Post by Admin on Aug 8, 2021 1:26:41 GMT -8
Hollowbreeds
You hunger. It consumes you. It becomes all you are, everything you think, everything you feel, everything you desire—you need to fill that hole left inside of you. It’s never enough, and it never will be, but there’s that moment of bliss and recollection that maybe it can be if you just. Keep. Eating. That skip of a beat when your teeth close around a soul with even the hint of a trait or regret you miss from your life before; an idea you can only grasp in those moments, in that span of time before you devour every last bit and you realize it still didn’t fill you. So you move on. To your next hunt. To more prey. And next time, surely, it won’t leave you so hungry.
Hollowbreed start as souls left behind in the World of the Living after their passing. Over time they begin to degrade when not sent to the Soul Society by a Shinigami or learn to move on by their own volition. This is caused by numerous factors—namely, it’s not being able to cope with your loved ones moving forward without you or a general malaise of being forgotten, or perhaps a positive effect your death might have had on others that you suffer to see. Many spirits have unfinished business that they aren’t willing to let go of, and this can warp into an obsession with trying to complete a goal or see a fixation finished until it corrodes at them out of lack of being able to interact much with the ones they left behind. Negative emotions breed within the soul - the Plus - and they’re unable to move on, while given little to no assistance towards that hope. They are left alone - assumedly - and they can’t help or hinder any actions that occur, instead forced to play the role of an observer to events that play out surrounding the life they can no longer lead.
A Tale of Hatching, Larvae, and Pupation
They mutate at this point to what is known as a Demi-Hollow: a Hollowbreed yet consumed and still technically salvageable, but much like a caterpillar ready to emerge from the egg. Their obsessions with their former life have almost fully consumed them, and at this point it’s just a matter of time before their Chain of Fate - what once connected them to their mortal body, and broke off when they met their demise - degrades totally and they fall prey to their sadness, regret, or anger and they finish gestation. A soul at this point can be put down out of respect or saved by a particularly moving force from their late life, but without outside interaction - or with negative ones, such as from a fully grown Hollow - they will inevitably transform, and turn into what is known widely as the common Hollow.
All Hollow after “ascending” from that of a forgotten soul wear a mask made of their former human heart. With this transformation, a hole is left on the body of the Hollow - generally where their true heart once was, but able to be anywhere of significance to the person they were before. Masks come in various shapes, forms and sizes, but are always white and befitting of a skull. Behind this mask lies the Hollow’s former human face, and by damaging the mask, a Hollow may briefly remember the details of their life before and once again show their Human side—from before the hunger and obsession overtook them completely. If not fully split and the Hollow slain, however, the Hollow will once again take over and the mask will regenerate. Aside from this mask, the Hollow that wear them are just as varied in shape and in body; a Hollow can range from the size of buildings to that of a house pet, and any combination of limbs therein that could possibly construe a physical form. Normally, they tend to lean towards animal bases, but this isn’t a codifying rule in their existence and any concept that could be thought of likely has a Hollow out there with its frame. Furthermore, the powers a Hollow wields are known as manifestations of their heart, drawn from the mask it left behind (or a “Baja Potencia” if you wished to gamify it.) These often tend to do with the Hollow’s obsession or the way they died, or anything personal or intimate to their concept as a creature. At a later stage of Hollow evolution this Baja Potencia will grow once or even twice more, notably to the stage of Alta Potencia which is considered a direct but more understood increase of power to the original concept.
A base Hollow, freshly unburdened from their meddlesome heart, has not realized itself fully enough to have an Aspect of Death. They are too consumed by their bestial form of intelligence, rather than analyzing where their power stems from. It's all about the souls. Hollow can taste the nuance of a soul so finely, even the smaller motes of personality within one might fizzle and pop on their tongue. The savory Plus, the salty Shinigami, the sour, sour Quincy souls. The souls of children might be delicious to one, repugnant to another; the souls of handsome and young gentlemen are the delicacy of many Hollows. The souls that excite Hollows to eat the most, that sate their deep hunger more than anything else in all worlds, are their Favored Prey.
