Hello all, my name is Maderfole and this isn't my first fanfiction, although it is my first foray into the world of Bleach. My previous fanfictions have all been in Gundam Seed, and if I do say so myself, I have quite a following over there, and also the three longest stories in the entire fandom and probably the entire world, at over 3 million words total across two completed stories and one that is only halfway done. With that e-peen stretched, and my credentials hopefully established in some small way, I'll move on to different and more germane topics, namely the general disclaimer type thing I do before all my stories. I write about war, about conflict on both individual and nationwide scales.

What does this mean? There will be death, violence, brutality, blood, gore and pain, for both original characters and most of our favorites and not so favorites from the anime and manga. People get killed and maimed and seriously messed up at times in my stories. It's sad, I know this. But it's also what war is. I have a fairly high tolerance for what sort of things I think Teens can handle in their reading... anyone old enough to fully apreciate Bleach and all its characters is old enough to not flinch from any topic I might bring up in my story, and if it bothers you, you can always just skim past it, that's the beauty of writing and reading, its much easier to look away from the stuff you don't like. If I find anything to be truly questionable, I'll put a Mature content warning in a chapter note at the start of the chapter, so keep a weather eye out.

Now of course I don't own anything canonical from Bleach, that should go without saying if I'm posting a story on this website. And unlike my Gundam Seed stuff, which I eventually plan to submit to Bandai for Expanded Universe style endorsement (like the Star Wars line of books), this fiction is purely for fun. Well, at least I say that now, who knows if I'll still be so nonchalant a million words or more down the line, right? I am rather fond of creating OCs, and there will be a large cast of them in this story, considering I am introducing a whole new faction into the storyline, heros and villians and everyone in between included. But again, I have some little experience with this sort of thing, and in my other stories, my OC's are probably the most popular characters, even over the usual canon main protagonists.

Whether that will hold true here, time will only tell. I would say that I get no benefits from writing and posting this story, but that would be lying, as I greatly enjoy entertaining others with this talent of mine and when I get reviews, especially the positive sort, it feels like I just won thirty bucks at the lotto. I don't hold back on chapters for want of reviews, but I do appreciate getting them all the same. I make it a policy to listen to my readers and incorporate their ideas into my storyline where possible, because I find that it makes the story as a whole so much better for everyone.

I write long chapters. Ten thousand words is my minimum for a posting chapter, and frequently I will get to more than double that in a exciting combat filled chapter or plot climax. I try to split my text up into more managable blocks, but don't always succeed, so please bear with me and let me know if things are getting too dense too often. Though English is my primary and only language, that doesn't mean I always use it perfectly, so there might be a mispelled word here and there, or a grammatical mistake. I apologize ahead of time, but again this is for FUN, not a profitable book, so bear with me when I say, a little roughness isn't entirely out of place, especially when it amounts to five or six incidents in 20,000 words, right? At some point in time, if this story becomes long enough, I will put in a character stats and terms explanation page, as a quick reference, since it can be a real pain remembering exactly what everyone is capable of and what each of my new terms from my new faction means if you have to look back a hundred thousand words to find the in-story definition.

Let's see, what else... ah, yes, pairings. While I don't know the Bleach universe anywhere close to as well as I know Gundam Seed, I have read the full manga, at least as far as its been translated into english and posted online at mangafox, and watched to about episode 280 of the anime. This story will be set post Winter War by a few years, and I'll be cutting out any of the new stuff about those new guys that Ichigo has been training with to regain his powers. Its taken him a few years of training with Urahara and others to get his powers back, and they're still not quite what they once were, but he's back about to the level he was at fighting Ulquoirra. Let me take a deep breath and then blather this all out. I think it will be Ichigo x Rukia, Orihime x Uryu, Toushiro x Momo (though perhaps with some x Karin as well, I can't make up my mind which of those I like more), Kisuke x Yourichi and... I realize there's more pairings in Bleach than can possibly be easily quantified and mapped out. Those are the main ones, though I have plans for Soi Fon as well, and who knows what I'll eventually come up with for others (I'm open to suggestions). I'll probably be listing Ichigo and Rukia as the "tag" characters for this story, but in reality I don't generally favor any characters as "main"... everyone I think important enough will get some time in the spotlight. This is a story about the Bleach Universe, not just Ichigo and Rukia, though of course they ARE major players in that universe.

I'm terrible with the honorifics, though I find them very informative and useful when reading, I just can't remember to force myself to write them in. I may try from time to time, but don't expect great consistency on it. I'll also be going with mostly english translations of various ranks and titles... so "soutaicho" will be Captain-General, then Captain, Vice-Captain, so forth and so on. I will of course be using the proper names and command words for Zanpukto, that should go without saying, and I'll do my best when it comes to Kidou and their incantations, though there may be just a few more people using unincanted spells than they normally might, just because its a pain to write that all out a lot. I use "" for things being said, italics for thoughts, CAPS FOR EMPHASIS OR LOUD VOICES and occasional bolding for different or weird voices (such as Hollow Ichigo). There will be several scenes in a chapter, divided by a xxxx (since the site is REAL finicky about lines for some reason), with a bold tag beneath stating the time, date, and place of the particular scene, if its necessary and not obvious.

And now of course for the big reveal, the basic premise of this story you are about to read. I realize that Bleach is a creation of Japan and thus it is only logical for it to be Japan-centric in themes and setting, but still I can't help but find it odd that the Soul Society, a very eastern culture, is responsible for the entire balance of life and death not just for Japan (and mostly Karakura Town, or so it seems...) but the entire world. There just doesn't seem to be nearly enough Soul Reapers to go around, even if you were to only deploy one Soul Reaper to each county or province, there's no way you could have enough to cover the entire Living World, much less Soul Society itself, which is apparently the size of most of Asia or bigger. It is my postulation that the Soul Society/Shinigami are merely responsible for the souls of the Eastern Cultures of the Living World, pretty much Asia, though Russia is probably a mutually owned territory. I say that there must be other Soul Kingdoms that are responsible for similar duties in other sectors of the Living World... one for Africa and one for Europe and the America's, at the least. They exist in the same alternate dimension that Soul Society does, just at such extreme distance that each is all but mythological to the others.

It is in meeting the representatives of one of these other Soul Kingdoms, the Imperium Animi or "Spirit Empire", which is responsible for the soul balance of Europe and the Americas and thus has a decidedly western medieval culture to it (knights in shining armor and the Spanish Inquisition and all that jazz) that this story's premise is founded. What has drawn a party of envoys and representatives from such a faraway and frankly mythological place as the Far West of the Soul Dimension all the way to the territory of the Soul Society and Gotei 13? And will the representatives of such a different and strange culture be able to fit in with the ways and personalities of the Gotei 13 peacefully, or is the cultural gap too wide to peaceably cross? The Winter War is past, the greatest crisis in the millenia long history of the Gotei 13 has been conquered... but could even such a rebellion as what Aizen formented compare to the potential horrors of a full out spiritual war between the Far East and the Far West? Read and find out...

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Check out my forums for a list of OC's and basic terms I'll be using, as well as the opportunity to help me with some more story details to make the story better in the long run.