I think we’re all of these things, though the attempt to push a coherent identity on shadow in legion has since been somewhat rescinded (Mechanically at least), I don’t think the void is no longer a part of what shadow is.
Shadow priests are shunned, ostracised, and often if not self taught then certainly self mastered. We pick up different traits and skills from various avenues within the scope of “Shadow magic” and patch it together to create our own identity, one I truly believe to be greater than the sum of its parts.
I talked about this in the “rename Devouring Plague” thread so I’ll post it here as well.
The Cult of Forgotten Shadows was more than just the Forsaken. Natalie Seline was the first to start experimenting and using the magic. When she was killed her knowledge was stored away in hopes of hiding her findings. The Forsaken rediscovered her teachings and then founded the cult. Despite the Forsaken being the founders it is full of members of both factions and all races.
Shadow Priest is basically just dark arts/black magic. It uses void, some death, mind/psychics, and vampirism. Devouring Plague is fine, but any of the above names you listed could also work. Devouring Plague is named Devouring Plague because in Vanilla and TBC each race had their own religions and therefore had their own type of spell because of it. Devouring Plague was just the one that made it through when they removed all of that and it comes from the Cult of Forgotten Shadows. It’s just iconic at this point and it does make sense for it to exist.
The fantasy of Shadow in Legion and BfA was a lot less about being a member of the Cult of Forgotten Shadows (or at the very least having learned our magics from it) and more about just being a Void Cultist.
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I could be wrong here, I’m no lore expert but I think Shadow Priests aren’t just members of the Forgotten Shadows. You could also RP as a disciple of a Troll Voodoo Witch Doctor or an actual worshiper/puppet of the Old Gods. Probably other things too
That’s why I said:
Shadow uses all kinds of different magics, it all comes together in the Cult of Forgotten Shadows.
The cult is the only collective of Shadow (out of the four that are known) users that are still sane and use it to benefit the world rather than blindly follow the shadow/void. They understand that light and shadow both must exist in balance. The collectives exclude small groups of troll tribes that use voodoo magic, but even then the Darkspear voodoo is included (it just isn’t represented in game with a spell).
You could RP as a disciple of a Troll Voodoo Witch Doctor but that doesn’t mean you haven’t learned the teachings of the cult like Devouring Plague or Void Form. All of that knowledge comes together in the cult because of the diversity that has grown since its initial creation.
Technically you can RP as anything you want and say you don’t know about those things. There isn’t anything wrong with that. However doing that doesn’t mean it’s not canon that you know all of it.
Words have meaning, the dev team chose Shadow Priest long ago and stayed with it in Legion when rogues lost Combat spec to Outlaw - the dev team could have changed “Shadow” to “Void” then too but it didn’t.
It’s a shame the glyph system has almost been left to rot instead of offering some of those old/undeveloped racial/factional schools of thought/magic.
Priestesses of Elune, witch doctors, raven priests, etc.
Seems like an easy win.