The Favored Prey is always tied to the death of the Hollow, with the qualities of the prey matching those of a central figure in their life. The attachment and well of feelings the Hollow had for that person in life are warped by the loss of their heart, ending in the belief that consuming that person (or victims like them) will fill the vacuous emptiness within them. It doesn't matter if they hated or loved that person, if they died for that person's continued existence or if that person killed them. It simply mutates out of strong attachments and the perceived ties they had. They are obsessed with devouring these ideal matches in the base phase of their life, even after discovering the joy of gorging themselves on souls en masse. The strongest Hollows and Arrancar are often not monsters, but instead towering tragedies emblematic of humanity's faults. The life of Shakespeare's titular Macbeth, the miserable fate shared by lovers Cleopatra and Mark Antony, and the injustice inflicted upon the Salem Witch Trials victims are not too far off from what those legendary Hollowbreed suffered through in their early existences.
Hollow subsist on reishi, normally found in the souls they hunt and devour as their new classification as predators. They can also find a measure of solace in places with high reishi density, such as in their home world of Hueco Mundo or the Shinigami’s Soul Society, though this isn’t enough to live off of—at least not comfortably, and Hollow are namely driven by their need to eat more and more souls regardless. When a Hollow becomes too strong and the void in their “heart” too large that no amount of human souls are able to even briefly satisfy them any longer, they begin to eat each other for their fix instead. When this congregation of hungry, hungry Hollow meet in the middle and all start to devour each other, they conglomerate in this melting pot of bodies that forms out the shape of a much larger creature—a Gillian, the first class of Menos Hollow classification, or powerful Hollow formed out of hundreds of competing personalities and desires.
Bloody Ecdysis
A Gillian can be seen as a phase in a Hollow’s life similar to that of the Demi-Hollow they once were. It’s a chrysalis of sorts, where their shape is massive and their intellect is low, left only with their beast-like desires to eat and lacking the whit or direction of the Hollow they were singularly. Gillian are gigantic, multi-story high and cloak-covered creatures with bone-white appendages below whose only directive is to devour everything around them while the multitude of Hollow consciousness’ that make them up battle for dominance within. They are massively powerful but incredibly simple, and despite their destructive power can be taken down with ease by a sufficiently powerful, smarter being than them. They have access now to the crowning abilities of later Hollowbreed; the Cero, a colored beam of concentrated reishi that erases everything in its path and scorches or melts what’s left behind, and the Bala, tighter shapes of condensed reishi used for faster or more focused assaults. Both tend to be formed from the mouth of the Gillian, and the appendages - such as hands - of later stages, and is the main form of spellcasting available to Hollow.
The growth period of a Gillian can be anywhere from a few minutes to countless years, based on the strength of the consciousness’ fighting for control and the number that need to be suppressed in order for one to win out and absorb the others into itself. When one of these succeed, the Gillian’s form will be broken and a new one will be born from it with the winning consciousness at the helm; though now possibly morphed somewhat by those others within the Gillian it “ate” and used to help construct this new shape and focused sentience. A Hollow we might have been following from its days as a Plus, to its changes through the phases to this eventual point might still wish to retain their original Hollow name - or expand on it, or change it, or add a title or some such - and hold on to aspects of their former “life,” but are now host to a new stage of awareness where they might have new wishes or ambitions to fulfill that weren’t originally - or solely - their own. That is to say, there comes a time in every Hollow’s life where they go through some changes and come out a little different, with the help of a new perspective and some outside influences that shape them into what they reach the finish as. This new Menos-class Hollow is called an Adjuchas.
Wings Unfurling
An Adjuchas is a Hollow coalition—coalescence, even, if you will. The strongest of the creatures that made up the Gillian chrysalis prior to the ascension of the dominant personality are now formed into one being, thoroughly absorbed and subjugated by the leading psychosis. Adjuchas are the strongest class of Hollowbreed you might come across naturally on the dunes of Hueco Mundo (filling the rungs of every Sand Tribe), the de-facto "kings" of the Forest of Menos through sheer power alone. Adjuchas may even choose to make alliances or travel in packs, and are the most conversational - if not strictly approachable - of what you’d find among Hollowkind. At the Adjuchas point of a Hollow’s development, they could be considered a “fully formed” character, able to critically consider their own decisions and make rational choices from this developed line of thinking not afforded to their lesser, hungrier kin.
