Wandenreich

The Wandenreich, a name that renders as "Walled Empire" in German and "Invisible Empire" in Japanese, is a Quincy nation answering to a single emperor, Yhwach. It stands as heir to the earlier Lichtreich and carries forward a grudge nearly a millennium old against the Shinigami.

Its ambitions reach well past mere conquest. Although its forces ravage both Hueco Mundo and Soul Society once they finally strike, the empire's true aim is to reach the Soul King Palace, slay the Soul King, and collapse the three realms back into the single primordial world that existed before their division. That target, the Soul King, happens to be Yhwach's own father, Adnyeus.

The empire traces back to Yhwach's first kingdom, the Lichtreich or "Light Empire," which he built in the Human World by uniting the Quincy through conquest. When the Shinigami crushed that war a thousand years ago, the survivors slipped into Seireitei itself, the one place they judged their enemy would never watch. Drawing on Reishi, they carved living space out of the shadows, a hidden dimension called the Schatten Bereich, and there they waited a full millennium, quietly feeding on Soul Society's abundant spirit particles to rebuild their strength.

Command flows downward from Yhwach. His adviser Jugram Haschwalth also rules in his place whenever the emperor sleeps, while Uryu Ishida is named the chosen successor. Yhwach grants his leading soldiers a Schrift, a single letter of the alphabet paired with a fitting epithet, branding the initial onto their soul through a blood ritual; should such a soldier die, the borrowed power returns to him. Members greet one another by raising their crosses.

Strategically, the empire fixates on five so-called Special War Powers, individuals whose rare qualities they believe could tip the entire conflict. To blunt Soul Society's captains, many soldiers carry a palm-sized medallion stamped with the empire's crest that can tear a released Bankai away from a nearby foe and hand its use to the thief, though a stolen technique never matches the strength of its rightful owner.

The nation first operated from Silbern, an ice-clad fortress at the heart of a city as large as Seireitei, wholly assembled from Seireitei's own Reishi and buried inside the Schatten Bereich. Once he had drained the Soul King, Yhwach hauled the entire city up to the Soul King Palace, fused it with five neighboring floating cities into an enormous Quincy sigil, and reshaped it into the towering citadel he named Wahrwelt, the "True World Castle."

Yhwach reigns as emperor, with Haschwalth serving as both his counselor and his stand-in. The fighting core is the Sternritter, a band of elite Quincy warriors marked by white hooded cloaks and commanded by Haschwalth as their Grandmaster. From their ranks Yhwach draws the Schutzstaffel, a handful of the very strongest, who guard him personally under Lille Barro's lead.

Beneath the elite sit the broader forces. The Jagdarmee, a hunting corps split into numbered units, was loosed across Hueco Mundo to seize Arrancar for the empire, its first company led by the Sternritter Quilge Opie. The rank and file are the Soldat, masked and goggled foot soldiers who wield long katana and basic spirit bows and can overwhelm weaker Shinigami with ease. Rounding out the army are conscripted Arrancar, prized because they need no training yet treated as disposable, stripped of their Zanpakuto and issued Quincy crosses to form spirit weapons. Named associates include the messengers Asguiaro Ebern and Luders Friegen.