After wandering the depths of the Cretan Hollow, an amnesiac survivor is given a second chance thanks to the masterful guidance of Phaethon and the daring efforts of the Cunning Hares... But without falling victim to Ether corruption, weeks after ge...
As of writing this, Zenless Zone Zero has been out for a week, and the deeper I go down this rabbit hole, the more I find myself wanting to explore it. This is going to be my attempt at writing a story for ZZZ, and for those of you joining me, let me welcome you to my nonsense with a quick slab of information to get us started.
I want to open up by saying that my stories are known to have OCs, and one OC in particular is a nameless 3rd party that simply goes by "The Player," a universal codename or alias to deliberately substitute their actual name, and for this story, he will serve as a central protagonist alongside the established characters within ZZZ. The Player is not to be confused with the player character of ZZZ, Wise and Belle.
I wanted to start by addressing this because I feel a lot of people are put off by OC-lead narratives in stories involving their favorite series. The Player's concept is inspired by the Angry Video Game Nerd, Nostalgia Critic, and the nameless player characters you often get to choose in RPGs, but the character themselves are inspired by Deadpool from Marvel Comics, the protagonist from Persona and Pokémon games, Ragna the Bloodedge from BlazBlue, and Sora from Kingdom Hearts, so if you're familiar with any of that, the writing and personality should feel familiar in some places.
Because Zenless Zone Zero is still relatively new, I don't expect to get the lore 100% right, which is why I'm going to test the waters with a one-shot. This'll help me see if there's any potential interest for readers to keep the story going. If there are any contradictions or misinformation, please let me know so I can improve any mistakes... I care a lot about accurately representing worlds and characters when writing, so that'll be my top priority.
As a disclaimer, I want to emphasize that I'll be using art from the official game as visual references for certain things, and in the event that I use anyone else's fanart the artist will be credited and I'll provide links to their socials so you can support them. I do not own or claim any of the art that'll be shown throughout the story.
I'm a fan of comedy, parodies, and action (with a particular focus on combat), so expect the primary loop to be focused around those genres.
Okay! I think we're just about done with the talking. To anyone who takes the time to read this, thank you! I truly appreciate you and hope to keep you entertained.
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Story Index
As of writing this Story Index section, it's May 2025. Since starting this story back in July a lot of content has been added beyond the regular numbered chapters. I wanted to make an index as quick guide on what to expect from the chapters so it's easier to jump in for any potential new readers.
Ridu Rewind Chapters These chapters are non-canon and are short bursts of nonsense or comedy sketches that center around self-referential humor. These are few and far between, but they're inspired by omakes you often see in Shonen anime.
Interlude Chapters Throughout Tales of New Eridu you'll often see an established dates and time marked:
Random Play June 4th, 10:00am
I add these to help give readers a sense of time and progression within the narrative. Interlude chapters are much shorter than their numbered counterparts, I want to keep them below 10k words while major chapters are at least 10k+, but, despite their length, Interlude Chapters are packed full of content and should be considered a major read.
They're not crucial to understanding the story later, but they provide insights you should want to see. It also gives me an opportunity to have more characters in the spotlight.
Interlude chapters take place during or in between major chapters. I'll provide an example: Let's say Chapter 1 focuses on the Nicole reaching out to Phaethon to help Anby and Billy in the Hollow and they eventually find them resting after fighting some Ethereals — Interlude Chapter 1 would focus on Anby and Billy, who were already in the Hollow, navigating and fighting Ethereals leading up to their eventual encounter with Nicole and Phaethon who were looking for them in Chapter 1.
Memoirs Every now and then you'll come across non-numbered chapters titled Crumbled Reports or Strange Memo(etc). These are small lore driven reports written from the perspective of certain characters to give readers more knowledge on the narrative or help establish clarity on certain things going on with Tales of New Eridu and Zenless Zone Zero as a whole to the best of my ability.
These are directly inspired by the Lost Items From the Old Capital you can collect and review from doing Hollow Zero missions in the game.
Writer Updates Writer updates are updates I like to make when I have extended absences, be it from work, lack of muse, procrastination, or whatever the case may be. I also use these to post extras like summaries on planned future chapters, scrapped chapters, or sneak peaks on what's being worked on.
Zenless Mix These are new additions as of April 29th 2025.
Zenless Mix chapters are basically extra chapters that are added after I already closed shop on the plans I had for Season 1 of Zenless Zone Zero.
I like to make roadmaps or do my best to plan out how I want to go about going through a story. Because Tales from New Eridu is following the story beats of Zenless Zone Zero, the foundation is already there so it's not too difficult mapping things out, but because Zenless is a live service game, content is constantly being published and things can get a bit challenging when information and characters are being thrown at you with each update.
Zenless Mix chapters should be considered extra content that wasn't originally in the roadmap.
Let me run you through a quick example, but be aware of potential spoilers for content within the 1.7 update. Don't go pass this point if you haven't gotten that far and want to go in blind:
I started writing for ZZZ around the time the game came out, about 6-7 days after July 4th, and I managed to make it to the finale of the Ballet Twins story, so after reaching the endgame, at that point, I already had an understanding of where I wanted to go with writing and characters, but then all the following updates dropped with the Sons of Calydon and Section 6 leading up to the 1.4 update where all the factions came together for the final battle of ZZZ's first season.
As the game continues updating itself, I'm making more roadmaps and keeping a list of notes and details I want added and handled. The game recently introduced characters from the Mocking Bird faction, Vivian and Hugo, and after getting the information we have on Vivian and her ties with Phaethon, it brought up a chance to add something far into the future back in the earlier chapters, which is an opportunity to utilize retroactive writing.
You'll know it when you see it as you read Tales from New Eridu. So far, there has only been one example in which I found it necessary to have a Zenless Mix chapter. If there are more in the future, you'll have an understanding of where I'm going with it and what to expect if you ever see it.
With all that said and done, I hope you enjoy and thank you for your time.
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