original description

Please ignore that this was supposed to be posted for my April Fools prank, I got a really bad case of "gameritis", which stopped me from drawing for a whole month. Last week, I finally managed to finish this piece, which was originally intended as the big finish for April 1st.

I promised a Zeti lore dump and today I'm finally here to deliver. As I've said on an earlier post, Sega forgot to give these six any lore or motivation, so I took matters into my own hands.

Last thursday (which is now actually 3 thursdays ago, because I forgot to post this, lol), as I was getting my highly anticipated Zavok tattoo, my tattoo artist asked what made Zavok turn to a life of crime and evildoing and if he had a tragic backstory that made him act this way. And all I could answer was "No, he's just evil. Lol." (She also asked me to find a cool video clip of Zavok that she can put in the video she took of the tattoo process, but finding something cool is really hard when your only source is fucking Sonic Lost World….)

Here's my awesome tattoo, in case you were curious (You just know it's me because of the awesome SiIvaGunner poster in the background) (And because no one else in the world would get a tattoo of Zavok of all characters):

Swagful Gamer Tattoo
Getting back to the topic, in my head, he does have a tragic backstory, but in that moment, I had to stick to the canon facts. And while I love characters that are just assholes for the fun of it, I think the Zetis really deserve some cool backstory as well. So here I go.

First things first, the Lost Hex in general. Are these six the only Zetis living there? Do any other Zetis exist at all? Where did Dr. Eggman get his information about this "Lost World"? (See what I did there?)

This is where the headcanons start. I think there used to be humans living on the Lost Hex. Not many, but a few who discovered the floating planet and decided to stay there, thinking it was an uninhabited landmass. It was not. They soon learned about the Zeti, who were, admittedly, not the nicest of neighbors to have around. And so the fighting started.

As the fights continued to become more brutal, the humans, who were at a great disadvantage against the Zetis enormous strength, were about to give up, until one of them, by sheer coincidence, decided to chisel a musical instrument out of a Zeti horn they had found lying on the ground. Which they soon discovered had the power to turn the mighty warriors completely defenseless through the power of bad music.

The Zetis were caught completely off guard by this, since they had already thought themselves the victors. Soon, most of them were caught and their horns crafted into more of these obscene instruments, which the humans started calling "conches" due to their peculiar shape.

This is where the Deadly Six finally come in. Not the ones we know, but the original Deadly Six, led by Master Zik. Made up of the strongest warriors their race had to offer, they managed to chase off the humans using clever tactics that wouldn't get them anywhere near their musical instruments. Not without casualties though, as Master Zik was the only survivor of their group.

After their close victory over the humans, some of the remaining Zeti decided to leave the Lost Hex, while Master Zik decided to stay right where he was and rebuild the Deadly Six, to make sure there would be future warriors who were ready to fight once again, should the need arise. He took in some of the orphans who had lost their guardians during the fight with the humans. Five of them.

So while Master Zik trains up his army of children to be the next defenders of the Lost Hex, the human survivors train up their very own "Zeti Hunters" to someday take their revenge…

For the Zetis backstory, I took the slight colonialistic undertones of the original Sonic Lost World and just turned it up to eleven. I'm in no way comparing this to the struggles of the real people who had to suffer the consequences of colonialism, cause y'know. That'd be weird.

Okay, but one last thing about the Zeti hunters. My headcanon is that Dr. Eggman got the conch he has in the game from one of these guys. Maybe he accidentally stumbled across one of their forums and got veeeeery interested when someone mentioned a whole planet that was inhabited by crazy strong monsters who are easy enough to control by playing a little bit of music.

The number six seems to be quite important on the Lost Hex, thinking about it. Hexagons everywhere, the Deadly Six… What are the Zetis anyway? I've seen some manuals describe them as aliens, though I don't believe that. They're supposed to be based on Japanese Oni, which seems more plausible than the alien thing, as they share some similarities to the traditional Oni: Imposing horns, sharp claws, impressive strength and their inclination to violence.

They're not quite as vicious as the average Oni, though. (Well, maybe Zazz…)

Then there's their weird magnetic field manipulation shenanigans. Did they always have this power and only discovered they could control robots when Eggman came to the Lost Hex? I don't think there were any robots on the Lost Hex before Eggman got there. (But since this is the Sonic franchise we're talking about, maybe the humans 100 years ago already had robots with them, lol.) What a random power to give to characters who apparently lived on an undiscovered planet for hundreds of years with no machines to manipulate. Though I did read that Onis were sometimes depicted with lightning powers, so maybe that's why. Wait wait wait…… They do shoot lightning projectiles in the game, right?? Okay, it all makes sense now.

Making up an edgy backstory for the Zetis doesn't change the fact that they're assholes, by the way. This is something I should definitely mention. And while they're not completely beyond redemption (I'd say they're on the same level as Bowser, who also goes karting with his adversaries), they're probably really hard to get along with. They barely get along with each other, much less Sonic and his friends.

Okay, now for the fun part. Speaking of Sonic and his friends… It probably won't shock you if I told you I was a very big supporter of shipping Zeena and Rouge. They probably met at the Olympic Games and have been hanging out ever since then. Most people would make them hate each other, since they're both sassy, fierce women, but I hate pitting bad bitches against each other if I could make them kiss instead. I was about to draw fanart of these two, but I couldn't figure out how to draw Rouge, lol (And I kinda ran out of time. I also wanted to draw Zazz in his punk rock outfit…). Someday, I'll draw swagful yuri of them, I promise. Here's my very bad sketch, though:

Image
I only realized later on that Zeena is way taller than Rouge.

Speaking of really bad sketches, check out this abomination I drew with my sausage fingers on my phone:

Die Gang
If you ever ask yourself how my creative process looks, almost all of my pictures start with an abominable sketch such as this.

That reminds me, I also mentioned on one of my last posts that I wanted to write more about their relationships. My headcanon really burns down to "Let's all be in a polyamorous relationship and not tell Master Zik", just because I think it would be funny as fuck.

But I think that in general, they tend to get along pretty okay, aside from the occasional brawl when they do get pissed off at each other. I saw some people mention that one panel from the IDW comics where Zazz says something along the lines of "Zavok has done much worse" after getting beat up by Espio, which a lot of people interpreted as Zavok being abusive towards his fellow Zetis. But I honestly think it's just a Zeti thing to beat each other up from time to time, lol. Secretly, they all love each other. I always think of this tweet when this topic comes up:

Straight Fire
This is canon to me. (Delusional)

I imagine Zavok would try to act cold and calculating most of the time so as to not let down Ziks very high expectations in him. (I imagine he has a whole complex about that, where he tries to never show anyone any weakness, not even his family, which, you know, is super healthy) But if someone from his pack was in trouble, he would raise hell for them.

Image
Anyway, I think getting him pregnant would fix him. :devilish: (I hope no one read this far)


Aaaaaand I think that's enough Zeti talk for now. My gameritis made me play the Dragon Quest 3 Remake and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 this last month. And ooooh boy Expedition 33. One of the greatest games ever created. I'm currently drawing some fanart for that, so I'll talk more about my experience with the game when I post that. Until then…

Jenny out.