Unreviewed Leapers

[Lucette]

Leapers

Leapers of the Ebon Maw

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OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION

• Intent: To submit a darkly comedic yet deadly Sithspawn creature for use in Force-based horror, humor, and Chaos encounters, created by Lucy Fortan Raaf as a biomantic project gone right (or horribly wrong).
• Image Credit: ChatGPT
• Canon: N/A
• Permissions: N/A
• Links: Rabbit of Caerbannog

GENERAL INFORMATION

• Name: Leaper of the Ebon Maw
  
  • Nicknames: “Maw Bunny,” “Raaf Rabbit,” “Bunnicula Maxima,” “Don’t Touch That It’s Not Cute,” “Kriffspawn”
• Designation: Non-sentient (but unnervingly clever)
• Origins: Valrar
• Average Lifespan:
  
  • In the wild: 2 to 4 years. Most die violently—either in combat, eaten by siblings, or collapsing from overexertion after a blood frenzy.
  • In containment: Up to 6 years with alchemical reinforcement and care, though most handlers don't survive long enough to study them longitudinally.
  • Queen/Alpha Variants: 8 to 10 years. Larger, more stable mutations often exhibit regenerative traits and enhanced resilience.
  • Some Sith alchemists report “reincarnating essence” across broods—suggesting select individuals may be reborn through their progeny, carrying fragmented memories or aggression patterns. This remains unconfirmed. Lucy, again, has offered no comment—just laughter.
• Estimated Population: Scattered – While originally confined to isolated Sith alchemy labs and sealed warrens, escaped populations have been reported in multiple Outer Rim and Unknown Regions systems. Due to their extreme reproductive rate and adaptability, small groups now exist across numerous planets, often in remote or contaminated regions.
  
  • Estimated Population: ~10,000 known across the galaxy, with several hundred breeding warrens confirmed on Ord Cantrell, and an uninhabited moon in the Firefist Expanse. True numbers may be much higher, as their nests are notoriously difficult to detect until it's far too late.
  • Note: A single escaped breeding pair can create a warren of over 300 in under a month. Containment protocols are rarely successful.
• Description: The Leapers of the Ebon Maw are small, deceptively adorable Sithspawn resembling overgrown rabbits—complete with fluffy fur, twitching noses, and glowing red or yellow eyes. Engineered by biomancer Lucy Fortan Raaf, these creatures are fast, feral, and vicious ambush predators, capable of long-distance leaps, Force-enhanced reflexes, and, in some variants, venomous or armor-piercing attacks. Though non-sentient, Leapers exhibit frightening cunning and coordination within their warrens. Originally a biomantic joke, they’ve since become a widespread nightmare—infesting battlefields, ruins, and forgotten temples across the galaxy.

PHYSICAL INFORMATION

• Breathes: Type I
• Average Height of Adults: 0.75 meters at the shoulder (about knee-high)
• Average Length of Adults: 1.2 meters from nose to tail
• Skin color: Pinkish white beneath the fur; heavily scarred in wild ones
• Hair color: Marshmallow white, sometimes beige, brown, cream or pale grey; exceedingly fluffy, almost plush.
• Eye Color: Red, yellow, or heterochromatic Sith-glow. Black sclera appears in enraged or active hunt states.
• Distinctions:
  
  • Overlarge front incisors concealing an additional, predatory set of fanged teeth behind them
  • Massive back legs for Force-boosted leaps
  • Dense, hyper-elastic musculature under cute bunny fluff
  • Muzzle splits unnaturally wide during attacks
  • Emits deceptive cooing or purring noises when stalking prey
  • Can burrow, hide in corpses, or leap from treetops
• Races:
  
  • Pale-Maw (Standard / Laboratory Strain):
    
    • Environment: Lab-grown, controlled environments; the original breed.
    • Traits: White fur, red/yellow eyes, large fangs hidden behind “normal” incisors. Most common variant.
    • Behavior: Highly aggressive. Used as the base strain for biomantic variations.
    • Notes: Often seen as “pure” by Sith biomancers.
  • Duskwarren Leapers
    
    • Environment: Swamps, marshes, lowland jungles
    • Appearance: Slick, semi-matted black or algae-green fur. Eyes glow dimly like bioluminescence.
    • Traits: Webbed feet for silent swimming, venomous bite (paralysis), extended leap range in wet terrain.
    • Behavior: Ambush from below—burrow in water, leap up under victims.
    • Notable Incident: Overran a research outpost on Telath V when mistaken for harmless fauna.
  • Stonefang Leapers
    
