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I've been making a lot of changes to the first book, inspired by (and heavily stealing from) Inspectre's thread. Since the party are good friends with Ileosa and have been doing favours for her, I've decided to have her be the one to send them to seek out Thousand Bones to ask him to recommend some local Shoanti leaders who would be willing to serve as a new seneschal - giving her a senseschal that she can trust not to favour any particular noble or merchant house while possibly improving relations between the citizens of Korvosa and the Shoanti people.
But now I need some interesting ideas for the NPCs that Thousand Bones can suggest, once his immediate problem is dealt with.
My guess is you've had no responses because your plot direction is extremely divergent from the campaign as written - so almost everyone would have no idea how to respond.
If you run the AP as written, the near universal attitude of Korvosans towards the Shoanti is negative. So they'd never tolerate a Shoanti as their Seneschal.
Also the AP expects the party to be enemies of the Queen not good friends, which complicates the request a bit too. Plus Ileosa already has a new Seneschal lined up: the bloodmage Togomor. There's nothing in the book about her wanting to improve the relations between Korvosa and the Shoanti either.
None of which is to say you shouldn't make the changes you want to. Go for it! But you're pretty much on your own in terms of any official material and almost all unofficial material when it comes to suggesting Shoanti NPCs for the Seneschal.
My thought based on your question would be to have this as a red herring: that Ileosa has zero intention of having a shoanti as a Seneschal and is asking the PCs to follow this trail to put them off the scent of her misdeeds. She may even be gearing them up to try to find out more about 'midnights teeth' for her surreptitiously, so she can unlock more of their power for herself. Just a thought.
Good luck!
Yeah, there's a lot of glaring new plot holes you'd have to write around even for the milder change Yossarian is suggesting. First, book 3 basically requires the party to know the Queen is evil to flee into Old Korvosa and eventually out of Korvosa entirely, and they'll certainly know by the end of book 3 anyway. The fourth book which actually deals with Shoanti comes after this. The first book is when all the hope the Shoanti had were dashed by racism and murder so they left, and Togomor was sworn in between book 2 and book 3. (I also think people are overlooking the fact that a Seneschal is essentially just the head chambermaid, something that seems like it would be a little insulting regardless of the importance of any other responsibilities.)
I'd recommend reading through the other books first so you fully understand the normal timeline so that you can also understand what all needs to also be changed and how you would want to change it. While many blue moons ago I read Inspectre's changes, frankly, I wasn't impressed enough to go back and read it again to make more specific recommendations if you were to follow it through out the rest of the books. Personally, I think the story is fine if you just lean into what is already there and just fill in the gaps without changing the direction of anything.
I copped Inspectre's general theme of Ileosa not starting out as the villain - she's going to be corrupted by Kazavon over the course of the first couple of books, while Andaisin and the Arkonas are behind the regicide, early chaos, and plague. I've got the whole second book to get the party out of her good graces and on the run - plus I expect the execution to put a serious crimp in their relationship. So I know that the populace aren't going to be accepting of a Shoanti in the role, and the party know it, but Ileosa is hoping that she can make it work, both because she naively wants to improve relations, and because she wants someone with no loyalties to any of the city's noble or merchant houses.
Replacing Togomor doesn't look like it's going to have any major impacts in and of itself as he barely seems to figure into the plot at all; he's just there to be a gross and creepy encounter. Replacing him with a Shoanti wizard or shaman who is looking forward to the opportunity to research the pyramid and the historical artifacts under the castle before being enthralled seems more interesting than just some random bloatmage with no connection to the rest of the story.
I know that a Seneschal is traditionally just the guy who manages the day to day running of a castle's staff, but I've expanded the role a fair bit, to suggest that the role has expanded over the decades to the point where it's more akin to a regent who does much of the day to day running of the kingdom, including the conceit that the Sable Company technically reports to the Seneschal, and not directly to the monarch (I needed a reason for their total lack of presence between the night of the king's death and Marcus' attacking the queen at the coronation, so I found a way for them to ignore their monarch for an extended period)
In any case, I wasn't looking for a suggestion for an existing NPC, just for interesting class/archetype ideas. I'm probably just going to have him be a Spirit Whisperer Wizard.
Togomor does relate to the summoning and binding of all the devil assistants to Ileosa, so he does need to figure in somewhere or that part needs to be changed so he isn't the summoner. And as far as the Seneschal/Sable Company not being around for the Kings Death, unless Inspectre changed this as well, the King died of poison, so they wouldn't have been needed to storm the "assassin" as there was no obvious perpetrator (except painter lady who was only blamed later).
If you're just looking for class/archetype, you can look at the Shoanti tribes in book 4, and their leaders (the Sun Shaman is a druid, Thousand Bones was a cleric and became a shaman, and Ahkram is a cleric) and how the represent the tribal spirituality. Spirit Whisperer might be ok, but aside from their familiar, it might be hard to represent the specific class choice. That said, I don't think you plan on having them fight so that will be the case for many classes/archetypes.