[ Sahkil ] [ Impostors | Lurkers | Stalkers | Tormentors ]
[ Caseafula | Chakanaj | Erasak | Esipil | Ganerul | Hemnallid | Ijhyeojin | Jichjik | Maatambil | Yatorak | Yogob ]
Trigger warning — this fiend description contains themes of blackmail and guilty secrets, so if you have concerns about content like that, I suggest you give this creature a miss
Chakanaj Sahkil
The Faceless Witness (CR 14); fear of ones secret’s being revealed
Home Planes: Ethereal / Xibalba; Nether
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Probably the smallest—but certainly not the least dangerous—of the sahkil is the chakanaj [CHAK-a-nay]. No more than two feet wide, they weigh about as much as a loaf of particularly unpleasant bread. They have long slender legs with needle-sharp claws and a body that skitters in and out of focus like a trick of the light. Even to a wary blood, a chakanaj is hard to spot: they slink about, perhaps in the guise of a discarded scarf, a featureless mask, or the inner lining of a cloak, always remaining close to their chosen prey. If you notice the atmosphere turning chill, and catch the faintest scent of musty secrets and old parchment, you might be in the presence of one of these foul things. Listen out for the whisper-thin clicks and rustle of skin scraping silk, if you value your life.
Where these fiends truly put the fear into a berk is their preferred method of hunting. Chakanaj embody the fear of one’s darkest secrets being exposed and the suffocating anxiety of being unmasked in public. If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear, right? Don’t make me laugh. Every berk has secrets if you look hard enough! Rather than a tactic as gauche as brash threats to frighten secrets out of a victim, the chakanaj prefer to gnaw at their victims’ minds with cunning manipulation—they will eavesdrop for days or even months, listen out for lies and half-truths that conceal guilty secrets, drop telepathic hints to their victim that perhaps someone knows more than they should. In this way they slowly twist a sod’s sense of shame and paranoia until they will do anything—even commit darker crimes—just to keep the truth hidden.
The chakanaj are able to instil an irrational dread of public disgrace, turning berks into jumpy, desperate shadows of themselves. Philosophically, the chakanaj reckon that the most exquisite kind of fear is not of a crude monster under your bed but of the skeletons in your closet. These sahkil stake their territory in the centre of the tangled webs of high society, manipulating the secrets of those around them until they’ve ruin the lives of entire communities. It turns out the worst nightmares aren’t always caused by monsters in the dark, but sometimes by truths desperate to see daylight.
Source and Stats: Night of the Gray Death [PF2e] p70
Other Sources: Jon Winter-Holt. Canonwatch: These 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.