During a spell of time when everyone retreated to the safety of their homes and didn’t go out much, a small horde of creatures appeared in our house.
Day by day, one by one, they popped up. We called them tanukitsune.
It seems they were the offspring of a fox (kitsune in Japanese) and a tanuki. Tanukis are racoonish, badgery animals that live in Japan. Foxes and tanukis have a reputation for being tricksters and shape-shifters.
We assumed their children would be full of tricks too.
“Are those plague puppies?” Someone asked, since they were born when a plague of virus was enveloping the land.
We responded that they were Tanukitsune-sans. And after a while, that got shortened to Sans. They were Sans. We were pretty sure they had appeared to trick the virus into staying away, using their special skills.
Eventually, we ended up with a deck of 58 different Sans. Each is its own unique self, yet they belong to four tribes. There are 13 Sans plus a wild card in each tribe. The wild cards are tardigrades. There are also two jokers—Coronia, the corona virus, and a Japanese supernatural creature called Amabie, thought to keep the plague away.
The suits are: the Silky Sans, the Cotton Sans, the Boro Sans, and the Odd Sans.
For more information, see the full site here: Saga of the Sans
Submitted by Liza Dalby, Alameda County – Berkeley.