The Rules of Engagement
0.1 Genesis
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They call it the Rules of...
0.1 Genesis
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They call it the Rules of...
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SolarFall | 3 |
Rarity and the Heart of the Cards said:When I said dueling in this world is different than dueling in yours, I wasn't referring to the Duelist Kingdom "my-card-does-whatever-i-say-it-does" narrativium. Umi doesn't hide your monsters from sight, Call of the Haunted doesn't resurrect your entire graveyard as immortal zombies, and Polymerization with that Light Arrow card doesn't let you give your enemy's Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon bone cancer. Standard YGO rules, folks.
One of those things is card rarity. See, in a world where Duel Monsters already has worldwide acclaim and is used to conquer small countries, the world leaders behind card production don't need to sell a million copies of Blue Eyes just to meet their monthly quota. Furthermore, some cards flat-out cannot be created - the Rules of Engagement will not recognize cards that do not reflect Spirits, and so, for example, Pegasus cannot create an auto-win card or a Kuriboh with 10,000 ATK, because there is no auto-win Spirit (save Exodia) and Kuriboh is not a strong enough Spirit to allow such a thing; for more information, read below. You can't have three copies of your spirit partner because three copies of it flat-out don't exist. Even the original Red Eyes only has maybe half a dozen copies, which is why national runner-up Rex Raptor went on a long monologue about how great his new best card was.
Which leads into my second point - it doesn't matter that you'll have only one copy of Toon Whatever Dragon, because when the chips are down and the stakes high, you'll draw it anyways. The Heart of the Cards is a living thing, and your likelihood of achieving that perfect draw is dependant on a number of things, such as how much you like your cards, how much your cards like you, and how much shit you've been through together. Hint: This is because of your Aura, and everyone else can do it, too.
This is also why protagonists can have such shitty decks and still steamroll over hordes of mooks. Chaz Princeton can take on all of Blue Dorm despite rolling an impossible deck of Ojama, XYZ Dragon Cannon, and Armed Dragon, because he begins every duel with the perfect hand. Zane Truesdale can start every duel with all three Cyber Dragons and Power Bond, because he's heir of the Cyber Legacy and have been using those cards all his life. Jaden Yuki can have a single copy of every Elemental Hero in existence and still have exactly what he needs to Fusion Summon the one Monster that can save his ass, because of his absolute faith in his cards. And, so, to, will you - ...eventually.
As for your decks - you can control them, to a point. Pegasus will give you a starter Toon deck which will have maybe three or four great cards, a horde of mooks, and a lot of staples. From then on, it's less a question of min-maxing and more a question of "Ooh, shiny! Where can I get one of those?"
Us? We have to minimize our decks to maximize our chances of drawing the card we need. Our world is lame, so we need to rely on probabilities and luck, like Bastion does. In this world, though? It's more important to have a card for every situation, and the force of will to draw that card, like every YGO protagonist ever. It's why Bastion can ace the theoretical and still get his ass kicked by Slifer Reds.
Also, you can totally create a second deck. There are plenty of reasons why you should - to go undercover from the Pegasus name, to avoid accusations of nepotism, to prove to yourself that you can - and plenty of reasons why you shouldn't - because you'll split your focus, and because the Toons might feel shafted and abandon you in your hour of need.
Duel Spirits and Spirit Partners said:So. Duel Spirits.
When Industrial Illusions prints a card, that's all it is. A card. Paper, plastic, colorful ink. Nothing more. If it couldn't be slotted into a Duel Arena, then no one could tell it apart from the fakes.
Now, when that card is sold to or won by a duelist, everything changes. That duelist puts that card in their deck, and then proceeds to fight alongside it, to summon it when they're in trouble, to wage their entire lives on the success of this card. With every duel, with every summon or attack or sacrifice, with all the hope and passion and want they feel deep in their hearts, they leak Aura from their Souls and into the card. And so, slowly, oh-so-slowly, that Aura crystalizes, forming a Spirit that takes on the shape and essence of the monster depicted in the card. That card becomes a Spirit, and then a Partner, wholly devoted to the duelist who gave them form for so long as that duelist remains devoted to them.
The Toon you're voting for right now is one of Pegasus', but, now, he will be one of yours.