There is an evolution not just mentally and physically but also spiritually to Adjuchas-class Menos. The Favored Prey aspect of the pre-Menos is traded instead for a delineated quality: an Aspect of Death. No longer the same creature they were at the start of their desperate and disordered journey of growth, the driving force of an Adjuchas isn’t what they were chasing to fill the hole of what they lost——it is instead the very chaotic core of their existence, their very virtue & downfall. An Aspect of Death is the culmination of every reason an Adjuchas has been driven to exist. This is truly the aspect of their downfall, their rise, and their trials & tribulations on their new platform. An Aspect of Death would be a character trait such as Sacrifice, Obsession, Lust, Anger; a vice to bring the character low, yet tempting enough for them to still drown in of their own accord—they could have just one more sip, one more taste, one more bite of their forbidden apple. This is their identity returning - and maturing - as if dappled sunlight between the boughs of a tree.
While not solely host to their original personality, the Adjuchas did win out not only within their Gillian body – and that alone is a testament to the strength of will of their persona – but also to the point of evolution, both defining & redefining who they are as a creature: and that they definitively exist. Their fatal flaw as both a living being before their corruption and the monster they were across the white sands—every favored soul they ate & every instinct they had grasping for a hold, the very reason they won their evolution, their Aspect of Death encapsulates who our “hero” is. What they are, what they want, and what they think they need.
There is one more tier of evolution for traditional Hollowbreed, famed and infamous, and is the result of countless years spent fostering their growth through competition. If an Adjuchas is permanently damaged in some way - losing a part of their body or being otherwise disabled - they cannot grow any further, and can never reach this state. A particularly cunning and feisty Adjuchas, however, who picks both the right allies &; the finest prey: they could find themselves Vasto Lorde.
Texts and history speak little of true Vasto Lorde; the King before was one such creature, and there are a handful at least scattered between the vast corners of Hueco Mundo. They are the result of a primitive desire to attain a humanoid form——pick a poison between convenience and desperation, vanity or ambition. With their power so compressed within the shape of humanity their reiatsu is particularly dense, and poses a danger naturally to anything that wanders near them. This drives most Vasto Lorde - with their newfound sense of consciousness from reaching the apex of their growth - to be a solitary race, and rarely ever connect to others outside of their own desires.
It is unknown exactly how the process of transitioning from an Adjuchas to a Vasto Lorde transpires or occurs, and they aren’t keen on sharing either their secrets or their experiences. It can’t be said for sure if any Adjuchas is set to evolve with enough perseverance, or if it’s an inherent trait a creature has to be born with, but we are able to speak to the fact that few have managed and even fewer have survived being hunted as a threat. Not many could take down a Vasto Lorde, but fewer still can suffer them to live uncontrolled.
Wings Cast Aside
A Hollowbreed not content with their power can reach a further stage of existence: but this is a deviation, not a natural evolution. When a Hollow’s mask is removed - either voluntarily, by their own hand, or by cause of another’s desire - their power is sealed within it, taking a new shape very similar if not exactly as a Shinigami’s Zanpakuto. They are left with shards of their Hollow identity as fragments of their mask on their new person, attaining a form of humanity on a greater level than a Vasto Lorde managed through their “natural” growth. They retain only the aforementioned physical fragmentations and their Hollow hole, otherwise taking a typical shape as an individual not too different from humankind. They are a side to the coin of Hollow evolution that Vasto occupy, a mirror of suppressing their Hollow side and seeming to overcome it versus embracing it to the culmination of their goals & very being.
