Pakalchi

(Illustration by Jose Parodi comes from the Pathfinder Facebook page and is © Paizo Publishing.)

“Pakalchis feed on the fear and insecurity of failing relationships,” says Bestiary 5.  And if you’ve ever been in a failing relationship, that’s pretty much all you need to know to convince you that these sahkils are the absolute worst monsters in B5—end of story, full stop, done.

And that’s even before you take into account that they can skip between the Material and Ethereal Planes (never a good thing) as a move action (even worse)…dominate you into giving into your worst instincts, fears, and insecurities and sabotage your love…and then strangle, poison, or pierce you to death when it’s all over and you’re no longer amusing to toy with.  Remember how mad Iago made you when you read Othello in high school?  This is Iago with game stats and semi-immortality.  She may be CR 9 on the page, but she’s CR 29 against your heart.

Also, one last note to underscore why pakalchis are the absolute worst: they feed on “failing relationships.”  Not troubled, not star-crossed, not tumultuous—failing.  (And since sahkils are former psychopomps, from a lore/flavor perspective it’s not unreasonable to assume that they have at least a little foresight/precognition about such matters.).  In other words, these relationships were already doomed.  The hurt was already there.  Pakalchis make it vastly worse so as to feed on the couple’s misery…but if you slay a pakalchi, that’s not going to lift the dark clouds over its victims and make flowers spring up in their footsteps.  It just means the relationship is likely going to flounder and fail anyway…and when the end comes, there won’t even be a monster to blame.

Young men in town have been disappearing—often after violent quarrels that leave their sweethearts heartbroken (and too often sobbing and bruised).  Certain signs—vines in unlikely places, bits of clothing caught on thorns, and trails of flower petals—suggest a nymph or some other fey influence.  But the true culprit is a pakalchi whose domain includes a thorny thicket in this world and a grasping, hungry forest on the Ethereal Plane.

Emika and Bez-Sha are twins—budded in the same instant from the same outcropping of direstone in the Cradle of Bones.  Though the catrina sisters were once mirror images of each other, Bez-Sha abandoned the psychopomp order to become a sahkil, gaining in power as she discarded mercy and other weaknesses.  The only hint at their kinship now is the swaying gait of their skeletal forms and the identical shade of tea roses adorning their brows.  The sisters have not spoken since Bez-Sha fled Death’s Realm, but Emika stretches her schedule and her oaths as far as they will allow to search the multiverse for news of her twin. Often this means hiring mortal adventures—sometimes with gold, sometimes with promises of future intercession in matters cosmic.

Napoleon’s occupation of Spain leads to calls for revolt throughout Mexico.  To suppress the uprisings, the Spanish colonial governments rely heavily on mercenary wizards, particularly conjurers whose summoned allies excel at breaking up demonstrations and ferreting out revolutionaries. Doing so, however, pierces the veils between this world and the next, allowing shadows, spectres, and extraplanar threats to creep through.  Recently a pakalchi managed to ooze over from the Realm of Mists.  She has taken to haunting the son of a local marqués and his betrothed, the daughter of a wealthy importer. The lovers’ misery has exacerbated tensions between the families and driven the distracted marqués to ever-harsher reprisals against his people, magnifying the fear and misery that fatten the pakalchi and her allies.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 5 216

The original image of La Calavera Catrina that inspired Pathfinder’s catrina psychopomp and possibly the pakalchi actually dates from a century later than the Mexican War of Independence: 1910, rather than 1810.  But today the images of a beautiful woman and/or a friendly skeleton wearing a flower crown is so tied to Mexico I couldn’t resist playing with history a little for that third adventure seed.  Mashing up wizards and Napoleon is, of course, also a big nod toward Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

Kimenhul

Remember the Quintessons from The Transformers: The Movie?  (Of course you do.  They were amazing.)  Now imagine taking a giant Quintesson and skinning it—alive.  Now imagine that after you peeled back its metal plates, you found not the circuitry you expected, but instead shrieking organic skulls and tissue?  With extra faces trying to pull away from its body in terror?  Scared and grossed out yet?  Now make that thing a former servant of the goddess of death, only it rebelled to torment the souls of the living with fear instead.  And have it hang out on the Ethereal Plane and make it really adapt at abducting victims. 

Starting to get the picture?

Oh, and make it CR 20. 

That’s right…kimenhuls are the pit fiends of fear.

And we’re talking serious fear.  Check out the Eternal Fear (Su) ability.  Once a character has proved susceptible to a kimenhul’s eternal fear, it can telepathically communicate with that creature once per day as long as they are anywhere on the same plane.  Worse yet, after the initial encounter, subsequent stressful situations can retrigger the fear, leaving the character shaken—even after the kimenhul is dead!  Said stressful conversations include any and all combat…not something a professional adventurer wants to hear.  (Oh, you want to cure it?  Better have a wish or miracle handy.)

If that sounds like a horrific fantasy version of PTSD or anxiety…well, that’s because it is.  And I’m not just hypothesizing that—I checked in with Adam Daigle (@thedaigle), creator of the sahkils (along with @wesschneider and John Compton), and he’s the one who pointed that out.  Other sahkils embody specific fears; the kimenhul is, if not fear itself, certainly the next best thing—the persistence of fear, the fear you live with day after day, the anxiety attack that might be triggered at any moment.  Kimenhuls are the fear that simply won’t let go.  Worse yet, they particularly focus on hunting society’s strong and the powerful, humbling and incapacitating the very cream of the crop of humanity…including high-level adventurers.

