Basic Information What are Arrancar? Considered the top of the foodchain within Hueco Mundo, Arrancar are the most powerful form of Hollow. They're typically many centuries old and have consumed thousands upon thousands of souls to reach the level of strength they possess. At their peak as a Hollow, they had been the most fearsome of creatures to have ever stalked the lands.
However, during their time as a Hollow something urged them to go even further. A nagging desire to see just how far they could go. Be it fear, anger, or even just curiosity, the highly evolved Hollow chose to fracture their own mask -- a decision that would otherwise kill them had they not possessed so much raw power.
Upon breaking their mask, the souls they consumed were dispelled and sent to the Rukongai like any other soul should. They shed their monstrous, deadly form and become something more human. Still bearing a small portion of their mask and the ugly hole that pierces their body, they exchange their extreme power for something even more fearsome: consciousness.
Arrancar are typically weak and unsure of their powers after breaking their mask. No longer consumed by their desire to constantly eat and fulfill their Aspect of Death, they now have a mind of their own. Equipped with an empty Zanpakutō and a plethora of unlocked potential, Arrancar often stand as leaders among all of Hueco Mundo. They use their newfound consciousness and personalities to hoard Hollows and bring some semblence of structure to the dog-eat-dog desert.
Aspect of Death The Aspect of Death (or ‘AoD’) is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within every Hollow-Breed. Put simply, an Aspect of Death is the root cause of the human’s death in life, and it becomes a recurring psychological force that drives their actions as a Hollow-Breed. Although hollow-breeds are almost never aware of their Aspect of Death, it is a constant force in their life, and one they will need to learn to control before it kills them again. Let’s give two examples to highlight how Aspects of death work:
A man who was a compulsive addict and binged on food, drink, and drugs until he died of an overdose would have the aspect Gluttony, and as a Hollow-Breed they would be particularly driven by his consumption. While this has the obvious connotation of ravenous hunger, their gluttony can express in other ways. It could extend to the other vices such as narcotics, or towards the finer things in life such as wealth and power, and all the excess that they bring.
A man who died trying to kill someone they believed got away with a crime before they killed again would have the aspect of Justice, and as a Hollow-Breed they would be driven by this strict desire to exact Justice. This could be a litigious form of custom; the Hollow-Breed could believe strictly in the decreed law of Las Noches and insist that anyone who has broken it be tried and sentenced. It could also be a personal form of justice, with the Hollow-breed exacting their own personal punishments on people who have violated their moral code.
An Aspect of Death does not have to be inherently bad or necessarily negative. In fact. in most cases the person will view their actions as just, or otherwise the right thing to do. For this reason, Aspects of Death like Love, Martyrdom, and Honor can all be used to great success.
As an Arrancar grows more powerful, they typically begin to challenge their Aspect of Death, consciously or otherwise. For one reason or another, they begin to break their bad habits (for better or for worse) and veer away from their patterns. These sort of developments typically begin during or just after the acquisition of Second Power and crystallize at Prestige.
Empty Zanpakutō Like Shinigami, Arrancar wield a Zanpakutō. However, an Arrancar's Zanpakutō has no spirit within it. Simply put, it's a "dead" weapon. These empty Zanpakutō are created the moment an Arrancar is form and typically shares a similar design to a trait they had as a Hollow. As such, most Arrancar Zanpakutō take the form of less conventional weapons than just swords. It's not uncommon for whips, spears, or even things like shields to be wielded by Arrancar.
It is worth noting that an Arrancar's Zanpakutō can never be "filled". The emptiness is a direct representation of just how hollow and empty inside they still are despite their humanoid form and newfound consciousness. Despite this, most Arrancar still show a possessiveness over their Zanpakutō, as if they've bonded to the lifeless weapon.
Last Edit: Feb 13, 2018 17:41:35 GMT -5 by Failure: 2018 update
Powers and Prestige Hollow Evolution All throughout a Hollow-Breed's life, they are apex predators. Every detail that makes up the Hollow-Breed comes together to create a monster that has, or will, climb to the very top of the food chain. For Arrancar, their power is a direct manifestation of that desire to be the most fearsome creature in all of Hueco Mundo.
A new Arrancar would find themselves struggling to balance out their desires to consume and grow more powerful, resulting in a wild, unpredictable power that they may struggle to call upon from time to time. But as they mature as a conscious being and "grow into" their new form, their power may become more refined and polished.
