Hey nerds. Merry July-mas. Have a primer.
Warning: May contain many brutalities against the German language.
Bleach Primer: Quincy
[spoil]Quincy History
Evolving from humans in a time long since forgotten, Quincies and their abilities have grown along with the budding human race. The first ever human subspecies able to manipulate reishi, the Quincy have had a race colored by times of war and peace with the shinigami who protect humans, Hollows that devour humans, and the humans themselves. The alpha generation of the race was originally shunned by their “normal” peers and, in turn, drew away from civilization to a nomadic lifestyle. For centuries they wandered the world’s wastelands, biding out time until the stories about them that terrified humans died and we’re written off as simple myth. While it is unknown exactly when it began, the race began settling down in various locations all around the world (the oldest evidence suggests it may have been around the rise of the Sumerians that this took place).
Centuries this peace lasted. The archer race killed Hollows as they had to and stayed away from shinigami as well as they could. Eventually, however, the death gods learned fully of the Quincies existence and a purging began. Realising the threat posed by the existence of the race, Soul Society chose to wipe out a majority of the gifted humans. The Quincies fought back, but were put down with little difficulty, suffering from a lack of numbers and power. Rapidly, it dawned on the just under 200 remaining Quincies that they must ensure their future survival. A fragile treaty was made between the races. In it, the Quincy were allowed to live out their lives without worry of execution or persecution; however, usage of any and all abilities became limited to religious-style services and the nurturing of Quincy children for preservation of the culture. Under the new laws, the Quincy lived amongst humans in a mostly peaceful state for centuries. While some malcontents rose to fight against the edicts, nothing of large scale ever occurred. That is, until the tail end of the fifteenth century.
In September of the year 1494 a young Quincy boy by the name of Fredrik Hegg was born in a small Swedish village. Like all Quincy children, Fredrik learned of the decrees made toward the use of his powers very early on. However, unlike most children of the then over 10,000 strong race, the boy did not accept his fate and spoke out quite vocally against, what he viewed as, blatant racism. The seed of hatred bloomed and seethed within the core of Fredrik’s soul as he grew older, leading him to murder his first shinigami and flee from his home at the age of 16. Soul Society originally viewed him as no more of a threat than any other rebel until an analysis of his spirit energy was run. Hegg was a vast well of untapped power, on par or greater than that of a captain-class shinigami. From then on, a chase ensued. For the next sixteen years, the fugitive Quincy roamed about the earth, secretly recruiting like-minded archers into his cause, all the while being tailed by shinigami. During the year 1526, Fredrik went into hiding to plan out his endgame.
In 1527, declaring himself the King of Quincy, a thirty-three year old Fredrik Hegg led his Quincies into battle. The army began by simply destroying any shinigami or Hollow they came across on earth. This phase of the battle lasted for fourteen years until Hegg’s researchers found a way to get into Soul Society; a back way, unmonitored by the shinigami. Entering a dimension seemingly uninhabited by hominids, the Quincy army funneled through, what is now called, the Tor der Sechs Eisernen Ringe (severely mangled German for Gate of the Six Iron Rings), into the outskirts of Soul Society’s Rukongai. Quickly, Seireitei’s armies were dispatched, and engaged the invaders. A deadlock formed here for four years before the archers broke the lines and began moving into the Rukongai itself. Like a driving wind, the archers tore through the poorest districts with a glimmering blue storm of Helig Pfeil. Upon reaching districts numbered in the 70’s, a feat which took the equivalent of two years in the World of the Living, Hegg and his best soldiers (who, due to their years fighting in Soul Society, looked barely older than when they had started) splintered off to invade Seireitei directly.
The small force of thirty men and women, plus Fredrik, managed to breach the Sekiseki walls with little difficulty and set about wreaking havoc in the shinigami hub. This invasion has become known in Soul Society history as the New Year’s Day Breach, due to the date upon which it happened: the First of January, 1548. For two days these soldiers broke every building and killed every shinigami they could find. On January the Third, Hegg made his boldest move yet: with the attitude that he cared not for the consequences, the Quincy called the Captain-Commander to duel him on the grounds of the First Division. Hegg’s power and skill were immense, forcing the Head Captain into using his shikai and still keeping up to pace once the sword was released. Eventually, the shinigami’s hand was forced and he resorted to using his bankai. While the Quincy did fight well enough to survive the release for a short time, he soon fell to the vast power. Not long after, the Quincy army crumbled without their leader and were driven back and ultimately defeated.
