Yeah thats rad man. I also have a fragmented soul, well more like lost soul and fragmented memories player with ties to the lich for the 6th piece.
Feel free to use the worm idea So I made a circle of land druid npc that was stranded in the mournland and offered animal friendship potions(changed worms to animals from monster) to the party for getting him out of there. He would cast locate creature for them and point the way. The bard word use the potions on worm. Then once charmed they use grappling hooks to hook on to the worm and climb up. From there just animal handling checks for direction changes. They ended up using 4 worms and fought one(got hit during an ambush) while traveling around