was a deadbeat dad who never spent any time with his kids, Shar and Selûne decided to entertain themselves by combining their forces to make things and set about crafting everything material.

They crafted the earth and called her Chauntea then went about filling it with all sorts of forces and creatures which necessitated making more gods for them to play with.

So, like any God, when they had completed their work they decided to rest and have some brewskis.

It was only when Chauntea reckoned she was a bit cold that the sisters came into major conflict. Selûne ignited a star and called it Amaunator, bringing light and warmth into the universe. Unfortunately Shar was nursing such a terrible hangover from celebrating the universe's ribbon cutting that she couldn't tolerate the light and got into a mighty bad mood and demanded Selûne turn it off.

When Selûne responded that one simply doesn't turn Amaunator off, Shar got mad and threw pieces of magical darkness at her sister in an attempt to shut the light off, ripping chunks out of her, wounding Selûne badly and diminishing her from "Greater" goddess level down to "Intermediate".

However, the chunks that were ripped off commingled the opposing forces of light and dark and created something entirely new: Mystryl: Goddess of magic, who looked down at her broken parent with pity, and proceeded whoop the ass of Shar seven ways to Sunday.

Shar retreated into the darkness of the night to brood, as is her prerogative, while the other gods got on with the business of running the universe.

The Shadow Weave

When faced with this new unexpected force called "Magic" that was utterly under the control of her belligerent daughter Mystryl; Shar set about doing her own version that she could control.

She succeeded in manufacturing a second magical weave, imaginatively called the "Shadow Weave".

Shars new weave allows Arcane and Divine spellcasting in much the same way as the normal one, but enhances casting Enchantment, Illusion and Necromancy spells as well as anything with the [Darkness] descriptor, providing +1 to save DCs and caster checks. Unfortunately it is unwieldy for creating matter and energy, so it diminishes Evocation and Transmutation spells by a whole caster level. It is also utterly useless for casting any spell with the [Light] descriptor. (note: this form of casting has nothing to do with the Shadowcaster class, which is an all new mechanic, but is probably thematically correct)

Learning the secrets of the Shadow Weave drops the Wisdom of its user by 2 points. However this drop can be negated if the user receives an Atonement spell from a worshipper of Shar. This way the Goddess of Darkness can keep a tight reign on who uses it, rather than advertising it for everyone.

It might seem that there are few benefits from using the Shadow Weave over the normal one and too many penalties. However, the Shadow Weave works reliably pretty much anywhere; there are no wild magic or dead magic zones in the Shadow Weave, where Mystra's weave steadily became worse and worse as editions went by.

Shadow Weave Magic can also be harder to identify and counter spell, though specific feats are required for that. Also, using the Shadow Weave is a requirement for entering certain prestige classes (see below)