Post by Admin on May 20, 2020 1:07:59 GMT -8
The World of Soul Society
Separated from Earth by forces mundane and mystical, departed souls can find new purpose in the afterlife. It’s filled with bureaucracy, wealth inequality, and literal gods, but at least it’s not a desert full of cannibalistic monsters. Or even worse, the rumored land of Hell that promises punishment to particularly heinous mortal souls. But… well, it’s far from what anyone would call “paradise.” If you can find a way to survive the various shades of cruelty present in Soul Society, you might just be able to change the place. Whether that’s for better, or for worse, is up to you.
At first look, Soul Society almost resembles the familiar islands that make up the Japanese archipelago of Earth. However, unlike the Japanese archipelago, Soul Society is one contiguous expanse of land ringed by a massive mountain chain, like a volcanic caldera. By the will of the Gotei 13's progenitors, this land is divvied up into three regions; the Seireitei, the Rukongai, and the Kouya.
The Seireitei is parceled out between the Divisions of the Gotei 13 and the Central 8, while the Rukongai is further divided into four directional regions, each containing 80 housing districts. The Kouya is everything outside of that, uninhabited and undefined.
At least, uninhabited and undefined by Shinigami.
As the Seireitei is roughly only 200 miles in diameter, It's the longest stretch of flat land in the entire Soul Society, with the one exception of Soukyoku Hill. A commonly accepted belief about Soukyoku Hill is that the creation of a weapon as powerful as the Soukyoku warped the land upon which it was forged, drawing rock and earth towards the heavenly clouds the spirit is said to have soared amongst. The scientists at the 12th Division have only confirmed that spiritual energy permeates the land there more than any other place in Soul Society (outside of the Kouya and the dwellings of local gods, that is).
In comparison, each of the four Rukongai partitions stretches about 400 miles out from the four directional gates that seal them off from the Seireitei. They expand outwards from the Seireitei's gates in a conical fashion, making the outermost districts the widest and most populous of all the ones prior.
(Note: some features not included. Use your imagination!)
The Seireitei
Also known as the Court of Pure Souls, this is where the government and military of Soul Society are housed. The Gotei 13 is the arm that wields that vast power of the Shinigami at the behest of the Central 8, their judicial overseers and the vocal cords of the Soul King. Every single Shinigami lives here, whether they like it or not. Their spouses, children, and pets are the only other beings allowed to live within its walls. Although the roads leading up to the four gates are lively with restaurants, boutiques, and fresh markets, most of the faces hawking the goods aren't your neighbors or loved ones. Civilian merchants are permitted to open up shop during the day if they apply for clearance with the 6th Division, but they must be outside of Seireitei gates by 8:00 PM or face consequences. Ideally. Most of the time, these merchants are the type with various connections to Gotei 13, so said consequences are usually, at worst, a slap on the wrist. After all, some of those merchants are 'generously donating' to fund the barrack larders and division research projects.
The Seireitei is ringed by thick, towering walls made of Sekkiseki, a special stone that saps away the spiritual power of an individual upon contact. These walls are completely solid, as are the four gates they are connected to; the Northern Black Ridge Gate, the Southern Red Hollow Gate, the Eastern Blue Stream Gate, and the Western White Way Gate. The Four Gatemasters (called the Oni's Daughters on account of their fantastic strength and size) are the only beings that can open these Sekkiseki gates, as their power is entirely from the body rather than the spirit. Not to their face, of course; at least, not since they flattened that one 3rd Seat officer.
Thirteen barracks occupy private but equal space within the Seireitei. Each barrack is nestled inside of a massive multi-building complex designed in the style of Japan's Edo period estates, also known as the shoin-zukuri style. Although the year is 2019, culture in Soul Society moves a bit slower; Edo period fashions and archictecture are considered the height of class, and one of the few things humanity has done well.
The only things that separate these complexes are the same wide-paved pathways that divide Seireitei up into the tidy grid it is today. That, and their ideological differences.
In the barracks are the offices, training rooms, dormitories, gardens, and cafeterias that each Shinigami will call "home" at some point or another. The more melee-focused divisions are arranged closest to the walls of Seireitei. The divisions known for housing sensitive materials and squishy Shinigami can be found bordering the inside of those hardier divisions. In the very middle is the 1st Division, the crown jewel of the Gotei 13. They occupy that space with the Chamber of the Central 8, where every criminal is sentenced, every potential law discussed. All must pass through this grand judicial hall to get to the towering green hill behind it, upon which stands only one thing; the eternal rebuke to even the tiniest thought of treason, the Soukyoku, a massive halberd with the power of a million Zanpakuto.
