Bount

Outwardly the Bount pass for ordinary people, and that is precisely what doomed them, since their bodies simply cease to age. Because the artificial souls behind their birth were modeled on Shinigami, a handful of Bount emerged as near-duplicates of those templates, with Yoshino Sōma bearing an almost exact likeness to the researcher Ran'Tao. To humans who watched them stay young across generations while feeding on the dead, they looked like vampires, witches, and monsters, and the tribe carries a distinctly German motif in its names and rituals, much as the Quincy do.

Their origin traces back more than a thousand years, to a team of researchers under Ran'Tao who predated Soul Society's science institute and set out to engineer everlasting life. Leaning on the slow-to-age souls of the Shinigami for their template and the Reishi-producing Jōkaishō as their engine, the project ended in catastrophe when one device suffered a meltdown and detonated, leveling a portion of the Seireitei and pouring its energy into the stream of reincarnation. Souls bound for rebirth in the living world were altered, and the Bount were born across the globe as a result.

Their efforts to live quietly collapsed once humans noticed they never aged and began hunting them. Wracked with guilt, Ran'Tao hid the survivors in a cave network on the fringes of the district that would later be Karakura Town, and promised to secure them sanctuary, but Central 46 instead ordered their extermination and the burial of the whole affair. Defying that ruling, Ran'Tao rescued a boy named Eugene Currier, pressed an amulet into his hands to rouse his dormant powers, and was arrested and stripped of her abilities for it. The scattered Bount drifted for centuries, hounded by Hollows drawn to their energy, until most resolved to relocate to Soul Society. Lacking any means to convert their bodies into Reishi, they sought Quincy aid, and the refusal sparked a war in which the Shinigami seized the chance to slaughter both sides at once. Left to watch his people die, Eugene abandoned his dream of a Bount paradise, took the name Jin Kariya, and set out to gather the strongest survivors and tear Soul Society down.

Every Bount can swallow the souls of other beings, and doing so is what sustains their unending youth. Tribal law restricts them to the souls of the dead, yet draining a living human delivers a far greater surge of strength, at a steep cost: soul consumption almost always leaves a Bount sterile, and by Kariya's era only Yoshino Sōma could still bear children, making her essential to his creation of the Bitto. Overindulgence carries its own danger, as gorging on thousands of living souls ages the body at frightening speed.

They also draw ambient Reishi into themselves to mend wounds, repair torn clothing, and boost their power, which renders them nearly untouchable within the Reishi-saturated Seireitei but nearly helpless in the thin air of the living world. That regeneration has limits, unable to cleanse poison, close certain mortal wounds in time, or continue at all once the body is pierced at a specific point on the left side, which permanently severs the gift and leaves a lasting scar. Their signature weapons are the Dolls, a counterpart to a Shinigami's Zanpakutō born from the same soul lineage, ranging from tiny beasts to towering giants, some able to speak, and a Bount who lacks the strength to master one is simply killed by it. Everyday trinkets serve as a Doll's sealed form, called forth with the command Zeige Dich!