    • Environment: Mountains, cliffs, and alpine caverns
    • Appearance: Grey-and-slate speckled fur, muscular hind legs, thick claws
    • Traits: Exceptional climbing ability, leaps enhanced for vertical movement, sharp enough claws to scale duracrete walls
    • Behavior: Drop ambushers—hide on ceilings, ledges, or statues. Leap downward for a spinal kill.
    • Known Warren: Rumored to infest old Sith shrines on Korriban.
  • Ashhide Leapers
    
    • Environment: Deserts, volcanic plains, scorched landscapes
    • Appearance: Ash-colored fur, cracked and flaking hide beneath. Emits heat-resistant pheromones.
    • Traits: Tolerant to extreme heat, claws adapted for digging through sand and soft stone.
    • Behavior: Burrow hunters. Will tunnel beneath prey and erupt upward in a sand-blast frenzy.
    • Unique Ability: Emit a choking, ash-like cloud to disorient prey mid-ambush.
  • Frostbreach Leapers
    
    • Environment: Tundra, ice worlds, polar biomes
    • Appearance: Translucent or bluish-white fur; some glow faintly in the dark
    • Traits: Natural thermal camouflage. Blood freezes quickly into bone-shard projectiles they can eject in panic or rage.
    • Behavior: Pack ambushers. Use snowdrifts or ice formations to hide until prey is close.
    • Notable Mutation: Regenerative tissue that slows decay in freezing climates.
  • Ruinbound Leapers
    
    • Environment: Urban decay, derelict cities, industrial ruins
    • Appearance: Patchy fur, stained with grease or soot; occasionally partially metallic or mutated from contaminants
    • Traits: Exceptional stealth, immune to many toxins and pollutants. Navigates vents, sewers, and ruins flawlessly.
    • Behavior: Acts like a virus in crumbling cities—spreads rapidly, overwhelming infrastructure before being noticed.
    • Cultural Note: Urban legends claim they mimic street cats to blend in before striking.
  • Redthorn Leapers (“Bloodbound”)
    
    • Environment: Unknown origin—possibly ritual sites or Force nexuses
    • Appearance: Red-tinted fur, blackened eyes, serrated fangs that grow from the sides of their jaws
    • Traits: Feed on Force energy. Bite causes spiritual disorientation—some victims report visions or memory loss.
    • Behavior: Stalk Force-sensitives. Often used by Sith cults as living traps or guardians.
    • Rumors: Said to "sing" to Force-sensitive victims before they strike.
  • Verdfang Leapers (“Beskarbiters”)
    
    • Environment: War-torn battlefields, scrap worlds, former Mandalorian colonies
    • Appearance: Dark metallic-gray fur with a dull, armor-like sheen. Fangs are blackened, ridged, and unnaturally durable. Some older specimens display bone growths resembling Mandalorian helmets or sigils.
    • Traits: Jaw musculature and alchemically reinforced teeth allow them to chew through beskar-alloy over time—or bite through weak points in armor. Highly durable: reinforced cartilage, layered dermal plating beneath the fur, immune to concussive force trauma. Internal organs arranged asymmetrically to survive direct shots and kinetic disruption. Resistant to both blaster fire and vibroblades. Able to tank explosives in some cases before succumbing.
    • Behavior: Target preference: Armored prey. Especially attracted to Mandalorian pheromones, blood chemistry, and scent of treated metal. Will ignore easier prey in favor of beskar-clad targets. Known to gnaw on fallen Mandalorians for hours, even post-mortem. Operate in small hunting triads to corner and dismantle prey. The third always targets the back of the knee—a consistent behavioral trait.
    • Origin: Allegedly created by Lucy Fortan Raaf in response to her grandmother’s journals chronicling the Mandalorians’ role in her uncle’s death. First deployed during a Sith assault on a Mandalorian war enclave—five warriors in full beskar were dragged underground and torn apart. Lucy recorded the results in her lab log as “therapeutically satisfying.”
    • Unique Trait: Verdfang Leapers remember armor layouts. Survivors demonstrate intelligent targeting patterns, focusing on joints, neck seals, and known weak points in Mandalorian designs.
    • Nickname Among Mandalorians: “Kyr'am Tuur'kad” — Death Bunny
  • Nightsorrow Leapers (“The Quiet Death”)
    
