ENTRY 07: SILENT HALLCREEPER!
Another Enchantment Creature Horror today! I had questioned the in-universe meaning of this when we looked at Appendage Amalgam, but multiple people reminded me what kind of setting this is. I guess I was too caught up pondering the more literal biology and physiology of a walking nose hand spider, when it should have been more obvious (especially to me of all people) why it's also an enchantment: that this is mechanically how they represent creatures manifested by the malevolent manor to toy with its victims. Not mere "illusions," but creatures both real and unreal, like Pennywise the clown and other puppets of IT, or of course like the aforementioned Silent Hill monsters!
Silent Hallcreeper is a monster with a straightforward, old fashioned kind of ghastly menace; a humanoid looking figure with hairless, wrinkled corpselike skin and distorted, predatory proportions, its legs bent out to the sides under the weight of a hunched-over torso. Its sharply jointed arms and enlarged hands, all three of them, are long enough to reach down to the floor in front of it, and a thick tubular neck ends in a ghoulish humanlike head with an abnormally wide, toothy smile and two bright, white lights for eyes, all cast in the same haunting blue light.
Despite its formidable size and shape, Hallcreeper begins as only a 1/1 creature, so it doesn't do all that much damage and it crumples easily. However, it's also unblockable, able to directly damage your opponent as it presumably creeps through halls, and quite silently no doubt!
What's very novel here is that every time the Hallcreeper damages a player, you can activate one of three effects, though only once each. One of those effects will add two +1/+1 counters to creeper, boosting it to 3/3. Another effect simply lets you draw an extra card, but a third, pretty wild one, just transforms the Hallcreeper into a duplicate of one of your other creatures, so it's even capable of permanently taking something else's form.
I feel like if Duskmourn was a video game, Hallcreeper would be that middle-strength monster that everyone remembers, like the Hunters from Resident Evil. Neither too common nor boss battle material, but something you still dread running into, and a top candidate for the "face" of the game when it comes to merchandising. Where's the collectible Silent Hallcreeper action figure? At least a little rubber keychain with a big head? Just not a Funko Pop, please.
Never ever a Funko Pop, please.
