Giant Friendly Crabs!

**Brief** | Targeted infantry are mounted on Giant Crabs, giving them the Cavalry Armortype, amphibiousness, and various smaller abilities

*"Flip it over, and attack that thing's weak point for massive damage!"*

- Imperial Warrior, before charging a loose Giant Crab
Out of all the Projects currently active within the United Technate, none has been as controversial nor as questioned as Project Bone Sword. Started in 1965 to study and examine the various uses of invertebrates for civilian usage, biological integration, and even espionage, from the beginning Bone Sword had a reputation for attracting cranks and crazies who enjoyed playing with bugs rather than trying to unravel the secrets of life, the universe, or everything in general. With the introduction of eugenic modification and the ability to eugenically create megafauna variants of many invertebrates, the reputation of Project Bone Sword only diminished faster: now, instead of playing with bugs, their scientists were trying to enact their favorite B-movies! Nevertheless, Project Bone Sword has defied expectations and continued to enjoy funding due to the array of surprisingly practical results its put out over the years: Giant Ants that dig subway stations and march alongside Humanitarian Guard troops, Giant Bees that provide pollination, honey, and a pet for Technocratic families, Giant Earthworms that can aerate and fertilize entire fields in a day, and more.

Even their less well-thought out experiments (some would say the majority of their experiments) can sometimes produce unexpected or welcome results, as is the case with *cardisoma ingentis* - the Giant Blue Crab. First thought up in late 1967, the Giant Crab's origins lay in the humble blue land crab that inhabited the many coasts and estuaries of the Technate's Atlantic borders. Often used as food by local villagers and citizens, the blue land crab became the first test subject of an innovative group experiment by Project Bone Sword and Project Gaia's Bounty to both improve local crab fishing economies and increase food surplus by eugenically modifying crabs to larger sizes. In theory, the larger size of the crabs would mean more meat for the villages, and more income by selling the remaining meat to inland areas for larger profits than they had with normal sized crabs. By releasing them into only a few isolated areas and carefully monitoring the population, the Giant Blue Crabs would be unable to spread without human observation and thus pose little risk to the surrounding environmental ecosystem.

In practice, the larger size of the crab meant that fishing villages uninformed of the introduction of such creatures broke their fishing nets struggling to get the now horse-sized creature onto their boats. While containment never became an issue, the sheer size of the creatures and their ornery (for crustaceans) nature meant that existing crab fishing techniques were inadequate for capturing the creatures, and the only result of the experiment was multiple angry villages, destroyed boats, and a thriving community of Giant Crabs throughout various Technate coastal areas. After several weeks, the experiment was canceled and officials from Project Bone Sword reluctantly prepared to exterminate the creatures. It is likely that the Giant Crab's existence as a species would have ended there...were it not for one anonymous old caballero from further inland.

It was he who first demonstrated the most efficient means to capture a Giant Crab: sneak up from it on behind, loop some rope around its claws and bind them before they could snap, and then jump on the back of the shell and ride the crab until it grew exhausted from struggling. Other vaqueros and gauchos followed in his path, and from them people living on the coast learned to do so themselves. By 1968, regular expeditions were sent out every week to track and capture the giant crab population, and Project Bone Sword had voted to continue the project to other coastal areas. By 1969, every major city along the Atlantic Coast had at least one Giant Crab population living nearby, and in the smaller cities the first crab rodeos were set up: events where men and women could test their skills at wrangling the crustaceans in sandy arenas.

Beyond food and money, Giant Crabs have also provided a surprising benefit to the United Technate - once domesticated and trained, the Giant Crabs can be made docile enough to accept human riders. While slower than a horse over long distances, and with an unsettling tendency to occasionally walk sideways no matter how trained, the Giant Crabs are still useful for relatively quick transportation or for long marches where foot soldiers would get tired from the weight of their armor or equipment. They also enjoy a few advantages over more conventional horses: their hard shells can easily resist small arms fire, and their partially amphibious nature allows soldiers mounted on them to cross rivers or even lakes where other animals would be unable. Though not in common usage among Humanitarian Guard forces, as many of them are stationed in areas with a lack of nearby saltwater for the crabs to rest, Giant Crabs may still be requisitioned for use by any Supervisor with the right clearance and the money for shipping in the saltwater tank pens.