    • Environment: Shadowed regions of existing warrens; deep forests, derelict ruins, crypts, and moonlit fields.
    • Appearance: Midnight-black or shadow-gray fur with a velvet sheen. Eyes glow faint indigo or crimson in low light. Fangs look ordinary until flared open, revealing inner, venom-laced barbs.
    • Traits: Strictly nocturnal. Exposure to direct sunlight causes sensory overload or pain—sometimes death in young kits. They dwell in the deepest tunnels of larger warrens, only emerging after dusk. Shadow-hunters. Their dark fur and low body heat make them nearly invisible to standard scanners. Paralytic Venom. Causes numbness, limb collapse, or total body lock depending on bite location. Some victims remain conscious while being consumed. Soundless pounce. Their leaps are nearly silent, due to pad adaptations and cartilage-dampened landings. The only sound victims report is a faint wheeze or breath before darkness.
    • Behavior: Serve as warren apex predators—preying on wounded or aggressive members of other variants. Hyper-territorial. They will cull overpopulated warrens by silently eliminating weaker Leapers. Never attack en masse. Always solo or in mated pairs.
    • Myth: Sith cults believe Nightsorrows are drawn to the dreams of Force-sensitives, slipping from shadow to shadow until the mind’s defenses falter. Some even claim the paralysis begins before the bite.
• Force Sensitivity: Low – While most Leapers are not consciously Force-sensitive, all are alchemically imbued with the Dark Side. This gives them unnatural reflexes, predatory instincts, and a sixth-sense for prey (particularly Force-sensitives). A very small number—usually rare mutations, alphas, or Queen variants—have demonstrated active Force abilities such as low-level precognition, enhanced cloaking, or dark-side resonance. These are often culled or captured for further experimentation.

Strengths:

• Fluffy Fangmageddon: Adorable on approach, horrifying on impact. Its bite is capable of severing limbs cleanly. Victims often don’t realize what hit them until their torso is missing.
• Bunny Port Blitz: Capable of short-range teleportation (1–10 meters) for surprise lunges. Usually preceded by nothing at all.
• Spring-Loaded Slayer: Single leaps can cover up to 50 meters horizontally and 10 vertically. Known to leap from cliff faces into troop formations.
• Cute Until You Die: Their soft coos, blinking red eyes, and cuddly size lull victims into underestimating them—until it’s too late.
• Breeds Like a Sith-Damned Plague: Two Leapers can spawn a warren of 20–30 offspring within two weeks. Maturation to full death-fluff form occurs in under 72 hours. Warrens of hundreds have overrun entire outer rim settlements.
• Apex Ambush Predator: Instinctively hides in places small prey animals wouldn’t—ventilation systems, bodies, cargo crates, your boots. Tends to leap at the face.

Weaknesses:

• Blood Frenzy Blindness: When in full attack mode, they can’t distinguish friend from foe. Many Sithspawn handlers have died trying to wrangle “their baby.”
• Fragile Ego, Fragile Brain: Despite their instincts, they aren’t sentient. Can be confused by mirrored surfaces, bright lights, or environmental misdirection.
• Fire Bad: Can tank blaster shots and resist sabers briefly, but fire-based weaponry or heat will break their biological cohesion rapidly.
• Hive Collapse: Once a dominant breeder in a warren dies, the remaining rabbits may collapse into chaos and begin cannibalizing each other or disbanding entirely.

CULTURE

• Diet: Leapers exclusively consume raw flesh and blood, preferring fresh kills. They are instinctively drawn to Force-sensitive prey, and some variants actively refuse to eat anything else. Common prey includes small to medium-sized mammals, humanoids, and other Sithspawn. They avoid droids, seafood, and cooked meat. Certain plants, especially those with high alkaline or phototoxic content (e.g., bogroot or sunleaf), are poisonous to their internal chemistry and cause violent seizures or death. Some variants have been observed gnawing on metal or bone purely for enrichment or sharpening their teeth.
• Communication: Vocalizations, body language, pheromones.
• Leapers do not speak, but they emit a wide range of sounds:
  
  • High-pitched squeals or "chirps" during the hunt
  • Low chuffing or hissing when threatened
  • Throaty growls or rasps during feeding or territorial displays
  • They use body language (ear flicks, crouch posture, tail-thump patterns) to signal one another and rely heavily on pheromonal communication. This allows coordinated ambushes, mating behavior, and predator alerts within warrens—particularly in darker or confined areas.
  • Some Force-sensitive individuals may unintentionally project sensations (like hunger, fear, or rage) into the minds of nearby Force-users.
• Technology level: None.
  