Arrancar are such creatures, able to be born from a Hollow of any Menos-class; younger, weaker Hollow with less of a spiritual composition simply disintegrate on loss of the key pillar that is their Mask. More individualized Hollow, however, even within the chaotic confines of the Gillian chrysalis or the searching ambition of Adjuchas - a Vasto Lorde isn’t immune from this cross-transition either, should they wish to chase an idea of being more than what they are on a greater level than they had to this point - can remove their mask in an act of willpower & strength. For the transformation into an Arrancar there doesn’t need to be clear intent to become what our concept of an Arrancar is: rather, it can’t happen accidentally, but you don’t need to know you’re taking this leap to become an Arrancar. All you need to breach the breaking point is that hunger that you’ve held since you were first corrupted — to become more, to become full. Similarly, should your mask be removed by a stronger entity for the purpose of transitioning you, the intent still remains to push past your ceiling, and the transformation will still take effect.
As said, Arrancar are not too far removed from where we class Vasto Lorde, though they are more varied in power level due to the different peaks at which they evolved. As a Vasto Lorde is the apex adaptation of the Hollowbreed species, an Arrancar uses an "unnatural" perversion of a Hollowbreed’s power to get rich quicker. Arrancar are not weak, and surely do pay themselves back multiple times over for the avenue to power that they open for themselves — but they are broken, far more than any normal Hollow. They mutilated their very soul for their ambition and their Aspect is far more controlling of their psyche than the beast that still hungers.
With this inversion to their original breed of Hollow power an Arrancar's previous or altered abilities are accessed through the release of their Resurreccion: as its name implies, this is the Arrancar giving form and cause to the powers they had sealed away. This acts similarly to a Shinigami's Shikai or Bankai release. An Arrancar will utter a liberating command to their Zanpakuto (or Zanpakuto adjacent personalization) and tap into the various strengths they once encompassed -- generally at a greater, to at least similar, level to their Hollow's Baja Potencia. The original drive of an Arrancar's Menos skillset can be mutated heavily by their evolution and a Resurreccion does not specifically demand to follow the same rules or theme, but as a beast is still a beast at its heart and tends to hunt the same.
However. An animal on instinct, bloodthirsty and wanting, is far more innocent of sin than a man, weathered empty, who finds his legs and uses his hands to kill in devotion to his vices.
You hunger. It consumes you. It becomes all you are, everything you think, everything you feel, everything you desire—you need to fill that hole left inside of you. It’s never enough, and it never will be, but there’s that moment of bliss and recollection that maybe it can be if you just. Keep. Eating. That skip of a beat when your teeth close around a soul with even the hint of a trait or regret you miss from your life before; an idea you can only grasp in those moments, in that span of time before you devour every last bit and you realize it still didn’t fill you. So you move on. To your next hunt. To more prey. And next time, surely, it won’t leave you so hungry.
Hollowbreed start as souls left behind in the World of the Living after their passing. Over time they begin to degrade when not sent to the Soul Society by a Shinigami or learn to move on by their own volition. This is caused by numerous factors—namely, it’s not being able to cope with your loved ones moving forward without you or a general malaise of being forgotten, or perhaps a positive effect your death might have had on others that you suffer to see. Many spirits have unfinished business that they aren’t willing to let go of, and this can warp into an obsession with trying to complete a goal or see a fixation finished until it corrodes at them out of lack of being able to interact much with the ones they left behind. Negative emotions breed within the soul - the Plus - and they’re unable to move on, while given little to no assistance towards that hope. They are left alone - assumedly - and they can’t help or hinder any actions that occur, instead forced to play the role of an observer to events that play out surrounding the life they can no longer lead.
A Tale of Hatching, Larvae, and Pupation
They mutate at this point to what is known as a Demi-Hollow: a Hollowbreed yet consumed and still technically salvageable, but much like a caterpillar ready to emerge from the egg. Their obsessions with their former life have almost fully consumed them, and at this point it’s just a matter of time before their Chain of Fate - what once connected them to their mortal body, and broke off when they met their demise - degrades totally and they fall prey to their sadness, regret, or anger and they finish gestation. A soul at this point can be put down out of respect or saved by a particularly moving force from their late life, but without outside interaction - or with negative ones, such as from a fully grown Hollow - they will inevitably transform, and turn into what is known widely as the common Hollow.