Soukyoku Hill is where every traitor to Soul Society must face execution, should they end up caught. The guilty are restrained upon a frame of sacred oak from deep within the Kouya before they are pierced by the Soukyoku, whereupon their soul is vaporized by the sheer power being contained within the holy weapon. A master of Kido is required to activate the Soukyoku, and they must use the closely-guarded incantation provided to them by the Central 8. The last beings to be executed by the Soukyoku were the leader of the Quincy noble houses, almost 60 years ago, and his love, a defiant Shinigami noble that plunged his house into disgrace following his indictment. Soukyoku Hill casts a shadow over Soul Society, sometimes quite literally, but always figuratively. Some souls can remember the first executions, back when the very young Gotei 13 solved its in-fighting with a (somehow) bloodier blade. No one looks at that hill on a happy, sunny day in the Seireitei.
Deep underneath the Seireitei, the province of the 10th Division lay dripping and rancid; the sewer system. These poor souls are the ones responsible for maintaining the Seireitei, and unfortunately, it includes the sprawling pipe complex that is only truly navigable to the Seated Officers of the 10th Division. The responsibility placed on them is grueling but important, as the sewers have been targeted multiple times over the years by criminal forces. If the reward matched the level of responsibility, it might actually be worth the pay.
More information about the 10th Division, as well as the other (happier) divisions and the Central 8, can be found in the Gotei 13 page ((here)).
The Rukongai
When mortals pass away, their soul is released from their earthly body by the chain that formerly bound the two. This being—a Plus, according to Gotei 13 textbooks, named for its wholeness in contrast to the Hollow’s lack of heart—has a chance of accepting their death peacefully. Some need a little help, whether by human attachment, confusion, or distress. Part of a Shinigami’s job is giving them a stamp of passage, issued from the hilt end of their sword. Of course, a Shinigami’s job is also defined by their universal commitment to slaying Hollows; their skills allow them to liberate all the souls, including any consumed Pluses, and automatically put those souls to rest. These quelled souls will either reunite with the spiritual flow of Reishi that runs through the three worlds, or they will wake up here, in the Rukongai.
The Rukongai, known in English as the City of Wandering Souls, is everything between the Seireitei’s barrier and the Kouya’s first patches of wilderness. It amounts to 320 walled subsections, called Districts, further separated into larger directional chunks. It was not always so large, though—or so looked down upon. In fact, the Seireitei and every Shinigami has the Rukongai to thank for the creation of the Gotei 13.
For the entirety of human existence, Pluses have been awakening in the Rukongai—even if it wasn’t the Rukongai back then. In the beginning, it was just fertile land, filled with forests and streams and rushing rivers. As the human population bloomed on Earth, the population of Pluses bloomed in the Rukongai, prompting expansion outward. The Kouya’s hostile and inhuman presence ended that expansion. This solidified the concept of the Rukongai—all the population clusters closest to the Kouya needed manned walls that separated them from the spiritual beasts that crawled out of those sacred woods, cutting off every settlement further within and uniting every Plus under a new umbrella. The defenders of the Rukongai, heroes of the war to define the Rukongai separately from the Kouya, were the original Shinigami. Not the Gotei 13 or the Central 8, mind you, and certainly not the black-robed elite soldiers you see now, but simply spiritually-gifted Pluses that used their soul to fight. In life, most of these proto-Shinigami fought bravely against Hollows on Earth, particularly in the ancient islands of Earth’s east. Their glory inspired the common folk, and they defined the distinctly Japanese cultural path of Soul Society in their wake.
As time went on, the blueprint for modern Soul Society started to manifest. What would become the Four Sections of the Rukongai, the four-way split along East, West, North and South, were centered on the warlords that ruled in uneasy peace with each other—they had split as far apart as they could while occupying equal amounts of territory, producing the directional system from their feud. A prototype of the Seireitei, also in the very desirable center of the Rukongai, existed as a mercantile hub. The warlords fought in the daytime with their trade monopolies over basic goods, and at night with sword and poison.
