Bulette

Nicknamed the land shark, the boo-LAY (as its name, bulette, is pronounced) lives only to eat and is avoided by every creature, monsters included. Some say it is an armadillo crossed with a snapping turtle, but that is guesswork. Its head and hindquarters are blue-brown, armored in gray-blue to blue-green plates and scales. Its claws and teeth are dull ivory, the skin around its yellowish eyes is brown-black, and its pupils are blue-green.

Perpetually hungry, a bulette roams its range eating anything it considers food. Elves are the only thing it will not eat, and it dislikes dwarves. Underground it senses prey by vibration, and when anything moves above, it bursts up crest first and attacks. Its temper is like a wolverine's: dim, vicious, and fearless, unconcerned with the size, strength, or number of its foes. It always attacks, picking the nearest or easiest target, using its huge jaws and front feet.

When cornered or hurt it can leap up to 8 feet with lightning speed to get away, and while airborne it strikes with all four feet, the rear feet each dealing 3d6 as well. It has two weak spots: the shell under its crest is AC 6 but is raised only in fierce combat, and the area around its eyes is AC 4, though that is a small oval roughly 8 inches wide.

Luckily, bulettes are solitary, though rare mated pairs share a range, and other predators avoid sharing territory with them for fear of becoming dinner. They keep no lair; they wander their range above and below ground, digging into the soil to rest. Their hunger demands territories of up to 30 square miles. They swallow victims whole, gear and all, and strong stomach acids quickly dissolve armor, weapons, and magic items; chests and sacks of coins get nibbled too. Once a territory is eaten bare, the bulette leaves for another, chosen only by food supply, so now and then one settles near human or halfling communities and terrorizes them.

Its life cycle is a mystery. Bulettes probably hatch from eggs, yet no young has been found, though small 6 Hit Die specimens have been killed. Perhaps the eggs are tiny and few hatchlings survive; some sages suggest live birth instead. They may keep growing with age as carp and sharks do, since bulettes 11 feet tall or more have been reported, and no one has ever found one dead of old age.

Few things wreck an ecosystem like a bulette. Nothing that moves, human, beast, or monster, is safe. Its hunting topples sizable trees, and in hilly or rocky country its tunneling can trigger small landslides. Trolls, ogres, and even some giants abandon an area when one arrives, and no sane human or demihuman stays in a district where one has been seen, so a quiet farming region can become wasteland within weeks.

Its sole known benefit is the big plates behind its head, which dwarven smiths can make into +1 to +3 shields. Some also claim that soil a bulette has tunneled through gains magical rock-dissolving properties. Few think these gifts worth the cost.