All Hollow after “ascending” from that of a forgotten soul wear a mask made of their former human heart. With this transformation, a hole is left on the body of the Hollow - generally where their true heart once was, but able to be anywhere of significance to the person they were before. Masks come in various shapes, forms and sizes, but are always white and befitting of a skull. Behind this mask lies the Hollow’s former human face, and by damaging the mask, a Hollow may briefly remember the details of their life before and once again show their Human side—from before the hunger and obsession overtook them completely. If not fully split and the Hollow slain, however, the Hollow will once again take over and the mask will regenerate. Aside from this mask, the Hollow that wear them are just as varied in shape and in body; a Hollow can range from the size of buildings to that of a house pet, and any combination of limbs therein that could possibly construe a physical form. Normally, they tend to lean towards animal bases, but this isn’t a codifying rule in their existence and any concept that could be thought of likely has a Hollow out there with its frame. Furthermore, the powers a Hollow wields are known as manifestations of their heart, drawn from the mask it left behind (or a “Baja Potencia” if you wished to gamify it.) These often tend to do with the Hollow’s obsession or the way they died, or anything personal or intimate to their concept as a creature. At a later stage of Hollow evolution this Baja Potencia will grow once or even twice more, notably to the stage of Alta Potencia which is considered a direct but more understood increase of power to the original concept.
A base Hollow, freshly unburdened from their meddlesome heart, has not realized itself fully enough to have an Aspect of Death. They are too consumed by their bestial form of intelligence, rather than analyzing where their power stems from. It's all about the souls. Hollow can taste the nuance of a soul so finely, even the smaller motes of personality within one might fizzle and pop on their tongue. The savory Plus, the salty Shinigami, the sour, sour Quincy souls. The souls of children might be delicious to one, repugnant to another; the souls of handsome and young gentlemen are the delicacy of many Hollows. The souls that excite Hollows to eat the most, that sate their deep hunger more than anything else in all worlds, are their Favored Prey.
The Favored Prey is always tied to the death of the Hollow, with the qualities of the prey matching those of a central figure in their life. The attachment and well of feelings the Hollow had for that person in life are warped by the loss of their heart, ending in the belief that consuming that person (or victims like them) will fill the vacuous emptiness within them. It doesn't matter if they hated or loved that person, if they died for that person's continued existence or if that person killed them. It simply mutates out of strong attachments and the perceived ties they had. They are obsessed with devouring these ideal matches in the base phase of their life, even after discovering the joy of gorging themselves on souls en masse. The strongest Hollows and Arrancar are often not monsters, but instead towering tragedies emblematic of humanity's faults. The life of Shakespeare's titular Macbeth, the miserable fate shared by lovers Cleopatra and Mark Antony, and the injustice inflicted upon the Salem Witch Trials victims are not too far off from what those legendary Hollowbreed suffered through in their early existences.
Hollow subsist on reishi, normally found in the souls they hunt and devour as their new classification as predators. They can also find a measure of solace in places with high reishi density, such as in their home world of Hueco Mundo or the Shinigami’s Soul Society, though this isn’t enough to live off of—at least not comfortably, and Hollow are namely driven by their need to eat more and more souls regardless. When a Hollow becomes too strong and the void in their “heart” too large that no amount of human souls are able to even briefly satisfy them any longer, they begin to eat each other for their fix instead. When this congregation of hungry, hungry Hollow meet in the middle and all start to devour each other, they conglomerate in this melting pot of bodies that forms out the shape of a much larger creature—a Gillian, the first class of Menos Hollow classification, or powerful Hollow formed out of hundreds of competing personalities and desires.