What became of those warlords is unknown, but either by reform or by defeat, the Gotei 13 and the unification of Shinigami power arose from the end of their reign. The Four Sections were enshrined not by their association to the warlords, but by their directional presence. Within those quadrants, the Gotei 13 worked expand the walls around the Rukongai inward, creating areas they could manage and patrol. These became the Districts, 80 per Quarter (with those being East, West, North, and South). Each District outward from the Seireitei’s gates is bigger than the one that came numerically prior. The Plus population, formerly a clump of poverty with an obnoxiously rich few cherries on top, spread out to form an upper, middle, and working class (with those in poverty still scattered generously throughout).
The rich and well-off, mostly merchants with some nobility mixed in, live in the aptly-named Upper Districts. These are Districts 1 (closest to the Seireitei) through Districts 5 in each quadrant. The Middle Districts, which are officially determined to be Districts 5 through 50, are where the population majority is composed of middle class and poor but secure Plus communities. This majority ends at District 50, the gateway to an area known as the Lower Districts, which is everywhere up to the Kouya. The poorest Pluses live here, working hard jobs and providing the hard labor that’s necessary for the rest of Soul Society.
These Lower Districts are maligned as a hotbed of assault, burglary, organized crime, and rape, but they’re mostly just people looking to live out their afterlife in relative safety. This brings with it a lot of nastier things in the name of survival, but the Gotei 13 don’t seem to be in any rush to fix their system. Why would they? Despite the best efforts of Division 9, the squalid pressure cooker they’ve fostered across the Lower Districts is the best recruitment tool of the Gotei 13. The allure of power, friendship, hot meals, status, and safety draw many desperate folks looking for a way out of constant degradation.
Culturally, the Rukongai is the most straightforward example of a melting pot. Most people leave behind what traditions they had on Earth, and even their names, to adapt to a way of life locked into Japan’s Edo era. You can find pockets of cultures old and new, perhaps even some that no longer exist, in certain less traveled areas of the Rukongai. Generally, the closer you get to Seireitei, the less common these unique pockets are. The first ten Districts in each Quarter strive to replicate the timeless, unchanging cultural center, the Seireitei.
The Kouya
Cursed. Protected. Abandoned. Holy. When spoken of, these are the words used to describe the Kouya, the region that lays past the farms and forest blanketing the outskirts of the 80th District. Not many people seek out the Kouya; if you know a Shinigami or Plus that wants to go, they’re being hunted by their own kind or they are close to death in some other way. This is where you go when you’re truly out of options.
From outside, it looks like nothing but wild and dark forest. It’s known that the mountains far in the distance belong to the Kouya as much as the forest that seals them off, but what’s between the two remains a mystery. Lakes, canyons, desert, tundra; it could really be anything. The running theme with the Kouya is that it defies all traditional rules.
Tales have trickled out of the mouths of men and women on the brink of death, rescued only just in time to perform their rites and bury them. They say the trees grow as thick as houses, hollow on the inside like houses too, but just as alive as you and me. Sometimes more alive; sometimes, the trees speak to you. They say eight-legged stags gallop like thunder across the surfaces of iridescent marshes, looking for their mates. They say shy and curious children of the forest live underneath mushrooms big enough to sit on. They say many things, and then, they die with longing in their eyes.
Although everything that lives in the Kouya is dangerous, what’s more dangerous is that almost everything that goes in simply doesn’t want to come out. Most of the time, they’re chewed up and spat out, rejected for reasons unknown to even the victims. Those who’ve seen it and survived don’t seem so willing to go around rambling about what lives in there.
Long ago, the Kouya simply pushed the population of Pluses and Shinigami away from it. Nobody knows why, if what lived there became hostile or was simply capricious. But one day, hoofs and snarls poured out of the brush in droves and murdered too many for anyone to forget. Walls were put up, walls came down, walls were put up farther away, farther away, and eventually, they had been put up far enough to stay up. The Kouya stopped being known for its wonder and majesty, and instead, for its unfathomable rage. The gods that existed there once and fed on the worship from Pluses simply grew cold and quiet. Some say they left, too, scattered by the war between nature and civilization, but the names to search for have been forgotten, the shrines overgrown.
In their place, the Shinigami became god of Soul Society. They are the soul reapers, the psychopomps of Greek mythology; quite literally, they are death gods. The gods of nature did not just fall. They were buried, buried behind bush and rock and wood, nothing but a grim ghost in the collective memory of the Rukongai. And perhaps that’s just the way they like it.
