Bhole

How big is the bhole?  Big enough that the majority of the bhole’s description in Pathfinder Adventure Path #65: Into the Nightmare Rift is devoted simply to the question of how to represent the bhole on the battlemat:

[Y]ou might consider not using miniatures at all for a fight against a bhole, with the assumption that once combat begins, the immense monster poses a significant threat to all in the area and that even several rounds of flight might not put a victim outside the monster’s reach.

(Don’t forget the 900’ breath weapon.  Your battlemat has a radius of 180 squares, right?)

So yes, the bhole is a worm-like creature from the Mythos of Lovecraft, and yes, even if a mortal could see its entire length, the apprehension of such a sight would drive them mad, and blah blah blah.  The point is: It’s the biggest worm your party will ever likely face, and if it swallows you, the GMs going to need 20 d6s to calculate the damage.  Good luck.

A bhole burrows from the Dimension of Dreams and into the Ethereal Plane, with animate dreams, nightgaunts, and flying polyps following behind in its wake.  Now the dreams of mortal sleepers offer no rest, travel to the Ethereal Plane courts death, and phase spiders refugees menace the forests of the elves.  The hole must be sealed…but the bulky form of the nearly infinitely long bhole is still in the way.

A mythic sphinx possesses knowledge found nowhere else in the universe.  The price for his insights is a simple one—the answer to his riddle—but he is not interested in the party’s solution.  Instead he directs them to the lair of a bhole, instructing them to bring back the worm’s reply.

Burrowing bholes can destroy whole worlds.  The evidence is right before spacefarers’ eyes, in the asteroid belt called the Shaitan’s Tears.  But this is the talk of eccentric sages and madmen; few ordinary folk believe the tales of otherworldly worms big enough to core a planet like an apple.  One old smuggler at the bar in the Gyrfalcon’s Roost even claims his ship was nearly swallowed by one once…but he also claims to have married a princess and taken a sasquatch for a copilot, so no one pays him any mind.

—Pathfinder Adventure Path #65 84–85 & Pathfinder Bestiary 4 18

Happy Friday!  Posting early today so I can get to Otakon.  Enjoy!

You caught the Dune reference, because you are smart.

The aforementioned Pathfinder Adventure Path #65 uses a bhole to make getting to Leng a bit more interesting.  It also has a gazetteer of that nightmare realm and a nice write-up of the goddess Lissala from Sean K Reynolds.

In the Hollow World setting, great worms called annelids threatened to undo the work of the Immortals.  Bholes would be a great way to represent these slumbering burrowers in your campaign.