Bount

Spiritually attuned and manufactured rather than born, the Bount came into being through an accident during an ancient Soul Society experiment into eternal life. Researchers used artificial souls modeled on Shinigami rather than humans, but when one of their Reishi-generating devices suffered a meltdown and detonated, its released energy seeped into the cycle of rebirth and altered a great many souls approaching reincarnation, producing the entire Bount population across a single span of time.

Because of how they were made, the Bount sustain eternal youth by consuming the souls of the living or the dead. Their agelessness and lethal feeding gave rise to the human legend of the vampire, and fearful humans branded them witches and monsters, persecuting and hunting them. Rejected by the living world, they sought a return to Soul Society, only to be caught up in war and slaughtered, dwindling into a small tribe led by Jin Kariya.

Every Bount can absorb souls, and doing so extends their lifespan indefinitely while draining a living human's soul grants a dramatic surge of power, at the cost of near-certain infertility. In Soul Society, where everything is composed of Reishi, they can freely absorb it to heal wounds, mend clothing, and empower themselves to rival a captain, though this fails in the thin spiritual air of the living world. Their signature weapon is the Doll, a soul-based companion equivalent to a Shinigami's Zanpakuto, which can turn on and kill a wielder too weak to master it.

The scientist Ran'Tao, who felt guilt for her role in their creation, gathered the persecuted Bount and tried to secure them protection, but Central 46 instead ordered their extermination. She saved a boy named Eugene Currier and awakened his dormant powers before being arrested. Eugene, later renaming himself Jin Kariya, watched his people massacred alongside the Quincy when the two factions warred, and resolved to assemble the strongest survivors and destroy Soul Society, developing with Ugaki a ritual to help any Bount summon a Doll.

The tribe's leader is Jin Kariya, once the young Eugene Currier. His followers and fellow Bount include Sawatari, Yoshi, Go Koga, Yoshino Soma, Ugaki, the pair Ho and Ban, Mabashi, Ryo Utagawa, and Cain. Yoshino held particular importance to Kariya's schemes as the last Bount still able to bear offspring, making her essential to his creation of the Bitto.