Him

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Him

Trigger warning — this sahkil has themes of suffocation and sleep paralysis, so if you have concerns about content like that, I suggest you give this one a miss.

The Bedside Shadow (planar sahkil tormentor [him] / NE) ‡

Portfolio: Suffocation, nightmares, and sleep paralysis

Realm: Astral / Demiplane of Dreams

Alignment: Neutral Evil

Him, the Bedside Shadow, is a deeply mysterious sahkil tormentor of suffocation, nightmares, and sleep paralysis. Him is a presence more often vaguely remembered than actually seen, a dark silhouette at the edge of waking consciousness that rapidly turns the restful darkness of night into helpless terror.

Him appears as a vague, featureless shadow in concealing clothes, marked most distinctly by a brimmed hat or a hooded cloak. Victims recall Him with impossible clarity even when they were unable to look directly at Him. That paradox is central to his horror: the Bedside Shadow is not seen so much as felt, as pressure on the chest, the certainty of that shadow in the corner being a figure, and the awful conviction that something is drawing nearer while you are powerless to move. Him is the bedside intruder of every culture’s half-awake folklore.

His portfolio is suffocation, nightmares, and sleep paralysis—but the deeper fear Him embodies is the betrayal of the self by the self. That moment when your own sleeping body turned into a cage and your awake mind helplessly watched as an imaginary doorway opens and terror enters. No grand doctrine is taught by Him to mortals, and Him barely acknowledges worship at all. The only thing that interests Him is the perfect intimacy of helplessness. Other sahkil cultivate fear of creatures or situations, or the terror of being chased, or social ruin, but Him strips it down to the most private possible experience. There are no crowds, no cults, no screams—only a sleeper, a room, a completely motionless body, and the certainty that something awful is standing a single step away, just watching.

Most of the manifestations of Him on the Material Plane last only minutes, although they feel like eternity. During this time Him stands near the paralysed victim and slowly approaches, footsteps echoing, letting anticipation do all the work. Some victims die in their sleep from terror or simply forgetting to breathe. The survivors fate can be even worse—unlucky sods might remain trapped in endless waking nightmares of suffocation, aging in terror while He savours their fear slowly like a fine wine. A hunter? Not Him—more a connoisseur of dread. Even worse, once a sleeper’s fear has been tasted by Him, it’s very likely that they will be visited again…

Unlike most sahkil tormentors, no dominion in Xibalba is maintained by Him. Instead, you can find Him in the Dimension of Dreams, where minds already suffering by nightmares are easy to hunt. The Bedside Shadow then follows the thread of bad dreams back to the Prime, to the moment of wakefulness.

Him has no known alliances beyond occasional contact with dreamthief hags, and operates outside of sahkil politics. In fact, Him is so solitary that graybeards are unsure whether there is only one Bedside Shadow or many manifestations of the same horror. Chant goes that the psychopomp usher known as Shadix Who Dreams is a mortal enemy of Him.

Edicts: Watch creatures while they sleep, record your dreams and nightmares

Anathema: Wake a sleeping being, consume stimulants to stay awake or sedatives to fall asleep

Source: Jon Winter-Holt, adapted from the Monsters Down the Path blog.