And what, you may be asking, became of the Quincy race in the aftermath of the war? The still living Quincies, whose numbers (both Hegg followers and Hegg opposers) had fallen from their 10,000 to somewhere between two and three hundred, were rounded up from all corners of the living world and brought into Soul Society. Those who had been a part of the antagonistic bunch were executed as quickly as possible. The peaceful Quincy, after the ordeal, had decided to come together as a race. They no longer wanted to be a system of scattered settlements; seeing the unity Hegg had created, albeit for the wrong reasons, had inspired the archers to gather under a banner of benevolence. The trouble with this came in finding a location large enough to house the entire race comfortably. A forward thinking captain suggested inspecting the world Hegg’s forces had used to enter Soul Society all the years before. Investigation showed the world to be perfectly inhabitable, to the point of having its own native flora and fauna as well as remnants of a civilization of intelligent life. Upon entering this world, the Quincy elders were overcome with a sensation they described as “much like coming home”. A process of transferring all Quincy to this world slowly began and was completed within five years. The dimension has since been given a name befitting is paradise-esque nature: Avalon.
The final loose end to tie up is the fate of Fredrik Hegg. To the Quincy race, excepting the elders, it was told that Hegg was killed during his fight with the Captain-Commander. In truth, the Quincy was viewed as too much of a dangerous soul to be set back into the soul cycle for fear that he may try similar acts in his next life. In remedy, the powers he used so destructively were sealed and the Quincy himself was bound in a prison more secret and dangerous than Muken, deep within some unknown corner of Soul Society. Over 400 years have passed since the sealing and what horrors go on inside the prison are unknown. So, it could be said, that no one really knows the true fate of Fredrik Hegg, the former King of Quincy.
The World of the Quincy – Avalon
The world bestowed to the Quincy after the war is one of vast difference from any of the dimensions it coexists with. The biomes are essentially the same - Avalon having deserts, tundra, jungles and all the other expected environments – though beyond the classifying features, the variation is monstrous. The flora is alien, with even traditionally rigid and straight organisms like cacti, growing in twisted, knotting masses. While Avalon has not been fully explored, much of the known parts, including the area to the east, west, and south of the central city of Damocles, are one large jungle. The amount of land covered by the floral growths has only been surveyed to equate to half of the human world’s Amazon jungle; in terms of height, however, Avalon’s jungles grow to 70 feet or more on average.
As mentioned above, the central city for the Quincy race is known as Damocles. While called a “city” for description’s sake, the settlement is actually a series of interconnected ruins and tunnels left by a long gone Avalonian civilization. The ruins that rest above ground are made of a suspiciously granite-like material, though tests have shown it to be far harder and most metals from the world of the living. The subterranean parts of the city are tunnels carved in a soft sandstone-esqe rock, connected the natural caves throughout the area. The buildings themselves are built in a cyclopean, almost non-Euclidian fashion, leaning at odd angles into sky. Starting from heights averaging at twenty feet, one will begin to notice tube-style enclosed bridges enabling passage from one tower to another at the highest levels. In addition to the practical structures in the settlement, features such as twisting spires and cube-like protrusions exist seemingly as nothing more than the sake of appearances. The Quincies have, during their tenure in the city, made their own design choices. These include, but are not limited to, the carving of Quincy pentacles and crosses in the faces of buildings and the inlaying of a natural produced stone that is the same shade of blue as the normal Quincy motif. At the center of the city is a circular plaza called the Tor der Sechs Eisernen Ringe (Gate of the Six Iron Rings) which is the Quincy's version of the Senkaimon. Control of this gate is given to the city's elders.
Last but not least, the fauna of Avalon needs a bit of exposition. With the sheer variances in sentient life that populate the wilds of the Quincy world, the word “animal” is an insult to the very beings it is used to describe. If finding a word to label the vast amount things is a priority, the closest one could find is, perhaps, “beings” or at the very least “monsters”. The terrors that roam throughout the world of Avalon are purely eldritch in nature, the concentrated essence of horror itself. Great mammalian beasts, eyeless but with rows upon rows of teeth, prowl among the jungles; creatures that seem to be living landscapes themselves, their backs large enough to host entire lakes and forests; in the seas, island-sized abominations possessing hundreds of tentacles drag anything in range into the deepest depths; behemoths of stone and sand, birthed in centuries long past, stagger about the deserts crushing whatever may be in their way; but the skies, the skies are the most dangerous of all. The atmosphere of Avalon are home to a race of beasts known to science as Atmospherica Leviathanos, though they have become colloquially known as Leskyathans. The monstrosities with the semi-ridiculous name, while not fearsome in appearance hold a very unique appearance even for the alien world of Avalon. The Leskyathans resemble some mix of a cloud, tornado and a bulbous whale. The entire body is somewhat funnel shaped, with the small, base end snaking throughout the air before expanding into a roughly spherical mass with, what would be the normal opening on a tornado, forming a monstrous gaping mouth. At all times this vast gullet is kept open as the Leskyathan flies about. While not naturally hostile, this action causes a run-in with Atmospherica Leviathanos the most feared event in all of Avalon. Attempts to slay them have been… unsuccessful to say the least. (Note: Can’t find a place to fit it, but all these creatures are what killed any Hollow that entered Avalon before the Quincy race came to populate it.)