Bloody Ecdysis
A Gillian can be seen as a phase in a Hollow’s life similar to that of the Demi-Hollow they once were. It’s a chrysalis of sorts, where their shape is massive and their intellect is low, left only with their beast-like desires to eat and lacking the whit or direction of the Hollow they were singularly. Gillian are gigantic, multi-story high and cloak-covered creatures with bone-white appendages below whose only directive is to devour everything around them while the multitude of Hollow consciousness’ that make them up battle for dominance within. They are massively powerful but incredibly simple, and despite their destructive power can be taken down with ease by a sufficiently powerful, smarter being than them. They have access now to the crowning abilities of later Hollowbreed; the Cero, a colored beam of concentrated reishi that erases everything in its path and scorches or melts what’s left behind, and the Bala, tighter shapes of condensed reishi used for faster or more focused assaults. Both tend to be formed from the mouth of the Gillian, and the appendages - such as hands - of later stages, and is the main form of spellcasting available to Hollow.
The growth period of a Gillian can be anywhere from a few minutes to countless years, based on the strength of the consciousness’ fighting for control and the number that need to be suppressed in order for one to win out and absorb the others into itself. When one of these succeed, the Gillian’s form will be broken and a new one will be born from it with the winning consciousness at the helm; though now possibly morphed somewhat by those others within the Gillian it “ate” and used to help construct this new shape and focused sentience. A Hollow we might have been following from its days as a Plus, to its changes through the phases to this eventual point might still wish to retain their original Hollow name - or expand on it, or change it, or add a title or some such - and hold on to aspects of their former “life,” but are now host to a new stage of awareness where they might have new wishes or ambitions to fulfill that weren’t originally - or solely - their own. That is to say, there comes a time in every Hollow’s life where they go through some changes and come out a little different, with the help of a new perspective and some outside influences that shape them into what they reach the finish as. This new Menos-class Hollow is called an Adjuchas.
Wings Unfurling
An Adjuchas is a Hollow coalition—coalescence, even, if you will. The strongest of the creatures that made up the Gillian chrysalis prior to the ascension of the dominant personality are now formed into one being, thoroughly absorbed and subjugated by the leading psychosis. Adjuchas are the strongest class of Hollowbreed you might come across naturally on the dunes of Hueco Mundo (filling the rungs of every Sand Tribe), the de-facto "kings" of the Forest of Menos through sheer power alone. Adjuchas may even choose to make alliances or travel in packs, and are the most conversational - if not strictly approachable - of what you’d find among Hollowkind. At the Adjuchas point of a Hollow’s development, they could be considered a “fully formed” character, able to critically consider their own decisions and make rational choices from this developed line of thinking not afforded to their lesser, hungrier kin.
There is an evolution not just mentally and physically but also spiritually to Adjuchas-class Menos. The Favored Prey aspect of the pre-Menos is traded instead for a delineated quality: an Aspect of Death. No longer the same creature they were at the start of their desperate and disordered journey of growth, the driving force of an Adjuchas isn’t what they were chasing to fill the hole of what they lost——it is instead the very chaotic core of their existence, their very virtue & downfall. An Aspect of Death is the culmination of every reason an Adjuchas has been driven to exist. This is truly the aspect of their downfall, their rise, and their trials & tribulations on their new platform. An Aspect of Death would be a character trait such as Sacrifice, Obsession, Lust, Anger; a vice to bring the character low, yet tempting enough for them to still drown in of their own accord—they could have just one more sip, one more taste, one more bite of their forbidden apple. This is their identity returning - and maturing - as if dappled sunlight between the boughs of a tree.
While not solely host to their original personality, the Adjuchas did win out not only within their Gillian body – and that alone is a testament to the strength of will of their persona – but also to the point of evolution, both defining & redefining who they are as a creature: and that they definitively exist. Their fatal flaw as both a living being before their corruption and the monster they were across the white sands—every favored soul they ate & every instinct they had grasping for a hold, the very reason they won their evolution, their Aspect of Death encapsulates who our “hero” is. What they are, what they want, and what they think they need.
There is one more tier of evolution for traditional Hollowbreed, famed and infamous, and is the result of countless years spent fostering their growth through competition. If an Adjuchas is permanently damaged in some way - losing a part of their body or being otherwise disabled - they cannot grow any further, and can never reach this state. A particularly cunning and feisty Adjuchas, however, who picks both the right allies &; the finest prey: they could find themselves Vasto Lorde.
