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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
Kimenhul Sahkil
The Impostor Unbidden (CR 20) atelophobia — fear of failure, impostor syndrome
Home Planes: Ethereal / Xibalba; Nether
Alignment: Neutral Evil
The kimenhul [kim-MEN-hool] is a towering monument to psychological torment that make even the most seasoned blood question their own judgement. Twenty-five feet tall, it has three enormous skulls fused together, wicked sharp fangs like daggers, and a body made from shadows that shift and writhe. If you’re unwise enough to looks closely, you’ll see the trapped faces and limbs that are echoes of every soul this fiend has broken, although while they’re screaming and wailing to be set free, it’s unlikely they’re actually alive in there. Underneath all that are three spindly boney legs that look ready to snap under the bulk, but they’re deceptively strong. The kimenhul can slash and grab with any of them, and if you’re grabbed then there’s a good chance you’ll be dragged away to the Ethereal Plane as well.
When a kimenhul manifests from the Ethereal, the air grows thick with the metallic taste of despair and the stench of failure made manifest. The sound it causes in your mind though is worse than any of the screaming: a constant, maddening chorus of self-doubt whispered in voices you swear you recognise—disappointed parents, cruel teachers, that lover who said you’d never amount to anything.
What makes these sahkils the stuff of true nightmares isn’t their size or strength, but the Eternal Fear—a curse that can brand a berk’s mind forever with the certainty that you’re not good enough, and never will be. Unlike other fiends who settle for quick kills or momentary terror, kimenhuls are artists of long-term psychological destruction, targeting the accomplished and high-up—heroes, generals, factols, anyone foolish enough to believe in their own competence. Once marked by eternal fear, victims hear the kimenhul’s poisonous voice telepathically every single day, reminding them of their inadequacies until paranoia and self-loathing consume everything they once were. Kimenhul don’t just feast on cutter’s fear; they’re the architects of imposter syndrome itself. They know only too well that the your harshest critic is the voice in your own head, and the cruelest wounds are the ones that a berk inflicts on themselves.
Source and Stats: Bestiary 6 [PF1e] p244; Bestiary 3 [PF2e] p222
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.