Wandenreich

Styled the Invisible Empire, the Wandenreich is a concealed Quincy state under Emperor Yhwach, carrying on the millennium-long war against the Shinigami that its predecessor, the Lichtreich, began. Its name reads as walled empire in German. When it finally emerges it ravages both Hueco Mundo and Soul Society, yet its deeper aim is to reverse the separation of the three worlds by reaching the Soul King Palace and killing the Soul King, who is Yhwach's own father.

Yhwach sits at the empire's head, with Jugram Haschwalth as his adviser and stand-in while he sleeps, and Uryū Ishida marked out as his heir. The emperor brands his foremost warriors with a Schrift, a letter of the alphabet paired with a fitting epithet, imprinted onto the soul through a ritual that returns the gift to him the moment the bearer dies. From its base at the ice-clad palace Silbern, tucked inside the shadow realm of the Seireitei, the empire wages a highly organized campaign that includes stealing enemy Bankai with palm-sized Medallions and fixating on five so-called Special War Powers it judges decisive to the outcome. Its personnel are recognizable by their long white trench coats and peaked caps bearing the Quincy cross.

The ranks are tiered. The Sternritter are the elite Quincy knights led by Grandmaster Haschwalth, and the strongest few are elevated into Yhwach's personal guard, the Schutzstaffel, under Lille Barro. The Jagdarmee, a hunting corps headed by Quilge Opie, rounds up Arrancar in the conquered Hueco Mundo, while the bulk of the army is made up of the masked, katana-wielding foot soldiers known as Soldat. Numerous Arrancar were also pressed into service as expendable troops, stripped of their Zanpakutō and handed Quincy crosses in their place.