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I'm preparing a campaign in which the sun is sentient, evil and actively trying to kill everyone. So as not to be limited to typical shenanigans like droughts, wildfires and mass heatstroke and skin cancer, the sun needs minions.
Shining Children are awesome and a natural fit, and Lurkers in Light (with numerous variants) could be anywhere. But where do we go from there? Slapping an elemental (fire) template on existing creatures is easy, but I'm not sure it feels quite right for the flavor.
Does anyone have any ideas for the servants and spawn of an axe-crazy, nihilistic sun diety? Who does Nergal hang out with?
You could use Aztec mythology. The sun demands sacrifice, or else everyone dies.
You could say that electromagnetic pulses create something like "Color of space" oozes.
Perhaps a type of giant that can create focused gravity to crush opponents?
How about the plasma ooze from Bestiary 3? Its round, hot, and luminous. And the sun in the real world is made out of plasma...
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While I can't think of any particular minions of the sun, an interesting 'ally' or perhaps object to be summoned to combat the sun could be the Tzitzimitl. Normally it's obviously an enemy sort of monster but maybe the PCs could summon it as a sort of "lesser of two evils" situation to help?
Nurgal (that is the sun demon lord; there is also an infernal duke on the devil side named Nergal...whose symbol is a sun over the battlefield; can't blame you at all) has dragons, desert tribes, and those that fear the sun.
So for that last one, you can change up the pace and add a nice contrast by adding some darkness focused creatures (typically the degenerate stuff from the underdark). The justification is that they are being forced to do so by the Sun god and his goons. Have a few night time raids, and eventually have the party discover that they are being cowed into fighting by some fire elementals.
Have the party do a rescue mission for the morlock village...heh. As a note- Morlocks are particularly good thematically, if we are going of the Golarion setting, since they are those that escaped ancient Azlant by going underground, and Nurgal had his strongest following during the age of Azlant.
Don't forget solar dragons.
Per Great Beyond, the hearts of stars are portals to the Positive Energy Plane, so what about jyoti and ravids?
In the campaign setting canon, the Sun is inhabited by fire elemental creatures. There could be a group of Efreets working with this malevolent being who live in the fire-y surface of the Sun itself.
Maybe the original sun god died long ago and a new sun god arose taking its place, while its corpse was left within the sun to naturally decompose as the stars fuel over a few millennia? Now maybe a cabal of liches and/or a god of undeath has located that corpse and necromantically brought it back to unlife? If the current sun deity sprung from the original one's body at death, the current one could be still linked to the previous incarnation/now undead evil god; that link may weaken the current sun god, and magical attacks/rituals on the evil sun god may also effect the current sun god.
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I would seriously advise checking out the book Lost Cities of Golarion. The chapter on the Sun Temple Colony is almost exactly what you're looking for. (It involves an aspect of a sun god drawn down and created by ancient Azlanti magics... plus the colonists, who have become cultists of the insane thing.)
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You could probably use Troth of the Forgotten Pharaoh to decent effect on some low-level minions. It's not particularly powerful, but it can quite succinctly drive home the "the sun is hot and wants you dead" angle.
Here is an interesting thought: a lot of stars existing in binary systems (two stars that rotate around eachother, like an ancient pair of dancers). There are a lot of things you could do with this detail.
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Quick easy and dirty ways take solar/fire themed creature who are usually good and use this template:
Or the template that I like to call: I want this monster to be evil even if it is normally good.
Other templates that are good for these kind of stuffs:
fiendish template obviously or half-fiend.
You could probably use Troth of the Forgotten Pharaoh to decent effect on some low-level minions. It's not particularly powerful, but it can quite succinctly drive home the "the sun is hot and wants you dead" angle.
Oh, YES please! Thanks for pointing out this little gem.
While I can't think of any particular minions of the sun, an interesting 'ally' or perhaps object to be summoned to combat the sun could be the Tzitzimitl. Normally it's obviously an enemy sort of monster but maybe the PCs could summon it as a sort of "lesser of two evils" situation to help?
I can see my players riding in this thing like some sort of horrifying undead mecha and engaging in Pacific Rim-esque battles with solar dragons and demonic phoenixes. SOLD!
