"You know, I’d heard that Duel Monsters was inspired by ancient carvings or something," you say idly. "Until I saw this stuff though, I didn’t quite believe it."

By ‘this stuff,’ you’re referring to the set of carvings on the wall in front of you. There are three of them, each displaying a massive monster. They’re all absolutely demonic looking, with skeletal limbs, clawed wings, and jagged spikes all over. There are hieroglyphs on the slabs of stone as well, but the monsters are carved as if they’re standing in front of them, partially covering them up. What symbols aren’t missing outright, anyway. There’s quite a bit of wear on them, with massive chunks missing. Even sealed up in this tomb, time has taken its toll on them… though you can’t help but notice that the damage has only affected the parts that have Hieroglyphs. The monsters themselves are untouched.

"Duel Monsters was indeed inspired by ancient carvings!" a voice cuts in. "Ones of the same sort as these ones, in fact."

You turn around. It’s one of the archaeologists you passed on the way in here, one of the more memorable ones. A tall man with distinctively long black hair, a broad-brimmed hat, and a pair of square frameless glasses, with a khaki-colored bag slung over his shoulder. "Ah, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you," you say. "I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage."

"My name is Lyman Banner," the man says with a smile. "It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance,

[ ] Mister…?" [ ] Miss…?" [ ] Mister? Miss? I apologize, I’m not sure…"

He trails off, allowing you to respond with your name.

[ ]Write-in

He smiles at your response. "My apologies. I thought I had met all of the other staff here when I arrived on Monday, but I must have missed you."

You shake your head. "I only arrived yesterday," you reply. "You were hired through the Wayman firm, right? Well,

[ ]so was my father. He got permission for me to come out to the dig site." (High School Age. Less freedom than the other options, but easier to interact with the high-schooler members of the cast) [ ]they made an error with my internship paperwork, so they weren’t able to get me out here until today." (College Age. More freedom than a high-schooler, but not old enough for interacting with the high-school age members of the cast to be too weird) [ ]I don’t think Mister Kanzaki trusts your firm that much. He hired me as an outside consultant to oversee things." (Mid-Twenties. Most freedom of the three choices) [ ]Write-in

Banner laughs. "I see! Yes, I suppose I would not have seen you, then." He looks back up at the massive tablets. "So tell me, where did you learn the origins of Duel Monsters? It took me a bit of digging to discover that for myself."

"From Mister Kanzaki," you reply. "I ran into him at the Wayman Offices last night, when I was waiting for the car that drove me out here."

"Ah, yes, Kagemaru is very talkative whenever he has a captive audience," Banner remarks, clearly amused. "No doubt he spoke for hours."

"Only until the car arrived. Though it seems like the only reason he wasn’t able to talk my ear off in the car too is because his health was too poor to handle the drive." You look at Banner curiously as something occurs to you. "It sounds like you know Mister Kanzaki very well, though. On a first name basis with the boss?"

"We met earlier this year," Banner replies. "I won’t bore you with the details, but he was interested in an item in my possession. I ended up mentioning this place while we discussed it, and he became rather insistent on unearthing it." He looks up at the tablets again, and for a brief moment, the smile he’s been wearing vanishes. "I ended up coming along as a consultant."

"Oh, so you’re not with the firm then…" you reply. "You said you ‘mentioned this place’ to him? So you knew about it before the excavation?"

"I don’t think many people know about it even now that the excavation has started!" Banner replies, his tone suggesting a joke only he gets. "But yes. I actually discovered this place years ago, acting on a hunch. I was on my own then, though."

"What, like, no dig team?" You ask, a bit confused. "Didn’t know archaeologists were allowed to do that."

Banner’s smile shrinks a little. "Well, I wasn’t exactly…" He pauses, and raises his hands defensively. "Ah… things happened, and I was on my own when I found this place. I would have come back with a team, but I fell ill shortly after that, so I had other things on my mind." He says. "So, Duel Monsters… you play then?"

He’s blatantly trying to steer the conversation away from the subject of the tomb’s discovery, and it’s working. Not for the reason he thinks, though. You glance around. You know it’s irrational to be thinking what you are at the moment. If it was something in this specific tomb that made him sick, they wouldn’t have sent in an entire firm of archaeologists without making sure it was clear first, right? Banner certainly wouldn’t have come back in here.

"Ah… do you?" Banner asks again. "I suppose you might not. Not everyone plays…"

"Sorry, I was distracted," you reply. "I do play. I even brought my deck with me."

Banner’s smile returns to normal. "What a coincidence. So did I!" He turns away from the stone slabs to look at the rest of the dig site. "Most of the firm will still be on break for…" He glances at his wristwatch. "Another forty minutes. Would you care for a quick game?"