Only those who have had their Aura Awakened can see these Spirits. As such, most duelists don't realize that they have their own Spirit Partner(s), because the process of Awakening Aura isn't well-known on Earth. Those who do, have had their Aura Awakened by the Spirits themselves, something that is only possible once that Spirit becomes very, very old and very, very strong. There are exceptions, of course - Chaz Princeton (as far as I can tell, anyway) forcefully Awakened his when he was dying of thirst in the middle of the ocean after he abandoned Duel Academy before the North/School Duel, and carriers of the Millennium Items have had theirs Awakened by the long-deceased Souls they carry around. Ruby, naturally, doesn't have to worry about this - she Awakened hers in the Forest of Patch.
Of course, not all Spirits are born like this. The Noble Knights coalesced from the Aura-laden beliefs of all of Britain when that nation was at the height of its power. The Egyptian God cards are fueled by civilization itself, and as such have enough strength to obliterate small countries. And, of course, the Spirits belonging to post-series Yugi and Seto are in part fueled by the awe and belief of everyone in the world who have watched them duel; that's right, dueling in front of an audience and winning literally empower your Duel Monsters. By the time Yu-Gi-Oh! GX comes around, Yugi and Seto can draw whatever card they wish from their deck whenever they wish, with a nearly flawless success rate.
That's because, no matter how much Solomon thought otherwise, it is not in fact the belief in the Heart of the Cards itself that ensures the top-decking phenomenon comes to pass. It is the Aura enchanting the cards, granting them awareness and higher thought and free will, that gives them that power... although, it is that faith and respect which makes the cards, thus empowered, choose to be drawn when their duelist needs them most.
Unlike in Remnant, where the metaphysical plane of nature's wrath and Aura is one-and-the-same as the physical realm where humans live and breathe and die, Earth has a clear separation of powers. This higher plane is called the Spirit Realm, and the Spirits that those with Awakened Souls can see belong to this plane first and foremost. It follows its own rules and at its own pace, and, the higher you go, the older and more surreal the Spirits get. Near the top, you can find the Egyptian Gods, the Madolche monsters, the Noble Knights, the Mermail, and so on. But, if you choose to go lower, instead, you'll find yourself in the Shadow Realm, where the Rules of Engagement lie... and which you may never escape.
Now, to (finally) get to your questions; a Spirit Partner is essentially one of these Duel Spirits, but are wholly devoted to their Partner. You will always draw their card when you need to (so long as you do not lose your faith or their trust). Perhaps more importantly, they are a flight-capable, invisible, intangible ghost that only you (and select others) can see. ...As you can probably imagine, that's a pretty useful friend to have. Chaz uses his Ojama Trio to watch over the Keys during the Shadow Riders Arc, and is thus able to determine who stole them when the rest of the Seven are clueless. The only limitation is that they are bound to their cards, and can't get too far away from them.
You can have multiple Spirit Partners. A Duel Monster becomes one when the Aura invested in their card exceeds a certain limit, and there is no arbitrary restriction to prevent multiple from forming. You can acquire more from the simple act of dueling, the more desperately and passionately the better, or by acquiring the trust and card of someone else's (not impossible, but harder than it sounds). Materializing them costs Aura (theirs, not yours), and they can become corporeal if they have stupid amounts of Aura to spend doing so (see Dark Magician Girl, in a GX filler). Alas, you cannot speed this up by channeling Aura into their card.
Egyptian Soul Magic (Thanks to GhostKing 666) said:So here's some background lore on Ancient Egyptian Soul Magic for those who only familiar with Modern Remnant Soul Magic. 3000 years ago(or 5000 in the English dub) Egypt got its hands on a legendary book of spells known as the Millennium Spellbook. A mystical tome containing magical knowledge said to be known only to the Egyptian gods themselves and written in a language no one knew how to read. Egypt's neighbors, fearing what Egypt could do if they managed to translate the book launched a preemptive attack that Egypt could not have hoped to withstood. At first the pharaoh of the time King Akhnamkanon(Atem's father) tried to negotiate a peace but the enemy armies remained undeterred. In desperation the pharaoh turned to his brother High Priest Aknadin for a solution. Aknadin himself had been studying the Millenum Spellbook and had managed to translate one of the spells written in it, specifically a ritual to create seven mystical items that would have the power to protect Eygpt. Akhnamkanon granted Aknadin permission to preform the ritual but what Aknadin didn't tell his brother was the cost of doing so, mainly the human sacrifice bit.