Prestige As a sort of reversed image of a Vaizard gaining a mindless drive to fulfill a newfound Aspect of Death, a Prestige Arrancar finds themselves dealing with the more human side of them. Their Aspect of Death, while still present and certainly still influencing them to a degree, now becomes something more like an after thought. Instead, a Prestige Arrancar would find themselves exploring their more human attributes and exploring a new level of self reflection they have gained.
As if to counter-balance this new change in psyche, a Prestige Arrancar's release reverts them almost completely to their former Hollow self. Resurrección: Segunda Etapa, an Arrancar's third and final power, morphs them into terrifying images of their form selves -- typically the form they held at their highest evolution phase before Arrancar.
The Prestige Roster Riko Suzumei, the First Prestige Arrancar; has since become a Broken Transcendent; now missing Tova Diabló, the Second Prestige Arrancar; has since become a Transcendent Hakuren Suzumei, the Third Prestige Arrancar Yaksha Dokuja, the First Prestige Hollow; has since become an Arrancar Titus Arkhan, the Second Prestige Hollow; deceased Garra Desalmados, The Fourth Prestige Arrancar, has since become a Broken Transcendent; now deceased Tori Saio, the Fifth Prestige Arrancar Erasmus, The Sixth Prestige Arrancar; has since become a Broken Transcendent Amaya Kidachi, the Seventh Prestige Arrancar, has since become a Broken Transcendent; now deceased Yaksha Dokuja, the Eighth Prestige Arrancar Nazomi, the Ninth Prestige Arrancar Takua Megiddo, the Tenth Prestige Arrancar
Last Edit: Feb 13, 2018 17:47:47 GMT -5 by Failure
History of Hollow-Breeds Origin of Hollow-Breeds For as long as humans have been capable of dying with regrets, Hollows have been born. While some mortals that died were reborn as Hollows in The World of the Living, others found themselves reborn in Hueco Mundo instead. The Reishi-thick air of Hueco Mundo sustained these Base Hollows who had no mortals to eat in order to grow. Without that catalyst, Hueco Mundo grew fat with Hollows that hadn’t yet found hunger for their own kind. Meanwhile, the Hollows on Earth that had gorged themselves on mortals found themselves craving Hollows, and soon found themselves drawn to Hueco Mundo. The result was a feeding frenzy that led to the birth of the first Gillians.
This cycle repeated itself for hundreds of years and the Gillian population overflowed. The docile Gillian were drawn beneath the surface of Hueco Mundo where the Reishi was thicker and their hunger could be satiated. With this boom in the Gillian population there eventually arose Gillian with independent wills that recognize the abundant source of food around them: Fellow Gillians. By devouring their own own kind, they were able to evolve into Adjuchas.
This is how the natural cycle of the Hollows marched on, with Base Hollows that grew ravenous for their own kind coming to Hueco Mundo and in doing so helping birth Gillian, which in turn birthed Adjuchas.
Then came the first Vasto Lorde. With his innate command of the will of Hollows, he bound Adjuchas and Gillian together under his will and named himself King. His vanity drove him to order the construction of his own personal domain: Las Noches.
At first, Las Noches was barely worth noticing. Some Adjuchas slapped together a derelict shack out of the abundant Quartz and they called it his castle. The King was satisfied with this, and while he ordered the occasional expansion to house his loyal supplicants his castle was never more noteworthy than the shack it started as. It was only when another Vasto Lorde rose to challenge the King that things changed. He won the fight, but his mask was shattered in the process. The King was reborn as an Arrancar, and with it, his mind flourished with new possibilities.
War With The Seireitei This Arrancar King set his sights upon The World of the Living. Their food source was right there, waiting for them to come and get it. He would invade Earth and turn it into an abattoir. They would forcefully make more Hollows, which would make more Gillians, Adjuchas, and Vasto Lorde. More Vasto Lordes meant more prey for him, which meant he could become stronger.
The King worked tirelessly and sent his loyal men out to gather as many Adjuchas and Gillian as they could through threat, force, or favor. As his army grew, so too did Las Noches. Shoddy, un-tempered Quartz was abandoned for stone pulled from beneath the sands that was cut and polished with precision. When his army and his castle were complete, the King chose his best ten fighters and named them his Espada.
An army of hundreds of Hollow-Breeds descended upon the Earth, including two Vasto Lordes and over two dozen Adjuchas. What ensued can only be described as a massacre, as hundreds of thousands of mortals were slaughtered in the frenzy.
