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Trigger warning — this fiend description contains creepy clowns, so if you have concerns about content like that, I suggest you give this creature a miss
Erasak Sahkil
The Puppet Masters (CR 6); pupaphobia — fear of dolls, puppets and marionettes; coulrophobia — fear of clowns
Home Planes: Ethereal / Xibalba; Nether
Alignment: Neutral Evil
The eresak [eh-REH-sak] are particularly disturbing sahkil, as they specialise in hiding in plain sight. While their true form is the size of a human, they can polymorph at will into the shape of a tiny doll—largely immobile, but able to watch and listen to everything going on around them. While the doll can be of any appearance, eresak typically appear as marionettes, jesters or clowns, with their faces either painted to look like skulls, or actual skulls. They can pass as toys, although they are always creepy, with staring eyes and an uncanny, unfeeling expression. Eresak wear garish costumes, and have what look like puppet strings coming from their shoulders, head and hands. These are, in fact, tendrils with which they can use to attack. When they do move, they alternate between the stiff jerky movements of a marionette and the fluid graceful movements of a predator.
Erasaks embody the fear of dolls and puppets—the discomfort inspired by the blank stares, their corpse-like stillness, the uncanny valley of their likeness, and the unsettling idea that one’s body could be reduced to an object. These sahkils are consummate sadists, drawing out the terror of their victims by slowly escalating their levels of psychological torment and, ultimately, stealing their autonomy itself. An erasak delights in isolating a single target, first unnerving them with subtle movements and repositioning themselves while unobserved—little things that their victim ignores, presuming they imagined them. Once their victim is thoroughly unnerved, the eresak then escalates to attacking with its tendrils and throwing tacks that inflict supernatural pain. Finally, the erasak may attempt to possess their victim and ruin their lives—or worse, transform them into a helpless doll, stripping away any type of agency.
Erasaks prefer to play psychological games rather than initiate open conflict. They are however cunning and dangerous when cornered, and will use their supernatural abilities and the support of eresak “playgroups” to overwhelm cutters who would oppose them. Their philosophy is simple: Amplify the primal fears that the familiar might be hiding the monstrous, and the terror of being rendered helpless and cruelly used as a mere plaything.
Source and Stats: The Creature Codex [PF1e] here
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.