Yhwach. Spiritually aware because of Yhwach's blood running through them, the Quincies can reshape spiritual particles into various types of bow and arrows, swords or explosives. There are also Quincies that are born once every two centuries with same power as Yhwach himself. At their height, Quincies used their powers to combat the hollows to protect the land of the living with a greater success rate than the Soul Reapers. However, unlike the Soul Reapers who purify Hollows, Quincies completely destroy the soul and thus create an imbalance between the life and death that would threaten to destroy the world. As a last resort to prevent further imbalance, the Soul Reapers exterminated most of the Quincies with only a few traces remains allowed to live. As a result, having great animosity towards Soul Reapers, some Quincies marry into normal human families with their children becoming Impure Quincies while some Quincy families attempt to keep their bloodline pure. Tite Kubo created the Quincy as rivals to the Soul Reapers, resulting in long-range weapons as a counter to the standard Soul Reaper zanpakuto and white clothing as an antithesis to the black Soul Reaper uniform. Their name stems from their symbol, a five-pointed star, and the prefix "quin," meaning "five," as well as Kubo's liking for the phrase "Quincy archer." Other than Uryū Ishida and the Wandenreich, there are some other Quincies who had survived the genocide. Ryūken Ishida is Uryū's father who works as the Hospital Director of Karakura Hospital. Ryūken is portrayed as a bitter and cold Quincy who detests his own people though he is extremely powerful and possesses many of their people's lost or stolen artifacts (some of the new weapons that Ishida currently uses are "borrowed" from his father). It is revealed that he was meant to marry Masaki Kurosaki, a distant relative of his, to preserve the blood purity of the Quincy. However, his engagement fell through when Masaki underwent Hollowfication and Isshin Shiba tied his life with Masaki's in order to save it. Instead of Masaki, he married his family maid, Kanae Katagiri. Nine years before the main story, Kanae was subjected to the Auswählen and eventually died, impacting Ryūken and causing him to detest Quincy. After his wife's death, he performed a long-term autopsy on her body in order to retrieve a special silver cloth created from Auswählen and used it to make an