Woo! Quest start, I'm so hyped! Absolutely awesome that Wistways is doing illustrations, big thanks to them, their art is always clutch.
Target:
Towns and trees are both large, while humans are small. We have no room for error in this task, not with a Herald above us. I think this is a time for caution, we should choose the way which maximizes our advantage. It also seems, to me, to offer the best narrative possibilities (chase scenes, disguises, etc).
In particular, the energy of attacking a human feels right. We want to be a vast, unstoppable monster, and the human has the right POV for us to seem that way. In a tree or a town scenario, we are likely to be a besieging force, or at least one skulking about around a static target. With a person, well, people move around. We can try camouflage and ambush, pursuit, subvert other people, all sorts of delightful villainous schemes suggest themselves.
Besides. Snidely goes for Nell. Monster goes for victim. This is the way.
Powers:
Oof, really tough choice here, all three seem amazing. We are presently a Shadow Hate Crab, and this choice seems like it will determine what the other half of our mix is.
Shadow: So, there's a lot to be said for remaining narratively pure. Hybrid creatures inherit vulnerability as well as power, and by staying with shadow/darkness we would avoid gaining any new weaknesses, while enhancing our existing powers. Invisibility, teleportation via shadow, shadow conjurations...these are all top tier gifts, helpful in a huge number of circumstances. We saw in our previous fight how clutch shadow decoys can be.
I'm also picturing, as befits a spirit of jealousy, that we could maybe do the whole 'shadow on their heart' situation, kind of being like a 'dark side' to characters, whispering from their shadows and encouraging them to be their worst selves. You know, pass on our obsessions and manias to our targets, get them into the Hate Crab spirit.
Stone: Stone feels, to me, to be a complementary power to our existing nature. We already have a hard shell, we are already bulky and difficult to stop. Bringing Stone into our being seems like it would exaggerate the 'crab' part of being a Shadow Crab. I feel like burrowing powers and camouflage powers are both kind of 'on brand' for crabs and stones, so it wouldn't shock me if we ended up able to do more of that kind of thing.
Stone feels to me like it leans a lot into the original design of the character. If we are already a vast, ponderous monster, why not take a power that makes us even heavier, even solider? We'd be a veritable monolith of flesh, an immensity of brawling malevolence.
Fire: Fire, by contrast, seems to be kind of a contradictory essence to our original being. Crabs are aquatic, which puts out fire, and fire emits light, which drives away shadows. I think a Fire pick would mitigate our weaknesses and give us access to abilities that are foreign to our current nature. We could use its light giving power to alter the shadows, flicker like a flame, breathe fire, maybe smoke form? Basically it feels the most 'different' to me from our base set.
I think Fire would probably give us the best chance at actually completing the mission. It's an immensely broad element, I'm hard pressed to think of a circumstance that we wouldn't be able to at least gesture at relevancy in, with shadow powers and fire powers working together.
I'm a bit of a wacko, though, in that I like to define characters as much by what they cannot do as what they can. I think the Stone Crab option best preserves the bulky, ponderous, fearsome nature of what I'm aiming for. I feel like the more 'shadow' we get the less emphasized our crabby nature is, and if we are hopping about breathing fire on stuff we are treading dangerously close to dragon territory. For me, the Stone Crab option seems like it will force us to be the most creative, in the ancient 'SV chooses Legendary difficulty and the Magikarp starter' sense.
[X] Kill the human
[X] The power of earth