Then the Shinigami arrived. The Seireitei mobilized every Captain, Lieutenant, and officer they could in response to the Hollow army that had arrived out of nowhere. Weeks of fighting ensued, and in the end both sides were decimated. Over half the Espada died, as did the King himself. The Shinigami suffered equal casualties, with almost all their lieutenants and over half their captains being devoured during the conflict. In the end, the Hollow army was routed, and fled back to Hueco Mundo in disgrace.
With the King dead, it wasn’t long before the surviving Espada turned on each other. One of the Vasto Lorde coveted the throne and the power the previous King had wielded, so he declared that he was now the new King. The other Espada decided that they were just as worthy to rule as him, and attacked the would be King. He died during the conflict, and the other surviving Vasto Lorde took his rightful place as King, only to be murdered less than a year later by one of his Espada. This began a cycle of barbarism that fuels Las Noches to this day. Kings take the crown, build up their castle and their empire, and then are cut down by a stronger man who covets their power.
Las Noches went through hundreds of Monarchs in this way, all the while fighting a bitter war with their new enemy, the Shinigami. Hollow-Breeds found their way to the Seireitei, and soon all the Hollow-Breeds knew of the plane of the Shinigami and their opulent fortress to rival Las Noches herself. Shinigami in turn found their way to Hueco Mundo, and the Shinigami learned of the might of Las Noches. Both factions made incursion attempts against one another, but none were successful.
Until the Seireitei invaded Las Noches.
Modern Day The previous King has been killed, and Las Noches was now governed by a rogue Shinigami named Sōgetsu Voltaire. He was a barbaric monster even by Hollow standards, and treated the Espada and Hollow-Breeds beneath him as little more than playthings. He showed little regard for the well-being of Las Noches as a Kingdom, and made no effort to bolster her numbers or her defenses.
His repugnant behavior eventually drew the ire of the Broken Transcendent Fate, also known as Riko Suzumei. She killed Sōgetsu and devoured him whole, declaring herself Queen. Riko tried to do her best to repair the damage Sōgetsu had cause, but her efforts failed to bear fruit. Whether through fear for her own life or simple disinterest in governing, Riko simply left Las Noches one day never to be seen again.
The Transcendent Truth—who still went by the name of Tova—rose from among the Espada to fill Riko’s shoes. Although he set about trying to repair the damage that had been inflicted by his predecessors, his efforts had come too late to prevent the inevitable.
On the orders of Captain Commander Mitsutaka Karahashi, an army of Shinigami invaded Hueco Mundo and attacked Las Noches herself. The Shinigami managed to catch the Hollow-Breeds off-guard and completely unprepared, and lead by Captain Commander Mitsutaka and Captain Kyousuke Tsukimiya, they engaged in wholesale slaughter of Las Noches’ best fighters. They even decimated the Espada with little effort.
Tova tried to fight against the invaders but was ultimately felled by Broken Transcendent on the side of the Seireitei: Time, known more widely as Hikari Miyazaki. She was, for the danger she posed, later executed by Kyousuke Tsukimiya.
Mitsutaka had the defeated King dragged back to the Seireitei in secret, while Kyousuke stayed behind to act as Occupation Commander over the now-enslaved Las Noches.
Mere days after having been captured and dragged off to the Seireitei, Tova mysteriously reappeared in Las Noches and met with Kyousuke. He struck a deal with the Occupation Commander, and was set up as a figurehead King loyal to the Shinigami. Together they subjugated Hollow-Breeds and the Shinigami occupiers, Tova, and the native population set about repairing the damage that had been inflicted to the castle during the invasion, with the intention to establish it as an outpost for the Shinigami to monitor and control the Hollow-Breed population.
As soon as the repairs were complete, however, Tova turned on Kyousuke. The two fought on the dome of Las Noches, and Kyousuke was forced to flee using his Zanpakutō’s power. Tova assumed he had killed the Occupation Commander and turned his focus on the Seireitei itself.
Tova traveled to The Soul Society and rampaged his way through the Rukongai and into the Seireitei itself in an event that would come to be called ‘The Great Seireitei Massacre.’ Every Shinigami that stood in his way he either slaughtered, beat near death, or infected with an Inner Hollow, until finally he encountered Captain Commander Mitsutaka himself. The two fought and Tova struck a lethal blow on Mitsutaka. Instead of dying, however, Mitsutaka transcended and became Wishes.