  • Leapers are non-sentient and have no technological culture. However, they adapt to environments shaped by technology:
  • Use of ventilation shafts, sewer systems, derelict starships, and battlefields as warrens
  • Known to avoid cameras and automated defenses with uncanny timing
  • Some appear to “learn” structural layouts over time, suggesting reactive problem-solving akin to predatory instinct or inherited memory
• Religion/Beliefs: None (but often treated as sacred or profane by others).
• Leapers themselves do not practice religion. However, Sith cults, alchemists, and fringe Dark Side sects frequently regard them as:
  
  • Manifestations of primal hunger and rage
  • Symbols of false innocence turned to violence
  • Guardians of tombs, secrets, or corrupted nexuses
  • In some outer rim horror cults, the appearance of Leapers is seen as a divine judgment or a curse of betrayal.
• General behavior:
  
  • Warren-Based Hierarchy: Leapers live in tight, violent colonies called warrens, usually centered around an Alpha, Queen, or the strongest brood-mother.
  • Reproduction: They reproduce rapidly via live birth or egg-like broods depending on variant. Kits mature within 72 hours. High-ranking females may devour weaker offspring to ensure dominance.
  • Mating: Driven by pheromonal surges. Mating frenzies are short, violent, and often fatal to one participant.
  • Hunting: Apex ambush predators—use environment, camouflage, and leaping ambushes. Some variants stalk prey for days.
  • Sleep Cycle: Most are nocturnal or crepuscular (active at dawn/dusk), though this varies by race (e.g., Ashhide Leapers are diurnal in desert heat).
  • Learning: Despite lack of sentience, Leapers exhibit pattern recognition, route memorization, and learned targeting behavior—particularly against armored foes or Force-sensitives.
  • Interaction with Other Species: Predominantly hostile. They see most species as prey, threats, or competition. They do not form bonds except in mated pairs or triads.
  • Social Order: Ruthless and hierarchical. Injured or weak members are either consumed or cast out. Stronger individuals command through fear, pheromone dominance, or sheer force.

HISTORICAL INFORMATION
Born out of a “what if I did?” moment during Lucy Fortan Raaf’s biomantic experimentation phase, the Leapers of the Ebon Maw began as a stress-induced, barely supervised alchemy project. The first prototype was inspired by a combination of childhood trauma (namely, a plush rabbit left too close to a Sith ritual site), Sith holodramas, and the kind of sleep-deprived mania only young biomancers and bad caf can produce. Initial test subjects were ordinary rabbits—docile, twitchy, and adorable. Lucy spliced them with Sithspawn traits, genetic aggression triggers, Force-compression glands, and unstable alchemical tissue strands stolen from half a dozen banned vaults.

What followed was not a single success—but dozens. Scores of variants.
Every environment she tested birthed a new horror:

• A desert strain that tunneled beneath the sand like a flesh-colored torpedo.
  
• A swamp variant that swam silently and bit with paralytic venom.
  
• An alpine horror with bone-crushing legs that could scale stone walls.
  
• One that learned to recognize beskar plating and target Mandalorians specifically, purely out of spite.
  
• Another that “sang” before it struck, just to see if it could instill dread in Force-sensitives.
  

Each variant seemed more ridiculous—and more effective—than the last. What began as a joke soon became an evolutionary cascade of weaponized adorabomination.

The project was deemed “accidental genius” by her instructors and “a galactic mistake” by everyone else. Within months, Leapers were banned from laboratories, research centers, public transit, educational institutions, diplomatic embassies, and one galactic pet show.

Despite this, escaped specimens began to appear in the wild. Cults in the Outer Rim began worshipping them—viewing Leapers as avatars of primal rage masked in innocence, the "smiling lie" of the Dark Side incarnate.

Rumors persist of a Queen Leaper, an alpha variant the size of a speeder bike, born of genetic recombination and a misplaced Sith ritual. Lucy has denied this, each time with a wider, more suspicious smile. And no one’s seen the warren on the 13th level of the Valrar testing complex in years.

Some suspect she’s still making more.
Others know she is.