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Trigger warning — this fiend description infers terminal illness, so if you have concerns about content like that, I suggest you give this creature a miss
Kalona Sahkil
The Carrion Caller (CR 14); thanatophobia — fear of death
Home Planes: Ethereal / Xibalba; Nether
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Kalona [ka-LONER] look like some barmy power tried to mold a human into a raven but gave up halfway through the job. These fiends are tall and painfully skinny, covered in ashy, molting feathers and bald patches. Their heads and long and slender, with narrow beaks tha are wickedly sharp, as are their talons. Their wings are vestigial and stunted, and by the look of them kalona should not be able to fly. Don’t let that fool you. These sahkil are mangy angels of doom, and their gutteral croaking call that mimics the death-call of a raven, now that’s a thing of nightmares. Their caw echoes like they’re inside a tomb, and cutters who hear it know in their bones that someone nearby is about to take the final journey,
The kalona sahkil embody the most primal terror of all—the fear of death itself. Unlike their more sophisticated cousins who feast on conceptions of existential dread, kalonas keep it simple and brutal. They target the sick, the aged, and anyone whose candle’s already burning low, stalking them mercilessly as they try to hound them into an early grave. Some graybeards reckon that the reason they’re so keen to bump off a berk is because every moment that their victim dies earlier than their time, that’s sustenance for the sahkil. They’re called “Raven Mockers” by prime-worlders who are wise enough to be scared by them. These fiends despise actual ravens with a fury, and they’ll slaughter the birds whenever they cross paths. Nosoi too, they really hate those little wisecracking psychopomps.
A kalona’s favourite tactic is to strike their victims while remaining invisible, their monstrous strength enough to snap bones like twigs—makes these attacks look like natural death throes—at least until the blood starts flowing. Their philosophy is as subtle as a blade to the throat: ultimately, death is the one fear no berk can ever truly escape, and the kalona want to make sure every last moment of that terror gets savored.
Source and Stats: The Creature Codex [PF1e] here
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.
