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Trigger warning — this fiend description contains parasites and disease, so if you have concerns about content like that, I suggest you give this creature a miss
Nucol Sahkil
The Harbingers of Contagion (CR 4); trypophobia & nosophobia — fear of parasites and diseases
Home Planes: Ethereal / Xibalba; Nether
Alignment: Neutral Evil
One of the more repulsive of the sahkil, the nucol [noo-COL] is a creature that transforms the dread of disease and infestation into a living nightmare. These violent abominations feast upon one of our most primal terrors: the fear that our bodies can be invaded, corrupted, and consumed from within by parasites and unseen pathogens. The nucol is a grotesque mockery of a wild boar, that often-sacred animal perverted into an avatar of pestilence. The creature’s flesh appears perpetually diseased, mottled with patches of necrotic tissue and suppurating wounds. The nucol’s hide writhes constantly with visible parasitic worms—long, pale helminths that burrow in and out of holes in its flesh in nauseating patterns, leaving trails of bloody discharge in their wake, triggering trypophobia as well as disgust.
The creature’s snout perpetually drips with infected mucus, and its breath carries the stench of decay and pestilence. Around the nucol swirls an ever-present cloud of buzzing flies—bluebottles, flesh flies, and other carrion-feeders drawn to the creature’s diseased emanations. These insects form a dark, writhing aura around the beast, their collective buzzing creating an unsettling drone. Nucols feed on nosophobia—the deep-seated mortal terror of bodily invasion by unseen organisms. This fear is many layered: the dread of contamination, the loss of bodily autonomy, and the slow consumption from within. The sahkil understands that few things are more unsettling to mortals than the knowledge that tiny predators might already be living inside them, eating them alive while remaining invisible.
Nucols attach themselves to communities, favouring settlements with poor sanitation, overcrowded conditions, and limited access to clean water—environments where disease spreads naturally and their presence can be masked among genuine outbreaks. The foul creatures begin by contaminating food and water sources with its diseased secretions, introducing real parasites and pathogens into the population. This creates a foundation of actual illness upon which the sahkil can escalate its campaign of supernatural terror. Most worryingly, nucols can serve as harbingers of greater sahkil activity. An outbreak started by a single nucol that causes a plague which grows out of control may foreshadow the arrival of more powerful fear-feeders, drawn by the amplified emotions of the community.
Source and Stats: Book of the Damned [PF1e] p253; Bestiary 3 [PF2e] p219
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.