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Ananshea
Trigger warning — this sahkil involves the theme of compulsions to cause harm. If you or your table has concerns about content like that, I suggest you give this fiend a miss.
The Skin that Walks on Teeth (planar sahkil tormentor [they/them] / NE) †
Portfolio: Brutality, torture, wild animals
Realm: Deep Ethereal / Xibalba / The Black Pyramid / The Cuspid Labyrinth
Alignment: Neutral Evil
In an obscure corner of Xibalba, walled off from the domains haunted even by the other sahkil tormentors, slinks Ananshea [uh-NAN-shay] the Skin That Walks on Teeth. If a sahkil was capable of feeling fear, rather than just being fear incarnate, you could assume that the other tormentors were even a little afraid of them. A towering mass of flayed skin, stitched together as if by the masterful needle of an insane artisan, Ananshea is a horrific amalgamation of all of their previous victims. Well, I say skin, but it’s really just their mouths, for this sahkil is an unholy tangle of jaws, teeth and tongues. Imagine a beholder, only for every eye add three maws instead, and you’re some way to imagining the horror. If you studied Ananshea’s form hard enough, and I strongly suggest you don’t do that cutter, you’d see the jaws of wolves, crocodiles, tanar’ri, giants, hellcats—all fused together in a horrific nightmare of tooth and slobber. They shift around constantly, forming and being swallowed up, a flickering mask of every creature they have ever consumed, all screaming in ceaseless agony. Oh yes, cutter, you’ll hear Ananshea coming before you see them.
Ananshea does not have limbs, instead lashing out with their many tongues to manipulate objects or attack. Some tongues are forked, some covered in sharp teeth, some in abrasive sharkskin. When they choose to speak—although the background screaming of the other mouths never stops—Ananshea talks with its many stolen voices at once. Their breath stinks of the hot, rancid odour of death. While their mere presence drives even trained beasts feral, when Ananshea speaks they are able to whip animals into a rabid frenzy, attacking any creature nearby. Wizards and witches with familiars, and any basher with a riding animal should particularly fear this tormentor. Ananshea can move with frightening speed, despite having no legs; instead they skitter along by moving dozens of jaws underneath their bulk. The sound this makes—of teeth scraping on stone, of tongues squelching, of screams being muffled by mud—is truly terrifying, especially if they are lurching towards you. It’s a brave sod indeed who can hold their nerve at the charge and not turn tail and flee in panic. Their weakness though is this same bestial rage; Ananshea is rash when initially attacking, taking some time to formulate a more strategic plan. If a sod can survive the feral onslaught, then they might be able to take advantage of this. If they can survive…
Ananshea’s obsessions are raw and primal: the tearing of flesh, the scraping of claw on bone, the moment where the mouth opens in silent horror just before a scream breaks. But they also has a terrible gift—they can sniff out the scent of a secret psychopath. They’re not interested in murderers or violent butchers. No, they’re after those cold, smiling would-be predators who spend their lives pushing down the monster within them, trying to suppress obsessive violent desires. But no matter how deep they bury the Dark Urge, Ananshea’s many mouths can taste the spoor: sense the tremor in the pulse, the stale breath of a carnivore, the sour sweat of a cutter desperate to maintain the illusion that they are “civilised.” They prey on these barely-restrained monsters with relish—unleashing hallucinations, visions, and savage phantoms that wear down their sense of reality and their self-control. Through Ananshea’s manipulative torments, such mortals risk becoming trapped in a waking nightmare, haunted by the sound of jaws snapping ever closer, overcome by the predatory hunger deep within themselves. Their terror grows as Ananshea makes them watch—over and over—the joy of release they would feel if they gave in to instinct, until the only escape is surrender to the Urge. Some sods and run wild, committing brutal acts in an frenzy of violent liberation. Others break more slowly, unable to restrain their vile cravings as Ananshea whispers encouragement, promising that their pain will be eased if they would only transfer it to others instead.
Unlike their subtler kin, Ananshea doesn’t linger in the shadows—they revel in raw violence and the collapse of restraint. Once they’ve corrupted their chosen psychopathic pets, Ananshea abducts them to their Ethereal realm The Cuspid Labyrinth, where the victims are hunted by fleshless beast-spirits and tormented by brutal traps, until they either die or themselves become predators. Graybeards reckon Ananshea is a warped echo of some primeval hunter-power, whose mask slipped revealing that their façade was only a skin-deep illusion of civility, a paper thin covering that masked the raw animal beneath.
Edicts: Annihilate any who would tame you, draw first blood, enjoy every kill to the fullest
Anathema: Choose peaceful solutions over violence, hold back in a fight, tame a violent wild animal
Canonical Sources: Book of the Damned [PF1e] p132; Divine Mysteries [PF2e] p228, 320-321.
Source: Jon Winter-Holt.