Siktempora, Anguish
Image © Paizo, accessed at Archives of Nethys here. For now.
[This is pretty close to the facial expression I made when I read that Archives of Nethys was losing their Pathfinder license. So I made sure to save pictures from all of the monsters in Monster Core 1 and 2 that I was planning to retroconvert. The anguished flame was among them, so a search brought up this siktempora, who I didn't know existed. I'm a fan of the siktemporas and have done retroconversions of all of the ones that were written for 2e only. I wrote those at a pretty rough time; around the time my students bullied me so badly I had a class reassigned, and the triumph siktempora got me harangued by a tumblr user who disagreed with my design decisions. Here's hoping that was a fluke, and I get out of the anguish siktempora without any more anguish.
One of my sources of periodic anguish is that I've been unemployed for more than a year. If you'd like to help make that a little less frightening, please join the Creature Codex Patreon here]
Siktempora, Anguish CR 13 CE Outsider (extraplanar) This creature resembles a malformed, oversized human head, its eyes rolling and its mouth filled with multiple rows of shark-like teeth. Dangling beneath its body are four insectile legs, each ending in a large hook.
Powerful emotions have a tendency to accumulate in the eddies and pools of the Dimension of Time, accruing until they manifest into living embodiments of strong emotions—the siktemporas. Anguish siktemporas are created from the pain and despair of mortals, and tend to gravitate toward areas where such emotions are commonplace. They are less common than the similar misery siktemporas, and the two lineages clash when they overlap, fighting over territory and emotions in an attempt to slake their endless thirst for pain and grief. Anguish siktemporas are stronger and more clever, but rarer and less likely to travel in groups, so the amount of misery siktemporas present often determines the outcome of these battles.
Anguish siktemporas are often called living screams; they cannot speak, but instead wail and moan constantly unless attempting stealth. They sometimes engage in telepathic communication while crying out in anguish, leading to discordant and frightening interactions. They can magnify these screams to the point of causing physical and mental damage, and when they bite down on a foe scream into their flesh to shake it apart. They are slow on the ground, moving with flailing legs more suited to tearing meat than movement, but can fly magically, drifting like sinister balloons. Anguish siktemporas can hit frightened foes harder and more accurately, and prefer to focus their attacks on those who succumb to their fear effects first.
