>>95882978So the original cards up until like 2005ish, are actually mostly the spirits of the Ancient Egyptian criminals who were sentenced to death by having their souls sucked out and placed within stone slabs which sorcerers could then control and use to fight each other. Pegasus was divinely inspired and recreated these in the modern day as playing cards.
After Pegasus died and the original storyline finished up, Kaiba took over the game and started producing the cards. From that point on it's mostly just the cards are cards.
But these days the anime is concluded and there hasn't been a new anime so yeah, the cards are just cards. Most of them are disconnected from that original lore and have their own lores, some of them spanning over many different decks that tell long stories. Like the Live Twins are part of a fairly small self contained setting that includes other cards like I:P Masquerena, the S-Force, and Time Thieves.