Out of sight, out of mind, after all.
Separated from Earth by forces mundane and mystical, departed souls can find new purpose in the afterlife. It’s filled with bureaucracy, wealth inequality, and literal gods, but at least it’s not a desert full of cannibalistic monsters. Or even worse, the rumored land of Hell that promises punishment to particularly heinous mortal souls. But… well, it’s far from what anyone would call “paradise.” If you can find a way to survive the various shades of cruelty present in Soul Society, you might just be able to change the place. Whether that’s for better, or for worse, is up to you.
At first look, Soul Society almost resembles the familiar islands that make up the Japanese archipelago of Earth. However, unlike the Japanese archipelago, Soul Society is one contiguous expanse of land ringed by a massive mountain chain, like a volcanic caldera. By the will of the Gotei 13's progenitors, this land is divvied up into three regions; the Seireitei, the Rukongai, and the Kouya.
The Seireitei is parceled out between the Divisions of the Gotei 13 and the Central 8, while the Rukongai is further divided into four directional regions, each containing 80 housing districts. The Kouya is everything outside of that, uninhabited and undefined.
At least, uninhabited and undefined by Shinigami.
As the Seireitei is roughly only 200 miles in diameter, It's the longest stretch of flat land in the entire Soul Society, with the one exception of Soukyoku Hill. A commonly accepted belief about Soukyoku Hill is that the creation of a weapon as powerful as the Soukyoku warped the land upon which it was forged, drawing rock and earth towards the heavenly clouds the spirit is said to have soared amongst. The scientists at the 12th Division have only confirmed that spiritual energy permeates the land there more than any other place in Soul Society (outside of the Kouya and the dwellings of local gods, that is).
In comparison, each of the four Rukongai partitions stretches about 400 miles out from the four directional gates that seal them off from the Seireitei. They expand outwards from the Seireitei's gates in a conical fashion, making the outermost districts the widest and most populous of all the ones prior.
(Note: some features not included. Use your imagination!)
The Seireitei
Also known as the Court of Pure Souls, this is where the government and military of Soul Society are housed. The Gotei 13 is the arm that wields that vast power of the Shinigami at the behest of the Central 8, their judicial overseers and the vocal cords of the Soul King. Every single Shinigami lives here, whether they like it or not. Their spouses, children, and pets are the only other beings allowed to live within its walls. Although the roads leading up to the four gates are lively with restaurants, boutiques, and fresh markets, most of the faces hawking the goods aren't your neighbors or loved ones. Civilian merchants are permitted to open up shop during the day if they apply for clearance with the 6th Division, but they must be outside of Seireitei gates by 8:00 PM or face consequences. Ideally. Most of the time, these merchants are the type with various connections to Gotei 13, so said consequences are usually, at worst, a slap on the wrist. After all, some of those merchants are 'generously donating' to fund the barrack larders and division research projects.
The Seireitei is ringed by thick, towering walls made of Sekkiseki, a special stone that saps away the spiritual power of an individual upon contact. These walls are completely solid, as are the four gates they are connected to; the Northern Black Ridge Gate, the Southern Red Hollow Gate, the Eastern Blue Stream Gate, and the Western White Way Gate. The Four Gatemasters (called the Oni's Daughters on account of their fantastic strength and size) are the only beings that can open these Sekkiseki gates, as their power is entirely from the body rather than the spirit. Not to their face, of course; at least, not since they flattened that one 3rd Seat officer.
Thirteen barracks occupy private but equal space within the Seireitei. Each barrack is nestled inside of a massive multi-building complex designed in the style of Japan's Edo period estates, also known as the shoin-zukuri style. Although the year is 2019, culture in Soul Society moves a bit slower; Edo period fashions and archictecture are considered the height of class, and one of the few things humanity has done well.
The only things that separate these complexes are the same wide-paved pathways that divide Seireitei up into the tidy grid it is today. That, and their ideological differences.
In the barracks are the offices, training rooms, dormitories, gardens, and cafeterias that each Shinigami will call "home" at some point or another. The more melee-focused divisions are arranged closest to the walls of Seireitei. The divisions known for housing sensitive materials and squishy Shinigami can be found bordering the inside of those hardier divisions. In the very middle is the 1st Division, the crown jewel of the Gotei 13. They occupy that space with the Chamber of the Central 8, where every criminal is sentenced, every potential law discussed. All must pass through this grand judicial hall to get to the towering green hill behind it, upon which stands only one thing; the eternal rebuke to even the tiniest thought of treason, the Soukyoku, a massive halberd with the power of a million Zanpakuto.