"Certainly!" You look around. "Ah, there’s a table right over there!"

Indeed there is – about fifty feet away, near the center of the chamber. There’s some tools for cleaning artifacts resting against the legs, but the table itself looks clear. On an unspoken agreement, the two of you start making your way over. It takes you some detours to get there – there’s a wide set of stairs in the way, going down, along with a large number of items partway through being examined or prepared for removal – but it doesn’t take too long.

As you reach your destination though, you realize the table isn’t actually unoccupied. There’s a set of five objects on the end, still partially caked in dust and dirt. It’s a rather eclectic assortment of items, too; a ring, a metal band, some kind of glove, a concave disk, and some fragmented thing you can’t quite identify. All of them seem to have the same eye symbol on them, though.

You remember these, come to think of it. They came from… right over there. There’s a stone cylinder not far from the table, jutting out of the ground to about the height of your waist. A glance confirms that this is where the items came from; there’s a bunch of slots in the surface, and it seems like the items would fit in there. There’s actually eight slots in it though, not five.

You turn back to the occupied table and sigh. "Never mind, we’ll find somewhere else."

Banner waves a hand dismissively and pulls a chair up to the table. "No, no, it’s fine. So long as we use the opposite end and don’t get too close to the artifacts, we’ll be fine."

You contemplate that. It is a rather long table… There’s enough room to have a game while still keeping at least a foot between them and the cards.

"Alright." You shrug and take out your deck, and are mildly surprised when Banner immediately does the same, pulling it from a holster on his belt.

"You actually brought it with you into the tomb?" you ask, holding back a laugh. "I thought you’d need to fetch it from outside!"

"You brought yours in here as well," Banner points out.

"Well I’m a notorious weirdo, what’s your excuse?"

Banner laughs. "I am very fond of dueling!" He says. He undoes the buckle on his bag and starts pulling out some odd items, continuing to talk as he does. "I actually tried my hand at being a professional duelist some years ago, in fact!"

You glance at the items he’s setting aside. A magnifying glass, a flat piece of gold-ish colored metal, a pencil and compass, some vials of colorful liquid… "I didn’t take you for the type, I admit," you say. "Is all that dueling equipment then?"

Banner chuckles politely at your joke as he pulls out a couple of loose duel monsters cards and sets them aside. "No, no, these are for the dig," Banner says. "I just happened to leave– ah, here we are!"

Banner triumphantly pulls out three items – two life-counters, and a large coin. "I left these at the bottom of my bag," he explains. He hands you one of the life-counters, and then sets the other two objects down as he starts to shuffle his deck. You begin to do the same.

"So, you tried to go professional?" you ask.

"Only for a short while," Banner says. "I managed to get into some national tournaments, but after my health began to decline I had to stop and focus on other things. Hopefully my skills have not gotten too rusty!"

"Well I guess we’ll find out!" you reply as you set your deck back down. You want to say more, but Banner picks up the coin and holds it against the table by its edge.

"So, heads or tails?"

"Tails."

Banner nods and flicks his fingers, sending the coin spinning into the middle of the table. After a moment it wobbles and falls over… landing on heads. You nod, having expected exactly that. Your weird luck, at it again.

Banner reaches over and grabs the coin. "I will be going first, then."

"Alright." You start to draw your opening hand… and hold back a smile as you draw your first card. Your best – or at the very least, favorite – monster was the top card of your deck. That seems like a good sign. You quickly draw four more cards, and it becomes even harder to keep yourself from smiling. This opening hand…

[ ]Tri-Horned Dragon, Final Attack Orders, D.D. Warrior Lady, Spirit Barrier, Rush Recklessly [ ]Zoa, Ultimate Offering, Green Gadget, Mirror Wall, Solemn Wishes [ ]Sengenjin, Horn of the Unicorn, Fairy Meteor Crush, Iron Blacksmith Kotetsu, Call of the Haunted [ ]Magician of Black Chaos, Sonic Bird, Xing Zhen Hu, Rogue Doll, Waboku [ ]Write-in

It’s more or less the ideal starting draw for your deck. Depending on how good Banner actually is, you may just have time for two games today.

---

Hello everybody, Arkanian here! Reading the various Yugioh quests on SB – as well as a certain game I’d been playing – got me inspired, and I decided to try my hand at writing a Yugioh quest!

