[ Sahkil ] [ Impostors | Lurkers | Stalkers | Tormentors ]
[ Caseafula | Chakanaj | Erasak | Esipil | Ganerul | Hemnallid | Ijhyeojin | Jichjik | Maatambil | Yatorak | Yogob ]
Hemnallid Sahkil
Hell Maiden (CR 7); fear of warfare
Home Planes: Ethereal / Xibalba; Nether
Alignment: Neutral Evil
So you’re facing what looks like a well-disciplined soldier, armed to the teeth, who’s moving with the fluid grace of a seasoned warrior. But when that helmet comes off, or the hood falls back, you find yourself staring not at a face but into the empty sockets of a skull decorated with intricate, blasphemous engravings. These are the hemnallids [HEM-na-lid], the so-called “hell maidens” who serve as the muscle among the sahkil. When they slip out of the mists of the Ethereal and onto the battlefields of the Prime, there’s no mistaking their presence—the air grows thick with the metallic stench of old blood. Their appearance is accompanied by the desperate prayers of dying soldiers, sounds that echo from a phantom warzone that exists just beyond perception. When they speak, it’s with voices that carry the screams of the innocent and the dying—a noise that’ll chill you to your core. In some senses, the hemnallid are a dark mirror held up to the valkyries—whom they despise with an intensity that burns hotter than the fires of Muspelheim.
What makes these fiends truly dangerous ain’t their martial prowess though. No, the real story here is how they feed on the primal terror that’s caused by warfare itself, especially among those poor half-hearted berks who never signed up for battle willingly in the first place. Hemnallids don’t just want to win fights—they seek to corrupt the very concept of honourable combat itself. They slip into the ranks of armies like a parasitic poison, hiding their faces behind helmets, and encouraging atrocities against civilians that turn soldiers into monsters. Their philosophy is as twisted as you’d expect from a sahkil: they believe that war is the most frightening thing that can befall a nation, so if they can control that, then they can achieve anything. War is the great revealer—strip away civilization’s veneer and every cutter becomes just another savage eager to spill blood. The hemnallids have carved out a nasty niche as the champions of war crimes, working to ensure that every conflict leaves lasting societal trauma that can feeds sahkil for generations.
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.