The Yugioh AUs Quill and I Play Around In: A Brief Summary of Each
Carvingsverse/Magic AU: Imagine an original magical world with a mythos revolving around Duel Monsters as gods and powerful magicians who have crafted all laws and magics of the world through artisanal crafts, but these powerful magicians fought over how their gifts to humanity have been used, so now their ways are somewhat lost... Yugi is a woodcarver who suddenly gains magic when fate bids him meet both an amnesiac Apprentice who was once the prince of a lost kingdom (Atem) and a lonely Apprentice of a forbidden magic who lives alone in a dilapidated manor on a lake (Ryou). Atem and Thief King grow up together Prince of Egypt-style in this one, the dragons from the DOMA Arc appear (kind of), there are endless cameos of beloved Duel Monsters, and the Ishtars show up in a later side story.
Shadows/Ghost Hunter AU: Ryou and Yugi hunt ghosts, Buzzfeed Unsolved style: Ryou is the lovingly self-titled "ghost magnet" and writes entries for his blog as a full-time freelancer. Yugi is the Tech Guy; between his part-time work as a programmer at Industrial Illusions, he creates their ghost hunting gear and vlogs about their experiences. They take on a haunting case at the Hawkins House and come across some cursed artifacts, which contain malevolent spirits that end up possessing them. The four of them end up uncovering an awful truth about the place-- a truth that ends up threatening their lives.
.hack//YGO, Kaiba's POV: You are Seto Kaiba, the heir to Kaiba Corp, which is mass producing a strange MMORPG that Pegasus J. Crawford created called The World. Lately this game has caused an alarming amount of people to fall into comas, and your adoptive father and his executive team have been covering up the scandal by pinning the blame on the hackers and silencing users who have expressed concerns. While these incidents are none of your concern, your brother has begun to investigate these incidents, and when Mokuba becomes unable to log out of the game (and also falls into a coma irl) you are spurred into action and must figure out how to eliminate the virus that's infected the game - even if it means stooping to the level of a hacker yourself.
.hack//YGO, Yugi's POV: You are Yugi Muto, an average player of The World, and you play with your friends all the time. You enter a dungeon and encounter both a mysterious woman and a strange enemy. As you hear another player telling you to log off, this enemy data drains one of your friends, and they fall into a coma irl. When you next log in you receive a message from a user named Amane, who invites you to Δ Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground, where they explain that their friends have also fallen into comas because of this virus. You work together with this user, unaware that they are your classmate Ryou Bakura, whom you've really wanted to get closer to since he transferred into your class...
Ancient Egypt AU: An AU retelling of the Millennium World Arc… Malik is a newly initiated "tattooed" priest among the Tombkeepers in the Valley of Kings, who are devoted to bearing the sins of the previous kings on their bodies so that they may enter The Duat free of sin (think tattooed priestesses à la Fatal Frame III). He bears the weight of the previous pharaoh’s greatest sin (the Kul Elna Massacre) and pledges his loyalty to the current pharaoh, until an unfortunate run-in while on guard duty with a deeply haunted and corrupted Thief King sets in motion a series of events that calls his loyalty into question and threatens to destroy his own sanity in the process.