Faced with Wishes, Tova chose to make a tactical retreat and returned to Las Noches. When he arrived home he personally devoured every Shinigami that remained in the garrison. He declared Las Noches independent again and took his position as its rightful King. The Seireitei was too focused on rebuilding themselves after their crippling defeat and Tova was able to reconstruct his Kingdom and his Espada in peace.
Nearly a year after the Massacre, Tova called a meeting of his Espada. This meeting was interrupted by… Truth. Truth told the Espada that the Tova that was serving as King (who will be referred to as “aTova” going forward) was an imposter that took over while Truth was held prisoner in the Seireitei. Given aTova’s numerous successes both in breaking the Seireitei and liberating Las Noches, the assembled Espada were indifferent to this revelation, and attacked Truth. Truth easily defeated every Espada who tried to attack him and decided to leave Las Noches.
With Truth gone, aTova was able to focus on what interested him the most: Experimenting on mortals. He went to Karakura Town with several of his loyal Arrancar in order to harvest interesting Mortal Spiritualists to experiment on. This event would later be dubbed ‘the Incursion.’ Captain Commander Kenshou Ine gave the order for a response unit to be mobilized, including the Kidō Corps. Captain Miki Sakamoto of the Fourth Division defied this order and instead chose to betray the Shinigami. She slaughtered the Kidō Corps and then went to Earth with the intention to destroy Karakura Town.
Although both Nothing and Hatred tried to stop Miki—along with the assistance of a Mortal Spiritualist named Adimus—they were too late. Miki managed to destroy Karakura Town and escape to Las Noches, and the distraction she caused allowed aTova to harvest the mortal specimens he was after without interruption. He took those he captured back to Las Noches and set about experimenting upon them.
Given the chaos aTova had wrought, Truth and Wishes decided they had to step in. The pair traveled to Las Noches, and a bloody battle ensued on the surface of the Las Noches dome. Although aTova devoured over half the souls in Las Noches with his Gonzui, his strength was still not enough to stand up to the two Transcendents, who managed to kill the King.
The sight of aTova dying was too much for his Primera Espada, Amaya Kidachi. She was in love with him and seeing him die caused her to become the Broken Transcendent known as Severance. Her breaking caused Severance to decide that the only way she could cope with losing people was to cut them out of her life completely by killing them. To this end, she set about trying to force Truth to come back so she could kill him. She tried destroying monuments on Earth like The Statue of Liberty, attacking Shinigami, and even turning Kiriko Chinda into the Broken Transcendent Penance. When none of these attempts worked, she decided to attack the connection between the worlds itself.
Severance sent Takua Megiddo—her Primera and the only one capable of stopping her—to The Seireitei under orders to kill Captain Ezekiel of the Fourth Division. When Takua had arrived in the Seireitei, Severance used her powers to sever the connection between the planes, making travel between The World of the Living, Hueco Mundo, and the Soul Society impossible, thereby destroying the ability for the Cycle of Rebirth to continue. This forced Truth to come and repair the damage Severance caused. When he confronted Severance, the two fought and Truth severely injured her. Takua Megiddo interrupted their fight, having just escaped The Soul Society. After Truth told him what she did, Takua killed Severance.
The throne was left vacant until Takua told Erasmus Mei—an Arrancar who had served as both Primera and Segunda Espada under Severance—that both Severance and his lover Rania Odette were dead. The revelation caused Erasmus to become the Broken Transcendent known as Obsession. Obsession immediately declared himself King of Las Noches and set about reforming the way their power structure worked. He had little interest in the power games the Espada played and instead made them reflective of the division structure employed by the Seireitei. Each Espada position now had specific duties, such as Medicine, Science, and Combat Training.
Obsession ordered his Segunda Espada, Evelynn Avana, to begin to infect as many Shinigami as she could with an Inner Hollow, while he set out to personally convert the Quincy to his cause. Obsession met with Weylin von Wolfenstein and used his powers to warp the King’s mind and make him sympathetic towards allying to fight against The Shinigami. Takua Megiddo, now Primera under Obsession, found out about this and did his best to undo the damage Obsession had done to Weylin’s mind. Takua confronted the King over his actions and the two came to blows. They engaged in a harrowing fight that destroyed both The King’s Castle and the Dome of Las Noches, but neither of them were strong enough to kill one another. Takua retreated, and Obsession set about repairing the damage the former Primera had dealt to his castle.
Obsession reigns as King of Las Noches to this day, and his castle is still being repaired after the devastating blow Takua dealt to it.