I doubt most campaigns will have kimenhuls as the Big Bad.  The two scenarios that spring to mind are: 1) campaigns very closely tied to the politics of the afterlife, where the rebel sahkils are one of the main threats to orderly march of souls, and 2) a campaign where fighting and defeating your fears is the main theme.  (That could actually be pretty cathartic actually.) 

In most campaigns, though, a kimenhul is probably the penultimate threat, the spoiler that must be defeated before the Ultimate Big Bad can be brought down—a very nice story-beat.  Otherwise, the PCs risk being incapacitated or undermined just when they need to be at their best—another great story option.  And here’s a GM pro tip: If PCs do face their fears and defeat the kimenhul, giving out, say, a morale bonus or ability score boost instead of treasure might be a great way to both reward the PCs and symbolize the renewed vigor with which they can now face their foes…

A ruler who was once an adventuring party’s patron has grown secretive and remote.  He has also grown terrified of mirrors, stained glass, and snails.  After some investigation—possibly even a red herring involving vampires—adventurers discover that a mirror in the king’s throne room leads to the Ethereal Plane.  There sits a mirror version of the king’s palace staffed by sahkils, enslaved members of the snail-like psychopomp race known as shokis, and rakshasas—all ruled over by a horrifying sahkil high justice who has his hooks deep in the mortal king’s psyche.

A half-fiend cetus of mythic proportions and abilities terrorizes a city.  The citizens expect their god-hero Tynin to drive off the beast, as he has done once a decade as far back as anyone can remember.  But in the past ten years, age has begun to catch up to the nearly divine god-hero—and with it, fear of mortality, failure, ridicule, and countless other pitfalls.  This growing anxiety has been helped along in no small part thanks to a run-in Tynin had with a kimenhul.  With Tynin dragging his feet, it looks like some out-of-town adventurers may have to face the sea monster…but their initiative may not sit well with the hero-worshipping citizens, the well-heeled clerical bureaucracy built up around god-hero worship, or Tynin himself, who cannot afford to look weak on so large a stage.

Adventures have declared war on the night hags, busting up their markets in Faerie and the Dream Shore and harassing the soul trade in the Ether.  Their efforts hit a snag when the hags suddenly abandon the pursuit of souls for the harvesting of liquid fear, taking them into territories like the Deep Dream and the Gray Lands that are much more dangerous for the adventurers to pursue.  A kimenhul with aspirations of ascending to tormentor status has declared dominion over the night hags and is pulling their strings.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 5 214–215

I had such an abysmal posting rate last week I thought I better give you all some weekend love.

One last note from @thedaigle:

For another behind the scenes tidbit, the word sahkil is from a Yucatec Maya dialect and it means fear.

The more you know!

Oh snap, it’s Tuesday’s show!  Nothing special to report, although I did get a Tiny Tim request that will put a smile on y’all’s faces.  (But you definitely want to tune in this coming Tuesday…for reasons.)

Stream/download it here till tomorrow (Monday), 02/27/17, at midnight.  Bros, don’t panic as the breastfeeding PSA comes up.

(Also, special apology to my Blogger readers, who never got linked to last week’s show because I wasn’t able to post an entry.  Message me if you feel left out and I’ll find a way to get a copy to you.)

Esipil

It’s our first sahkil!  A new category of outsiders introduced in Bestiary 5, sahkils are renegade psychopomps.  All too aware of the mortality of all things, they would rather spend their finite eons making souls suffer rather than shepherding them.  Taking forms out of nightmares—nightmares that even death is no release from—they find inventive ways to spread terror and torment living victims and vulnerable souls.

The esipil may be the weakest sahkil revealed so far, but they’re also my favorite.  They’re just so gleefully malevolent, particularly given their habit of masquerading as lovable pets that are seized by sudden violent outbursts.  (I once dogsat a racist Dachshund, so I can confirm that that sudden transformation is scary as hell…not to mention humiliating to all parties involved.)

And the best part about them is that they can be familiars!  I so want to see one of these in a Hogwarts/Glantri School of Magic-style campaign, or in a guild or society (such as the Pathfinder Society) where members of different alignments are forced to coexist and play nice.  Imagine a group of students sharing their classrooms and corridors with students and familiars of all shapes and sizes…but one of the familiars (ideally that of a hated rival or resented professor) is just wrong somehow.  This feeling might persist for days, weeks, or even whole semesters until the esipil finds the proper moment to reveal itself in the way that causes the most fear.

Adventurers traveling to the Ethereal Plane are greeted by a talking terrier who claims to be a party member’s spirit guide.  The mutt is helpful in all things until he is able to catch the character alone or in combat with other ethereal threats.  Then the terrier, actually an esipil, uses cause fear and then attacks, howling to summon the rest of his pack.

Ever since a young wizard’s near-death from drowning, an immature nosoi has been his companion (due to become an ordinary nosoi when the wizard achieves the appropriate level and feat).  Having such an exotic familiar at such a young age has earned him no small praise from his masters and peers at the Academy…save for one lecturer, who seems to dislike the birdlike psychopomp intensely.  The lecturer’s familiar is actually a carefully disguised esipil, and the beast spends every night whispering dreams of torturing the nosoi into his master’s ear.

Cast off by their outsider masters long ago, a doru and a esipil haunt the souk in Ibor.  When the esipil successfully cajoles his way into the service of a haruspex, the doru becomes mad with envy.  The resentful div finds down-on-their-luck adventurers and offers to show them the graveyard where the esipil has stashed his treasure.  Should the esipil discover he has been robbed, he will do everything in his—and his soothsayer master’s—power to exact revenge.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 5 213