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Trigger warning — this fiend description contains themes of blasphemy, so if you have concerns about content like that, I suggest you give this creature a miss
Yatorak Sahkil
The Blasphemous Shepherds (CR 18) theophobia — fear of the powers
Home Planes: Ethereal / Xibalba; Nether
Alignment: Neutral Evil
If you cross paths with a yatorak [ya-ter-ACK]—assuming you survive to tell the tale—you’ll know it by the sheer, nightmarish spectacle. Some twenty feet tall, its towering form is held up by four thick limbs which end in long, grasping toes that look uncomfortably like human fingers. From that unsettling base rises a torso reminiscent of a warped centaur, with small arms clutching an ornate and oversized golden sword, spear or trident. Yatorak dress themselves in the garb of clerics, although their interpretation of holy finery is corrupt to say the least. The fiends festoon themselves with vestments and relics that parody the robes of holy folk—a mockery sure to sting the pride of any priest or paladin who might see it.
Yatorak hide what passes for a face behind a tiny golden mask, typically in the style of a religious icon. Their most terrifying aspect though is the mass of tentacles and unblinking eyes which crown their heads, constantly in writhing motion. Apparently, at the centre of that tangled chaos is a huge slavering mouth lined with jagged fangs. It’s the last thing that many berks ever see.
A yatorak doesn’t simply manifest with a bang and flash, but with a slow, choking miasma: the faint but inescapable odour of musky incense mingled with a cloying hint of blood and rancid communion wine, and a thrumming undercurrent of whispers—blasphemous prayers and stolen confessions.
The yatorak is the dark apostle of the sahkils, the embodiment of mortal terror of divine retribution. Their method of spreading fear is sinister: they radiates an overwhelming presence which can bring bashers to their knees, inspiring abject terror and submission in all but the stoutest minds. But this sakhil’s real joy is corrupting religious faith, twisting doctrine through sly conversation and back-alley heresies. Their goal is to break the faith of mortal worshippers, using their fear of the divine to drive a wedge between them and their powers. Once they’ve broken their victims, they will brainwash them into gospel of their chosen Tormentor patron—they might even allow the poor cove free to spread its blighted word back in society, or they just snuff out their spark for the sheer devilry of it, turning them into a mindless undead.
The yatorak seek to reveal that faith is just a thin layer papering over the real reason mortals worship powers—primal dread of the divine. The sahkil believe that fear isn’t to be used as a cudgel—but as a spark that can be nurtured to burn away holy conviction. See, these sahkil have worked out that many powers are only worshipped by mortals because they are afraid of the repercussions of not showing them sufficient obeisance. And where there’s the scent of fear, there’s a sahkil to feed upon it.
Their niche on the planes lies where faith teeters on a knife-edge: the yatorak gather lesser sahkils and spirits in perverse congregations, haunting sites of lost faith and sowing doubt wherever mortals insist on bending the knee to the powers. Whether mortals are faithless, fearful, or just plain clueless—it matters not; the yatorak will see to it that their belief curdles into delicious terror.
Source: 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.