Soukyoku Hill is where every traitor to Soul Society must face execution, should they end up caught. The guilty are restrained upon a frame of sacred oak from deep within the Kouya before they are pierced by the Soukyoku, whereupon their soul is vaporized by the sheer power being contained within the holy weapon. A master of Kido is required to activate the Soukyoku, and they must use the closely-guarded incantation provided to them by the Central 8. The last beings to be executed by the Soukyoku were the leader of the Quincy noble houses, almost 60 years ago, and his love, a defiant Shinigami noble that plunged his house into disgrace following his indictment. Soukyoku Hill casts a shadow over Soul Society, sometimes quite literally, but always figuratively. Some souls can remember the first executions, back when the very young Gotei 13 solved its in-fighting with a (somehow) bloodier blade. No one looks at that hill on a happy, sunny day in the Seireitei.
Deep underneath the Seireitei, the province of the 10th Division lay dripping and rancid; the sewer system. These poor souls are the ones responsible for maintaining the Seireitei, and unfortunately, it includes the sprawling pipe complex that is only truly navigable to the Seated Officers of the 10th Division. The responsibility placed on them is grueling but important, as the sewers have been targeted multiple times over the years by criminal forces. If the reward matched the level of responsibility, it might actually be worth the pay.
More information about the 10th Division, as well as the other (happier) divisions and the Central 8, can be found in the Gotei 13 page ((here)).
The Rukongai
When mortals pass away, their soul is released from their earthly body by the chain that formerly bound the two. This being—a Plus, according to Gotei 13 textbooks, named for its wholeness in contrast to the Hollow’s lack of heart—has a chance of accepting their death peacefully. Some need a little help, whether by human attachment, confusion, or distress. Part of a Shinigami’s job is giving them a stamp of passage, issued from the hilt end of their sword. Of course, a Shinigami’s job is also defined by their universal commitment to slaying Hollows; their skills allow them to liberate all the souls, including any consumed Pluses, and automatically put those souls to rest. These quelled souls will either reunite with the spiritual flow of Reishi that runs through the three worlds, or they will wake up here, in the Rukongai.
The Rukongai, known in English as the City of Wandering Souls, is everything between the Seireitei’s barrier and the Kouya’s first patches of wilderness. It amounts to 320 walled subsections, called Districts, further separated into larger directional chunks. It was not always so large, though—or so looked down upon. In fact, the Seireitei and every Shinigami has the Rukongai to thank for the creation of the Gotei 13.
For the entirety of human existence, Pluses have been awakening in the Rukongai—even if it wasn’t the Rukongai back then. In the beginning, it was just fertile land, filled with forests and streams and rushing rivers. As the human population bloomed on Earth, the population of Pluses bloomed in the Rukongai, prompting expansion outward. The Kouya’s hostile and inhuman presence ended that expansion. This solidified the concept of the Rukongai—all the population clusters closest to the Kouya needed manned walls that separated them from the spiritual beasts that crawled out of those sacred woods, cutting off every settlement further within and uniting every Plus under a new umbrella. The defenders of the Rukongai, heroes of the war to define the Rukongai separately from the Kouya, were the original Shinigami. Not the Gotei 13 or the Central 8, mind you, and certainly not the black-robed elite soldiers you see now, but simply spiritually-gifted Pluses that used their soul to fight. In life, most of these proto-Shinigami fought bravely against Hollows on Earth, particularly in the ancient islands of Earth’s east. Their glory inspired the common folk, and they defined the distinctly Japanese cultural path of Soul Society in their wake.
As time went on, the blueprint for modern Soul Society started to manifest. What would become the Four Sections of the Rukongai, the four-way split along East, West, North and South, were centered on the warlords that ruled in uneasy peace with each other—they had split as far apart as they could while occupying equal amounts of territory, producing the directional system from their feud. A prototype of the Seireitei, also in the very desirable center of the Rukongai, existed as a mercantile hub. The warlords fought in the daytime with their trade monopolies over basic goods, and at night with sword and poison.
