I've always had a bit of a soft spot for lantern archons, so I'm pleased that their Remaster equivalents are the first things I get to tackled out of Monster Core. Zoaems, or ring archons, occupy the low-level minion niche on the archon org-chart. They aren't particularly bright, but they are trained in Religion, so they know their theology and the outer sphere beyond heaven's slopes. Their second skill is Acrobatics for flight and darting through an enemy's square. The third is interesting though - it's Intimidation. My instinct says a celestial use Diplomacy instead, and indeed that's what the lantern archon had as its third skill. My guess is that Paizo is rolling with how outright eldritch the new archons appear, so every single one of them excels at scaring people. There’s also that whole “be not afraid” thing from the Bible, which works so much better if Archons are terrifying.
Zoaems are the least uncanny archons, but they still have plenty of latitude to be eerie and weird. The default zoaem is a series of spinning, winged rings surrounding an inner light. An easy way to customize their appearances would be to vary light within them. The obvious approach would be to make the inner light a sun or a star, but anything which sheds light could work. A haunting or occult oriented zoaem could have one or several candles floating in their core. Another, who escorts souls to the Boneyard, may have ivory rings spinning around a luminous skull. Of course, there is also the classic - a giant unblinking floating eyeball that stare at all who pass.
After the serial killer Bartrum the Bloody escaped his sanitarium prison in Ustalav, a group of archons took matters into their own hands. The band tracked down the murderer, but he proved too much for them, slaying the divine host one by one. The final celestial standing was Elijah the Daring. The zoaem took the fight to Bartrum, rushing him with eye-beams blazing. Some how, the confrontation ended with the two merging together, creating a being with a mortal body, and rotating rings in place of a head. This creature, Bram the Bright, wanders Avistan trying to reconcile the conflicting impulses within its soul.
Legends say that in the Universe's early days, all ring archons were a single potent demigod who fractured themself to thaw unholy powers. The ring archons keep the birthplace of the original Zoaem secret, but make frequent pilgrimages there. The best way to find it is to follow the zoaem who bring blessings to their kin, the immobile bastion archons.
Ncuti the Jeweller (entrepreneurial nonbinary ring archon) wanders the streets of heavens shore with their extra dimensional shop. While they sell baubles of all types, Ncuti’s typecast itself with its speciality - it loves magic rings. They pay a premium for unique rings, both mundane and magical, and keep a bounty list of particularly infamous magic items from across the planes.