Texts and history speak little of true Vasto Lorde; the King before was one such creature, and there are a handful at least scattered between the vast corners of Hueco Mundo. They are the result of a primitive desire to attain a humanoid form——pick a poison between convenience and desperation, vanity or ambition. With their power so compressed within the shape of humanity their reiatsu is particularly dense, and poses a danger naturally to anything that wanders near them. This drives most Vasto Lorde - with their newfound sense of consciousness from reaching the apex of their growth - to be a solitary race, and rarely ever connect to others outside of their own desires.
It is unknown exactly how the process of transitioning from an Adjuchas to a Vasto Lorde transpires or occurs, and they aren’t keen on sharing either their secrets or their experiences. It can’t be said for sure if any Adjuchas is set to evolve with enough perseverance, or if it’s an inherent trait a creature has to be born with, but we are able to speak to the fact that few have managed and even fewer have survived being hunted as a threat. Not many could take down a Vasto Lorde, but fewer still can suffer them to live uncontrolled.
Wings Cast Aside
A Hollowbreed not content with their power can reach a further stage of existence: but this is a deviation, not a natural evolution. When a Hollow’s mask is removed - either voluntarily, by their own hand, or by cause of another’s desire - their power is sealed within it, taking a new shape very similar if not exactly as a Shinigami’s Zanpakuto. They are left with shards of their Hollow identity as fragments of their mask on their new person, attaining a form of humanity on a greater level than a Vasto Lorde managed through their “natural” growth. They retain only the aforementioned physical fragmentations and their Hollow hole, otherwise taking a typical shape as an individual not too different from humankind. They are a side to the coin of Hollow evolution that Vasto occupy, a mirror of suppressing their Hollow side and seeming to overcome it versus embracing it to the culmination of their goals & very being.
Arrancar are such creatures, able to be born from a Hollow of any Menos-class; younger, weaker Hollow with less of a spiritual composition simply disintegrate on loss of the key pillar that is their Mask. More individualized Hollow, however, even within the chaotic confines of the Gillian chrysalis or the searching ambition of Adjuchas - a Vasto Lorde isn’t immune from this cross-transition either, should they wish to chase an idea of being more than what they are on a greater level than they had to this point - can remove their mask in an act of willpower & strength. For the transformation into an Arrancar there doesn’t need to be clear intent to become what our concept of an Arrancar is: rather, it can’t happen accidentally, but you don’t need to know you’re taking this leap to become an Arrancar. All you need to breach the breaking point is that hunger that you’ve held since you were first corrupted — to become more, to become full. Similarly, should your mask be removed by a stronger entity for the purpose of transitioning you, the intent still remains to push past your ceiling, and the transformation will still take effect.
As said, Arrancar are not too far removed from where we class Vasto Lorde, though they are more varied in power level due to the different peaks at which they evolved. As a Vasto Lorde is the apex adaptation of the Hollowbreed species, an Arrancar uses an "unnatural" perversion of a Hollowbreed’s power to get rich quicker. Arrancar are not weak, and surely do pay themselves back multiple times over for the avenue to power that they open for themselves — but they are broken, far more than any normal Hollow. They mutilated their very soul for their ambition and their Aspect is far more controlling of their psyche than the beast that still hungers.
With this inversion to their original breed of Hollow power an Arrancar's previous or altered abilities are accessed through the release of their Resurreccion: as its name implies, this is the Arrancar giving form and cause to the powers they had sealed away. This acts similarly to a Shinigami's Shikai or Bankai release. An Arrancar will utter a liberating command to their Zanpakuto (or Zanpakuto adjacent personalization) and tap into the various strengths they once encompassed -- generally at a greater, to at least similar, level to their Hollow's Baja Potencia. The original drive of an Arrancar's Menos skillset can be mutated heavily by their evolution and a Resurreccion does not specifically demand to follow the same rules or theme, but as a beast is still a beast at its heart and tends to hunt the same.
However. An animal on instinct, bloodthirsty and wanting, is far more innocent of sin than a man, weathered empty, who finds his legs and uses his hands to kill in devotion to his vices.