So Aknadin took the soldiers that Akhnamkanon granted to him so he could complete the ritual and went off to the village of Kul Elna, a tiny destitute village of thieves and tomb robbers. In short people who would not be missed. Of the villages population of 100, 99 were melted down alive along side the gold to forge the Millennium Items inside the Millennium Stone and the survivor was the future Thief King Ba Ku Ra. Then things took a turn for the apocalyptic, for when the Millennium Items were finished, a portal to the Shadow Realm was opened and Zorc Necrophades almost managed to enter the world then and there if not for some quick thinking by Aknadin who managed to pull out his own eye and replace it with the Millennium Eye, using its power to force back Zorc and grabbing the Millennium Ring from the Millennium Stone, closing the portal. Afterwards, using the Millennium Items the Pharaoh and his six high priests were able to crush the invading armies by summoning Duel Monsters.
During the time of peace in between the Millennium Items creation and Zorc's rampage, the holders of the Millennium Items became more adapt at summoning monsters, with the Items they were able to seal the Ka* or Spirit Monster of a person inside Stone Tablets, allowing them to call up said Ka monster in battle. Ka, also known as an Egyptian Spirit Monster, are monsters that were used in ancient Egypt. The Ka are spirits that reflect the nature of the person that they come from. They are fueled by the energy of the soul, the Ba. The strength of the Ba determines the strength of the Ka. A person with a good soul will have a spirit or good Ka, but a person with an evil soul will have a monster or demon Ka.
Ba, or Spirit Energy, is a person's life force. When someone Summons or commands Ka, they lose Ba. If someone loses all their Ba, they die (get sent to the Shadow Realm in the dub). The strength of one's Ka depends on the strength of their Ba.
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In the anime, the amount of Ba is shown on the Eye of Wdjat of the user's DiaDhank. Life Points are the modern day equivalent of Ba. In this crossover Ba would be what the Ancient Egyptians called Aura. In addition with summoning monsters, ancient Egyptian sorcerers could also cast various spells to either empower their monsters or cause carious effects in what could be likened as the Egyptian equivalent to Weiss and Glynda Goodwitch's style of Aura use. If one were to compare an ancient Egyptian sorcerer with a Remnant Hunter/Huntress, the former would be squishy wizards summoning monsters to do battle for them and protect them while they caste their spells while the latter would be magical knights who use their soul magic to directly empower themselves to do battle(if we use Duel Monsters terminology, a Hunters semblance would be their special effect).
Victory between someone using Egyptian style vs Remnant style would naturally depend on several factors, from the level of training both have, to the tactics used, to the equipment both have, mechashift weapons for the Hunter, a Millennium Item for the Sorceror, which in addition to them having own unique powers(Rod could Mind Control, Eye could Mind Read, Necklace could see the past and the future, and the Puzzle can fuck with Destiney to give you the power of Plot Shields, ect.) they also have a few shared powers such as letting their wielders warp reality by turning the match into a Shadow Game and even boost your Ba/Aura to an extreme degree. In the Memory World arc, Simon needed the Key in order to become strong enough to summon Exodia and without the Puzzle Atem lacked the power to summon an Egyptian God and with it he could summon all three at once. And as was pointed out in the Duelist Kingdom Arc, imprisoning souls in the Shadow Realm can have its own power boosting aspect to ones magic.
If it weren't for the whole human sacrifice part, knowledge on how to create Millennium Items would be almost as valuable to Remnant as access to modern Duel Monsters Cards do to their potential to make a morally dubious Hunter inhumanly powerful even by Aura standards. As for why Duel Monsters cards would be a game changer to Remnant SolarFall already explained that. The ability for any Hunter to carry with them their own personal army of monsters and book of spells that anyone with Aura could use no matter what their semblance, monsters and magic that are literally only limited in what they can do by human imagination and the power of ones own Aura. It would be as big a change as what would happen to the Yugioh world if Remnant Aura unlocking and training techniques were to propagate among the whole world. You really have to give Pegasus credit where credit is due, he turned an already powerful style of magic into something into something that can only be described as broken, and then made himself fabulously rich by marketing it as a card game! Really finding a way to form a permanent connection between Remnant and Earth isn't just a good thing for Ruby, its a good thing for both worlds period as the exchange of magic and technology would elevate human civilization to whole new levels and in Remnant allow for humanity to render the Grim extinct.
You have since been reborn as a small child, along with all of the Heroic Spirits,
*looks at avatar*
Human Error: QM is not an omniscient otaku. She does not know everything there is to know about Yu-Gi-Oh! That being said, all settings are AU; if you see a mistake, it may not be a mistake at all but a deliberate change. Feel free to point out any errors, however, as it may not be a deliberate change but a mistake, and it's better to find those sooner rather than later.