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Trigger warning — this fiend description concerns the apocalypse, so if you have concerns about content like that, I suggest you give this creature a miss
Pazanbuul Sahkil
The Ill Omen (CR 15); existential crisis — fear of apocalypse and the end of times
Home Planes: Ethereal / Xibalba; Nether
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Behold the pazanbuul [pazzun-BOOL] sahkil, cutter—a seven-foot nightmare that’s crawled straight out of a prophecy, and I don’t mean a pack of harrow cards. They look like demonic locusts from one of those apocalyptic scriptures, all arms and angles, tarnished iron-gray scales and buzzing leathery wings. They’ve got ugly bat-faces, lashing whip-tails like scorpions, and fangs that can rip through plate mail.
Now the pazanbuul has a very particular diet, feasting exclusively on the fear that mortals have for the end of days. Now this ain’t an easy one to just happen across, which means that pazanbuul have to be masters of the long game, formulating schemes more elaborate and devastating than any other sahkil. From the moment they arrive, heralded by a doom-laden trumpet sound that’ll freeze your marrow, they command attention. On the rare occasions they deign to speak, their voices carry the weight of ruin, a low rumble that echoes from caverns deep below the earth.
These sahkil embodies existential terror: the fear that everything you know, love, and treasure will crumble to dust. Pazanbuul don’t just kill—they orchestrate the slow collapse of entire societies, starting with whispered suggestions that turn neighbour against neighbour, driving wedges between cutters, and magnifying cracks in social structures. They’ll cause religious bashers to preach hate, convince berks that diversity should be stamped out, and little by little erode all that is civilised about civilisation. Their goal is for societies to tear themselves apart in paranoid frenzy of mistrust and hatred.
To achieve this, the pazanbuul is able to brand its victims with an attack that leaves a permanent scar. The mark of the beast then festers and corrupts, spreading the pazanbuul’s poison throughout society slowly but surely. As social structures start to crumble, the pazanbuul enters a feeding frenzy, savouring the rich feast of anxiety and dread of the poor sods whose lives it is gleefully destroying.
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.