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Trigger warning — this fiend description contains themes of being eaten alive, so if you have concerns about content like that, I suggest you give this creature a miss
Baxbakwalanuxsiwae Sahkil
Baxbak, The Cannibal at the End of the World (CR 16); vorarephobia — fear of being eaten alive
An eyeless giant mass of heads and necks covered with dozens of ravenous mouths, bloodstained teeth and razor-sharp beaks, the baxbakwalanuxsiwae [BAX-ba-KWA-la-NUXY-way] (shortened by must cutters to “baxbak“) is the manifestation of the fear of being eaten alive. The sahkil’s form defies rational comprehension—a writhing mass of predatory anatomy optimised to consume sentient life. Each of its countless mouths can act independently, creating a feeding frenzy that overwhelms even the most experienced warriors. Most terrifyingly, the baxbak’s very presence causes excruciating phantom pains as those who behold it experience vivid hallucinations of its teeth gnawing endlessly on their flesh, transforming the fear of being eaten from abstract terror into visceral, inescapable agony even before they have engaged the beast.
The baxbak preys upon the primordial fear of predation. Despite society’s magical and technological complexity, the civilised veneer of most mortals crumbles when they’re confronted with the threat of being devoured alive. These sahkil believe that the fear of being eaten is the most fundamental terror, from which all other fears derive. For most of existence, after all, mortals were prey animals rather than predators in the natural world. The baxbak particularly relishes the moment when victims realise that no amount of weapons or magic can protect them from the horrifying reality of being eaten alive. After all, they cannot deny the fundamental truth that mortals remain, at their core, a conveniently mobile and delicious protein source. Once swallowed whole by a baxbak, victims find themselves alive inside the monster’s stomach, where they are attacked by further internal mouths and slowly dissolved by acidic gut juices.
Baxbak typically dwell in isolated areas. Fortunately, their distaste for the trappings of civilisation keeps them away from most burgs, and they prefer instead to capture and dominate their victims in a remote lair. Planewalkers entering baxbak domains need to be aware that the sahkil have the ability to control animals as well as humanoids, see through their eyes, or turn them feral. It is likely that a baxbak will be aware of intruders long before they are aware of the fiend.
These sahkil particularly relish enslaving humanoids and forcing them to serve as servants and chefs, particularly forcing them to capture members of their own species to feed into the fiend’s ever-hungry maws. It may not be obvious at first that they have been dominated in this way, but a tell-tale sign is the irrational fear of swallowing that typically manifests in ensorcelled victims, leading them to foam at the mouth, or become malnourished. To defeat a baxbak, it is likely that its magically-compelled gang of slaves will have to be neutralised first.
Source and Stats: The Creature Codex [PF1e] here; inspired by Kwakwaka’wakw folklore
Other Sources: Jon Winter-Holt. Canonwatch: The sahkil are a fabulously horrid type of fiend from Pathfinder lore, who make a great addition to the Ethereal Plane and Planescape lore generally. The Creature Codex has done an awesome job of expanding the number of sahkil massively too, and I’ve included all their creations here. Organising the sahkil into three sub-types based on their hunting style was my idea, because the list was unwieldy and their names are (deliberately) hard to remember, and this splits them up into bite-sized chunks.