The Abilities of Quincy – An Exercise in Evolution
Avalon has done more for the Quincy race than to simply give them a home. The world itself, as well as the latent spirit energy within, have allowed the civilization of archers to evolve their abilities to a level never before attainable during their time in the World of the Living. While the dimension of Avalon is, like Soul Society and Hueco Mundo, made entirely of spirit particles, the effect it has on the race inhabiting it is massively different.
The natural way Quincies react with reishi is by drawing it inwards. This most basic of practices is what makes most recent generations of the race so different from the previous. Analysis on Avalon’s reishi has revealed that it is, when compared to the reishi of other worlds, perfect for Quincy. As one of the archers draws in the reishi of Avalon, it does not simply fill the void left by his/her own spent energy; instead, it takes on the properties of the Quincy’s own reishi. This unique trait not only causes the restoration to take place more quickly but also makes the natural reishi stores more potent. It is for this reason that the Quincies say that Avalon feels like “home” and like it “was made for the Quincy race”.
It is also through this process that the abilities of the Quincy race have evolved past what they once were. In general, the archers have found themselves able to fire greater numbers of Helig Pfeil before becoming tired, as well as increased strength of said arrows. The potency of the natural reishi has also increased the strength of both Blut Vene and Blut Arterie and allows for faster movement when using Hirenkyaku. In non-combat realms, the reishi has allowed the Quincy to extend their life much like the Shinigami and Hollow due to a slower aging processes. However, the longest a Quincy has been reported to live is 187 (human world) years. The most beneficial ability, however, is the paradoxical “dilution” of Quincy powers. While a significant power boost was seen, it was also noticed that the race’s techniques no longer packed enough of a punch to completely destroy souls. However, the souls were still not returned to the natural Cycle. It was only through later modifications made by a team of Quincy and Shinigami working in tandem that allowed Quincies to purify Hollows, sending them to Soul Society, including those souls from Avalon. Additionally, the Shinigami bestowed upon the archers a device for performing artificial konso on plain human souls.
Despite all this, perhaps the most miraculous effect of Avalon’s reishi on the Quincies is an evolution in their abilities known as Erwachen (Awakening). The technique of Erwachen was originally discovered during the period that would’ve been the 19th century on Earth. A scouting mission into the jungles turned into a heated battle between the trekking archers and the native beasts. In the throes of combat, a young Quincy inadvertently discovered that he could manipulate one of the creatures. Using this newfound gift, his group managed to fend off their predators and return to Damocles with few wounds. Later analysis showed that this ability came from the communing of the warrior’s own spirit energy and the natural energy of one of the creature’s teeth he had carved a pentacle into and had been using as his focal point for bow generation. However, when the same process was repeated with another Quincy, the technique failed miserably. This lead to the revelation that only a certain few Quincy are capable of attaining this Erwachen.
Creating a perfect Erwachen is, while incredibly simple in theory, a process that is arduous, painful, and at times downright terrifying and that’s only if one is deemed of the correct characteristics to obtain the power. Upon being realized as one of what the Quincy call Die Gewählte (The Chosen), the task begins. The Quincy must roam through Avalon to find something - be it an environment, a creature, a mineral – that calls to them, speaks to their soul. Once this has been found, the bearer of the prospective Erwachen must commune with what spoke to them and bond with it. This step requires him/her to expend a vast amount of their own spirit energy and allow the energy that chose them into their body. This is the time that Avalon’s unique reishi comes into play. The “blank” energy of the world is used as a spiritual bonding agent, taking on the properties of both the Quincy’s energy and their chosen energy before refilling the Quincy’s spent tanks. That is the make-or-break point. Should the body and the energy acknowledge one another as equals, the power will belong to the Quincy; however, if the body and energy cannot commune, the physical form of the Quincy is ripped apart and sent into the aether. It is interesting to note that, even if the energy does find a home in the body, the Quincy in question cannot access the abilities until they find a focus object given to them by whatever they commune with. These items range from crystals and stones to beasts’ teeth and bones, all which come mysteriously pre-emblazoned with the Quincy pentacle. This Crest, as it is called, enables a Gewählte to tap into their new abilities by replacing the usual Quincy cross as a spirit weapon focal point. Furthermore, the spirit weapons generated from Crests have an aesthetic difference symbolic of the Erwachen it channels (Ex. A plant-based Erwachen may generate a green spirit weapon).[/spoil]