Who Teaches Vanguards?

[Perpdepog]

I just finished reading my PDF copy of Galactic Magic, and I realized something.
We get a pretty lengthy article on various centers of magical learning in Starfinder, including all of the casting classes, as well as solarians, but we don't get anything about where vanguards are trained, or any vanguard-centric organizations.

Come to think, I'm not sure vanguards are mentioned once throughout the book outside of the section giving them their alternate class features and new abilities.

Am I right in that vanguards were kind of on the back burner, or are there sections I'm missing? I am loving the book either way; this is just a strange discrepancy I wanted to point out.

I really love these bundles of essays that both Tech Revolution and Galactic Magic are employing. I hope we get more going forward. (We probably already did get them in earlier books that I just haven't read all the way through.)

[BigNorseWolf]

Folks probably don't see he vanguard till its done, so no brewing ideas about them till the next book is the issue i think

Vanguard schools

Hard knocks
ESP N etwork
Vanguard crash course
OOMF university

[Metaphysician]

At a bare minimum, I imagine every "school" that includes a militant or physical aspect, or that doesn't describe itself as very explicitly "scholarly", probably includes Vanguard training in its curriculum.

[Claxon]

I assume the harsh forces of the universe are a sultry but painful teacher. Who better to teach them?

[BigNorseWolf]

Gravity. Harsh mistresss but graves on a curve (of spacetime)

[RiverMesa]

This has been my big gripe with the class for ages now.

In my mind, every class can be approached from two different ways, through either extrinsic or intrinsic hooks.

By 'extrinsic', I mean based on pre-existing notions, tropes and ideas, using the provided classes and other player options to realize them - something that the CRB classes especially shine at, even though they don't exactly have the most unique concepts themselves (solarians being the biggest exception).

By 'intrinsic', I mean based on ideas sparked by the game's own lore, concepts and options - something that post-CRB classes tend to skew towards; I can't exactly name (m)any witchwarpers from other media, but the class is so compelling thematically that I get enough ideas from it by itself.
And of course, the more generic classes can do this stuff just as easily (such as reading up on a particular deity and wanting to make a mystic or other PC tied to them, or a character with ties to a particular organization, or tapping into the lore of a certain species, et cetera).

Now, why am I talking about all this? Because under this paradigm of mine...Vanguards don't really work from either a "bring your own outside idea" or "look for some writing to get inspiration from" angles.

Physics was easily one of the weakest subjects in school, and entropy to this day is a concept that flies over my head to some extent, and I sure as hell can't name any characters from pop culture that would be easily classified as Starfinder vanguards. And, as per this thread, there aren't really many good hooks for vanguard characters in the setting either.

I've seen suggestions that vanguards are kind of similar to solarians in that they form monastic orders, being another kind of warrior-monk with ties to a physical concept...But if that's the case then I'd love to actually see that in writing.

The closest I've come to having a compelling lore-based vanguard idea is one tied to the Devourer, but, well, a CE nihilistic god of universal destruction doesn't strike as the most PC-friendly option.

If Paizo were to dedicate a whole backmatter article to vanguards' role in the game world in a future AP, I'd be positively delighted; As it stands it's just a class I really don't know what to do with on a narrative level, and that frustrates me, because I love pretty much every other class.

[Rosc]

I took some creative liberty with my Vanguard in an AP and explained her Vanguard powers as coming from a pact with some unknowable being that she only met by chance of a freak Drift accident. She ended up making a pact, but the details are fuzzy because her memories were part of the deal. And she may or may not have always been a tiefling. Or, if her existential dread is to be believed, killed and replaced with one.

I like to imagine Vanguards as mostly occurring as the result of some catastrophe. Surviving a magical cataclysm and coming back changed. Nearly being sucked into a black hole, but gleaning wisdom from gazing into the eye of the warp.

It's way more fun to imagine you're What's Wrong With The World, or at least a symptom of it.

[Gaulin]

Reading a cool origin story like that is a big reason I'm glad there's no pre-existing way to become a vanguard. Really let's people use their imagination and not limit their choices.