In regards to the deck selection above, each of those opening hands represents a deck with a specific theme, and the vote option is supposed to represent a strong opening hand that also shows off that theme:

• The first deck is a battle-focused deck – it wants to battle often, and it wants to force its opponents to battle instead of defending.
• The second is a machine deck, that also has a copy of Ultimate Offering as a key card to help it bring a large number of them out to the field. It also has one each of the green, red, and yellow gadgets to help with this.
• The third deck is an equip spell focused deck, but is one of the more flexible ones in terms of the options it has during chargen.
• And finally, the fourth deck is built around summoning ritual monsters. The deck has four ritual monsters in the starting deck, with options to buy more during chargen.
• As for write-ins, they should go with a similar format: Ace listed first, with the remaining cards indicating the deck’s theme. I reserve the right to veto any write-ins, however, and not necessarily just for power reasons either; these four decks were chosen for very particular reasons, which you may already be able to surmise.

Mechanics This quest’s mechanics are

plagiarizing

heavily inspired by those in Have You tried Dueling It Away by The Great Walnuts over on SB – it isn’t broken, so I see no need to fix it. There are some modifications to it, but if you’re familiar with that quest you should have a general idea of what to expect. Some of these differences can be a bit important though (And obviously not everyone will have read that quest, seeing as it’s not on this site), so I’ll still be going over it below.

DP In DiA, new cards were acquired from stores by spending DP, or Duel Points. This quest will be doing something similar. You’ll start with a large amount of DP to spend during chargen, and can usually earn more when you win duels… as well as certain other methods, that will be explained in more detail when the quest starts covering them. These points can be spent to acquire cards – for example, should you go shopping for booster packs, I will provide a list of cards that could potentially be acquired from said packs along with a DP cost for them, and you can spend DP to buy those cards.

Unlike DiA however, DP will be spent on more than just acquiring cards from shops. Many instances where you acquire a card through other means – such as via spirit world shenanigans, for example – will require you to spend DP. There will be certain traits and abilities that can potentially be acquired or upgraded through DP expenditure, or even require DP to use (One notable example of which will be introduced in the next update). All told, DP will not be representing money as it does in DiA, but rather the expenditure of something a bit more supernatural.

Custom Cards These will be a thing. Not necessarily a common thing, but a thing. Don’t expect them to be easy to acquire, though.

Ryumancer @Ryumancer was gracious enough to provide help with balancing this quest. They’re the ones who built the starter decks for the options up above, they’ll be the ones determining how much DP things will cost, they’ll be assisting me with any custom cards that come up, and they’ll be helping me figure out what cards should and should not be available to you. Balance, especially in regards to how much things should cost, is something I have very much struggled with in the past… so if you like this quest, be sure to thank them for it! I doubt it would be happening without their help.

The Format This initial (And short) duel with Banner will be in Yugioh’s initial format – 2000 Life Points, with no tributes required. However, most duels in this quest will be in the more familiar Battle City rules, with 4000 Life Points and tributing required for monsters above level 4. This includes what is most likely to be the next duel after Banner. We may end up dipping back into the Duelist Kingdom format if I can’t come up with a reason to avoid it, but Battle City rules will be used for the majority of duels in this quest. Fortunately, I at least have a story reason for this to be the case.

Fusion So, just to make it clear ahead of time: This quest’s protagonist will not be using fusion monsters. This is partly due to reasons of plot, and partly due to a combination of personal taste and wanting the deck to be more focused on your Sacred Beast once you eventually acquire it.

Anachronistic Cards Some of you may have noticed a few cards in the "opening hand" vote that were a bit… out of place. Gadgets, for example, were printed at the beginning of the GX era. Generally I try to limit card availability to what would have plausibly been around at the start of the series, but I ended up being a bit more willing to fudge things than I initially intended. Generally speaking, cards printed in 2000 or earlier are fair game, 2000 to 2003 can show up if I feel they aren’t too out of place, and cards from 2004 should show up only if there isn’t a substitute (Such as the gadgets, which are rather important to the making the deck they’re in work). Cards from 2005 onward are off-limits.

This only applies to cards that originally came from card shops, however. If you acquire them through other methods, all bets are off.

Anime Card Effects

Cards will be using the anime version of their effects when possible. If a card is using its IRL effect instead of its anime effect, I will do my best to warn you ahead of time if reasonable (On that note, of the cards listed in the opening hand votes above, one specifically uses its IRL effect instead of its anime one: Mirror Wall. It’s a bit too strong without the upkeep cost I’m afraid).

Update as of the 11/19 update ("Fork"): After some issues with this approach, and some subsequent discussion, Ryumancer and I have decided to primarily use IRL card effects instead of anime ones. There will be exceptions of course – Relinquished and Brain Control both used their anime-only effects rather extensively before this decision(and thus will be grandfathered in), and things like the God Cards and the Sacred Beasts will of course be using their more powerful anime effects (Or at least something like them) – but you can assume that the IRL version of a card will be used unless otherwise stated. Like before, I will do my best to warn you of exceptions ahead of time if reasonable.