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Thief Dark Project gas breathing Burrick
Burricks are huge, bipedal lizards, with a form vaguely resembling a cross between a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Carboniferous amphibian, but with the head of an iguana, fit to scale, and without any crest or dewlap. They have hair like a horse's mane, but it lays flat, and appears matted and oily. They are burrowing animals, and can create labyrinthine tunnel systems much like ants, yet even boring straight through solid rock. By all accounts, they are not carnivorous, but in their extensive excavations, it's not out of the question that they consume whatever lives in the soil they clear away, possibly spiders. Whatever it is Burricks consume, especially glowing mushrooms, they are able to manufacture from it a unique substance, which they use as their primary defense: a plume of visible, noxious green gas which they can belch forth up to a distance of unmeasured. They are loathed for their destructive burrowing and injurious belchings. They are popularly hunted and shot at, and some nobles' homes have mounted Burrick-head trophies. They can be lulled into complacency by the soothing musical tones, such as that of the magical Horn of Quintus.
Burricks almost always travel in small packs, usually in groups of about a half dozen, but undisturbed by humans, they can form colonies numbering in the dozens, such as in the Bonehoard. They appear also to be somewhat emotional creatures similar to dogs, whimpering when injured, and howling mournfully when it finds a fellow burrick dead. To an extent, they can also be tamed and kept as pets by those with adequate facilities, such as Ramirez.
In T1/TG they are inhabitants the player must avoid or confront. We see and hear about the damage they can cause, they are experimented on, and are even kept as pets.
In T2 they are joked about, have become a euphemism, are used as an insult, are feared, and there are several mentions of violence against them. We only ever see mounted trophy heads and a an image of a burrick's head painted on a sign hanging outside The Crippled Burrick Pub/Inn.
In T3 the word "Burrick" has become a euphemistic curse word, burrick meat is consumed, they are still joked about, the Sentient called "The Heart" is also called "The Burrick's Heart Ruby", but we never see a burrick in any form at all.
Strategy
- Broadhead Arrow – can kill Burricks from a distance with ease
- Backstab – kills a Burrick with a single swing
- Fire Arrows or Mines – very effective against these large beasts
- Sword – even discovered, circle around the beast and kill it with fast slashes
- Gas Arrows – extremely effective on clustered Burricks
- Blackjack- Yes (Warning: blackjacking a burrick will alert nearby entities)
Appearances
Thief: The Dark Project/Thief Gold
Trivia
A repeated in-game notion is that the noxious fumes from a Burrick are reputed to be flammable, but that's not an implemented gameplay feature, what with all the open flames and explosive weapons around. Still, Garrett quips about "looking down a Burrick's mouth with a lit match" in the briefing for Framed. And a trivia note to this trivia would be that in the real world, matches were first invented in 1827.