What became of those warlords is unknown, but either by reform or by defeat, the Gotei 13 and the unification of Shinigami power arose from the end of their reign. The Four Sections were enshrined not by their association to the warlords, but by their directional presence. Within those quadrants, the Gotei 13 worked expand the walls around the Rukongai inward, creating areas they could manage and patrol. These became the Districts, 80 per Quarter (with those being East, West, North, and South). Each District outward from the Seireitei’s gates is bigger than the one that came numerically prior. The Plus population, formerly a clump of poverty with an obnoxiously rich few cherries on top, spread out to form an upper, middle, and working class (with those in poverty still scattered generously throughout).
The rich and well-off, mostly merchants with some nobility mixed in, live in the aptly-named Upper Districts. These are Districts 1 (closest to the Seireitei) through Districts 5 in each quadrant. The Middle Districts, which are officially determined to be Districts 5 through 50, are where the population majority is composed of middle class and poor but secure Plus communities. This majority ends at District 50, the gateway to an area known as the Lower Districts, which is everywhere up to the Kouya. The poorest Pluses live here, working hard jobs and providing the hard labor that’s necessary for the rest of Soul Society.
These Lower Districts are maligned as a hotbed of assault, burglary, organized crime, and rape, but they’re mostly just people looking to live out their afterlife in relative safety. This brings with it a lot of nastier things in the name of survival, but the Gotei 13 don’t seem to be in any rush to fix their system. Why would they? Despite the best efforts of Division 9, the squalid pressure cooker they’ve fostered across the Lower Districts is the best recruitment tool of the Gotei 13. The allure of power, friendship, hot meals, status, and safety draw many desperate folks looking for a way out of constant degradation.
Culturally, the Rukongai is the most straightforward example of a melting pot. Most people leave behind what traditions they had on Earth, and even their names, to adapt to a way of life locked into Japan’s Edo era. You can find pockets of cultures old and new, perhaps even some that no longer exist, in certain less traveled areas of the Rukongai. Generally, the closer you get to Seireitei, the less common these unique pockets are. The first ten Districts in each Quarter strive to replicate the timeless, unchanging cultural center, the Seireitei.
The Kouya
Cursed. Protected. Abandoned. Holy. When spoken of, these are the words used to describe the Kouya, the region that lays past the farms and forest blanketing the outskirts of the 80th District. Not many people seek out the Kouya; if you know a Shinigami or Plus that wants to go, they’re being hunted by their own kind or they are close to death in some other way. This is where you go when you’re truly out of options.
From outside, it looks like nothing but wild and dark forest. It’s known that the mountains far in the distance belong to the Kouya as much as the forest that seals them off, but what’s between the two remains a mystery. Lakes, canyons, desert, tundra; it could really be anything. The running theme with the Kouya is that it defies all traditional rules.
Tales have trickled out of the mouths of men and women on the brink of death, rescued only just in time to perform their rites and bury them. They say the trees grow as thick as houses, hollow on the inside like houses too, but just as alive as you and me. Sometimes more alive; sometimes, the trees speak to you. They say eight-legged stags gallop like thunder across the surfaces of iridescent marshes, looking for their mates. They say shy and curious children of the forest live underneath mushrooms big enough to sit on. They say many things, and then, they die with longing in their eyes.
Although everything that lives in the Kouya is dangerous, what’s more dangerous is that almost everything that goes in simply doesn’t want to come out. Most of the time, they’re chewed up and spat out, rejected for reasons unknown to even the victims. Those who’ve seen it and survived don’t seem so willing to go around rambling about what lives in there.
Long ago, the Kouya simply pushed the population of Pluses and Shinigami away from it. Nobody knows why, if what lived there became hostile or was simply capricious. But one day, hoofs and snarls poured out of the brush in droves and murdered too many for anyone to forget. Walls were put up, walls came down, walls were put up farther away, farther away, and eventually, they had been put up far enough to stay up. The Kouya stopped being known for its wonder and majesty, and instead, for its unfathomable rage. The gods that existed there once and fed on the worship from Pluses simply grew cold and quiet. Some say they left, too, scattered by the war between nature and civilization, but the names to search for have been forgotten, the shrines overgrown.
In their place, the Shinigami became god of Soul Society. They are the soul reapers, the psychopomps of Greek mythology; quite literally, they are death gods. The gods of nature did not just fall. They were buried, buried behind bush and rock and wood, nothing but a grim ghost in the collective memory of the Rukongai. And perhaps that’s just the way they like it.
Out of sight, out of mind, after all.