Conduit Hare

Cryptologic Name: Silvilagus transveho
Planar Origin: Mithyrea
Habitat: Temperate fields and forests
Diet: Herbivorous

Appearance/Morphology
Conduit rabbits, better known as “portal bunnies,” are nearly identical in size, shape, and morphology to cottontail rabbits with white, black, brown, or multicolored fur. The way to visually distinguish this magical creature from its nonmagical counterparts is to look at the rabbit’s nose. Conduit rabbits will have brightly colored noses, most often either blue or orange, and they will glow faintly. These glowing noses are the source of their magical abilities. Conduit rabbits are always born in pairs; the twins are not always identical in fur coloration, but they will always have noses of different colors.

Magical Abilities
When a conduit rabbit touches something with its nose, this activates its magical powers and causes the object to vanish and reappear in the vicinity of its twin. Both rabbits’ noses flash brightly when this power activates, which leads researchers to believe that the constant faint glow from these rabbits’ noses may be due to a steady transmission of dust and other particles that come into contact with them.

When a conduit hare’s power activates, transmission is not altogether instantaneous, generally taking anywhere from 1-3 seconds for the vanished object to reappear. Unfortunately, we don’t have a clear understanding of why this is, or what’s happening to the object/living thing during teleportation. Many studies have been done to attempt to understand this phenomenon, but tracking spells are ineffective at establishing a location during transmission, and when people have allowed themselves to be teleported, their perception always seems to be that the travel was instantaneous. This suggests that the subject of the teleportation “loses” those few seconds as part of the process.

These rabbits are immune to their own powers, so scratching their noses doesn’t cause them to teleport to their twin, nor will they teleport when touching the nose of another rabbit.

Behavior
Just as with their appearance, their behavior mimics that of nonmagical rabbits as well. They are prey animals so they tend to be cautious but will become curious and playful when they are in comfortable surroundings.

In the wild, these rabbits will often use their powers as a defense mechanism against predators, as sudden teleportation is generally quite disorienting for any would-be attacker. This strategy does potentially put the rabbit’s twin in some danger, however we believe that they can sense, in some manner, what sort of thing is being teleported to them, and as such can take measures to escape if it is something dangerous. This is similarly relevant when the set of twins is close to one another, in a spatial sense.

Field Notes

• The practical use of conduit rabbits by mages is fairly straightforward, offering an easy, near-instantaneous transportation system between two fixed points. However, despite this seemingly ubiquitous method of transportation, they are very infrequently used in such a manner by any who are not well-versed in cryptozoology. The imprecision of the teleportation is the first major concern, as the exit point of the teleportation is seemingly random. Objects appear in the vicinity of the sender’s twin, but this “vicinity” encompasses approximately 1.5-2m radius around the rabbit, meaning you could end up appearing reasonably high in the air. Thankfully an object has never been known to reappear in the ground or in another nearby object upon arrival. The biggest concern is the potential for a hard fall upon arrival, which makes the transport of people and fragile goods somewhat precarious.

  There does seem to be a correlation between the size of the object/living thing being teleported and how close it ends up to the receiving rabbit, though not enough research has yet been done to develop any sort of mathematical prediction model based on size or mass. There also seems to be an upper limit on the size of thing being teleported. As such, large objects such as cars, buildings, etc. would never be at risk of suddenly appearing and crushing anyone nearby.

• If it is in fact the case that this time is lost during transmission via a conduit hare, theoretically this could offer a route to immortality via constant teleportation. Obviously, this is not a practical option given the necessity to continuously teleport between rabbits and inability to do anything else productive during the process, but the possibility does at least exist in a theoretical context. Perhaps it would be better stated that this offers a route more akin to time travel than immortality.