Bulette

The bulette ( ), also known as a landshark, was a fearsome magical beast. Feared and hated by most living creatures, bulettes were extremely dangerous, burrowing unseen beneath the soil before erupting up at an unexpected moment to seize their prey. Dwarves called the bulette a ghohlbrorn.
==Description==
A bulette's body was covered in thick, layered plates. Its head was bullet-shaped, similar to that of a shark, with a massive mouth. It had stumpy but powerful legs.
Bulettes were sometimes supposed to be a bizarre cross between an armadillo and a snapping turtle, though there was little evidence to support this theory. Bulettes were heavily armored, however, like either creature, and had a powerful jaw mechanism for snapping up their unsuspecting prey.
Bulettes were covered head to toe in armor. Around the head and rear, this armor was a blue-brown color, while in-between the hue might range from gray-blue to blue-green. Areas around the eyes were slightly darkened, with the eyes themselves being a yellow color with blue-green pupils.
==Ecology==
===Hunting===
While bulettes could see in perfect darkness with their eyes, they were not a bulette's primary method of sensory perception. Instead, bulettes typically hunted through the detection of vibrations in the ground, moving towards the source of the movement when their hunger is aroused.
They burrowed through soft earth, listening for potential prey and then erupting from the ground to consume their living targets.
===Diet===
In many cases, a bulette would swallow its prey whole, also consuming their victim's clothing, weapons, and other equipment, which the bulette could in fact digest successfully through the use of powerful stomach acid.
===Behavior===
The male bulette's mating ritual was fairly complicated, involving the killing of deer and boars, which were placed in a wide circle. He then dug a shallow pit in the middle of the circle, and lined it with the bones of the animals he had killed. Over the course of about a week, the bulette slowly grinded the bones in the pit into a fine powder. He then dug underneath the pit and waited for the female.
The female usually came along within a month after being attracted by the odor, at which point the bulettes mated. It took only a day and a half for the female to lay around a dozen eggs, covered in spines, and by the next morning, they had hatched. During hatching, the female bulette made a noise like an elephant. Once hatched, the newborn bulettes immediately attacked the mother, in an attempt to kill her. She fought back, and although she usually killed most of the young she succumbed to their attacks more often than not. The survivors, usually no more than two or three, devoured their slain siblings and mother.
For the 48 hours immediately after the hatching of the eggs, the powder in the mating pit was saturated with fluid from the eggs, making it a very effective fertilizer.
===Habitats===
Bulettes lived in the Starwood area of the forest of Cormanthor. They were also known to inhabit the mysterious Darkmoon temple along the Sword Coast, where they were studied by the ancient elf, Alain.
Bulettes were known to hunt in the Lizard Marsh on the Sword Coast, north of Daggerford.
Beyond the Prime Material, bulettes could be found in the Jotunheim layer of Ysgard. There they were referred to by the local giants as "land dragons".
==Appendix==
===Gallery===
POD - Battle - Bulette.jpg|A bulette in the combat view of the game Pools of Darkness.
Advance Bul.png|A bulette from 3DO's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Slayer (1995).
NwN Bulette.jpg|A bulette from Neverwinter Nights.
Bulette bg3.jpg|A bulette from Baldur's Gate III.
Bulette NWN.jpg|A closeup of a bulette.
Armored Bulette.png|A trained armoerd bulette.
Dungeons of Dread - Bulette.jpg|A bulette from the D&D Miniature's set "Dungeons of Dread."
Bulette attack.png|A hungry bulette attacking a horse and its rider.
Bulette Alt AFR.jpg|A depiction of a bulette from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms
BGIIITBH bulette.jpg|A bulette from the cancelled Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound.
===Appearances===
===Further Reading===
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===External links===
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===References===
FR:Bulette
Category:Creatures found in Jotunheim