Need Help Picking a Dawn of Flame Concept!

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I've been struggling between two big character concepts to play Dawn of Flame with on the off-chance some GM wants to run it here sometime...and I was wondering if I could get some help picking one to commit to and refine it. Here's the two concepts, both of which are Solarians, since...I mean, come on it's ON THE SUN, this AP is MADE for the class!

The Star Knight:

This was the first concept I came up with as a foil to my current Dead Suns character, Arcalinte Soter. The idea is that the character is a Drow Death-Touched Solarian with the Star Knight Archetype for the Knights of Golarion. Her basic story is that she was a student at the Eclipse Academy on Apostae, which trains some of the best Solarians, Mystics and Technomancers in the Pact Worlds but is infamous for its grueling, sometimes inhumane, teaching methods. She only barely survived this training, which is how she became Death-Touched, and began desperately searching for a purpose in life. This search drew her to the Knights of Golarion which, according to Owen K.C. Stephens in this video, like to recruit from species who originated from Golarion. This naturally means humans are the largest percentage of this, but they're not the ONLY species that came from Golarion, like dwarves, space goblins and hobgoblins, orc and half-orcs...and drow!

While it's a relatively solid character concept, Death-Touched offsetting the drow CON penalty, Star Knight giving the character Heavy Armor Proficiency for free, but it feels kind of...disconnected from Dawn of Flame's plot. Granted, the AP somewhat assumes that the PCs don't START with a narrative horse in the race, strangers who get drawn into a mystery that's a lot bigger than they first expected, but it also means that the character doesn't resonate with the story the AP is trying to tell, which is something very important to me. And I'm struggling to determine if the character should be part of one of the drow houses/corporations, whether to be a lower-middle class drow rising from the capitalistic hellscape of Apostae, or an upper-class one who has decided to abandon her privilege to do the right thing. Besides that, I've only played Human from the core species, and Drow are from outside the corebook, so I feel like I'm not taking advantage of the cool aliens in Starfinder enough, like if I wanted to play elfy-types I'd just play Pathfinder...

The Divine Warrior:

This character is a Shirren Solarian with the Divine Warrior Archetype for Desna. Here the character has a narrative stake in the race right away; she's a nice hippy kind of girl who wants to investigate the "bad vibes" coming out of Asanatown that she can detect with her telepathy. I'm kind of stuck on the Theme for this one. Dream Prophet has some solid connections with Desna since she's the goddess of dreams and has some good abilities, but it boosts WIS, which isn't something Solarians depend on and isn't helped by the character's species with the Shirren's WIS boost and CHA penalty. Paranormal Investigator kind of works too, and can boost CHA if you select Diplomacy as the skill it's tied to. On the other hand, Solarians get Diplomacy as a class skill already, so it would only provide a +1 boost rather than make it a new class skill, so it'd feel kind of wasted, even with the additional +2 to Diplomacy shirren have as well.

I thought playing up the duality element with Desna and the Black Butterfly would be an interesting idea, especially with the icestar staff weapon that shirren developed, but in order to wield that, the character would have to be an armor solarian, and Arcalinte, whom I'm currently playing, is an armor solarian as well, so it might feel kind of redundant to play, even if the trappings are different and the Divine Warrior changes a few things up, since Arcalinte doesn't have any archetypes and I created him to be a kind of "vanilla Solarian experience."

Another issue is that I really, REALLY struggle with coming up with shirren names. I've visited a few generators, and got some ideas, but I feel a lot of them are TOO similar to the iconic "Keskodai," like "Jaskodei," or "Daskemei," or "Xozceme." It's not like more traditional human-and-human-adjacent species where you can just butcher some real-world names to create a fantasy version.

And finally, WHAT is this character's backstory? There's so many disparate elements that would need explaining: icestar staves were invented on Verces, but the Dreamers who make Dream Prophets are on Liavara, and Desna's faith isn't as popular on EITHER of those planets as it is on Absalom Station, Castrovel, the Idari and Triaxus. Which planet IS this shirren from? Why was she drawn to the CG Desna when most shirren prefer LG? Why does she care about what's going on in Asanatown?

Which of these is coolest? How do I know WHAT cool is? Am I overthinking things again and worrying too much?!

["Dr." Cupi]

As a person who does enjoy giving advice I would ask you, What specifically are you looking for in the advice? Optimization? Backstory and character concept continuity? Without knowing what you want I can't really give helpful advice. I'd be shooting in the dark.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Mostly the latter (backstory and character concept continuity). I'm trying to decide which of these two concepts I should pick to start crafting a profile I can post in the Recruitment board in case someone starts a Dawn of Flame game there. Which one should I play as? Which one fits better into the story Dawn of Flame is trying to tell? Which one is the cooler or more interesting of the two?

[Cellion]

Hi AZ!

Matching Dawn of Flame's themes and story with your character is not essential. One of my most fun characters right now is my Corporate Middle Manager Skittermander, whose background and personality have very very little to do with Dead Suns. In fact, working out motivations for a character with a very different background to want to pursue the challenges of an adventure path can result in some super dynamic and interesting characters.

That said, I'd say knowing how your character relates to the following prominent elements of Dawn of Flame is important:

The Sun (What do they think about it? Are they from there? A pilgrimage site? They're afraid of the dark? Etc)

Telepathy or psychic powers (Do they have telepathy? What do they think about the ambient telepathic aura of the sun?)

Sarenrae & other religions (Are they religious? Dogmatic or open-minded? etc)

Other sentient creatures, especially if they're very different to them (How do they regard other sentient aliens? Cautiously or with open arms? How has this affected them before?)

(For a Dead Suns example, my skittermander relates to just some of the elements of Dead Suns as such: Undead are gross, Giant superweapons are a potential business opportunity, and a suplex hold is an appropriate way to deal with a dinosaur)

Just reading your two character options above, both of them would mechanically work just fine with the AP. But I'm left wondering what the key aspects of their personality are - and how they might relate to the adventure at hand.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Hi Cellion! :D

I'd say we're in agreement on what the themes of the AP are:

• The sun theme was really why both of my concepts are solarians. Like I said in the OP, "It's ON THE SUN, this AP is MADE for this class!"
• Telepathy is why I created the Divine Champion character concept. I thought it would be a good idea to have a strong connection to the initial conflict in Asanatown without necessarily playing a lashunta, to avoid redundancy
• As far as religion, this is why both concepts have strong ties to their respective deities, Iomedae for the drow, Desna for the shirren, but neither are Sarenites, again to avoid redundancy (and because I'm already playing a Sarenite solarian in the Dead Suns campaign you're GMing :P). I wanted to decide which one to go with before I started nailing down the details of their faith, though.
• This last theme is something I've been thinking about more with the Divine Champion concept than the Star Knight one, since as a shirren the character would already express a friendly demeanor and a desire to cooperate with other species. I think the Star Knight's way of addressing it would be like "On Apostae, you're taught to only think about yourself, to survive and look out for number one, and abandon anyone who might hold you back. That's the attitude that nearly killed me. I want to make sure others don't suffer the way I did, and the Knights taught me how to do that."

The idea with the Star Knight is that she's initially travelling to the Sun on errantry duty: she's completed her training with the Knights of Golarion and has been given dispensation to travel the Pact Worlds and right wrongs. She gets involved in Asanatown's troubles because she sees injustices occurring as a result of the militias and wants to put a stop to it. She also treats the adventures from something of a tactical perspective. In the initial adventures as well as the latter third of the AP, you're dealing with militias and mercenaries and she might see it as "I'm not necessarily the most academic solarian, but tactical operations? THAT I'm good at!"

For the Divine Champion, it's more to do with exploration and solving mysteries while helping make the Burning Archipelago a better place. Her initial concern is the "bad vibes" coming out of Asanatown, and once the PCs start interacting with the Deep Cultures Institute, her curiosity is piqued, and she'd keep the group moving because each mystery they solve leads to a new one, and while she favors Desna to Hylax, making first contact with the anassanois would make her "squee!"