Zarchoomi

While this painting might seem gratuitous, I invite you to image search "p99 zarchoomi." If you've felt I've done her any disfavor, then you can use the contact section on the website to let me know.

There is a lot to talk about with this painting, as well as this character. From a lore perspective, Zarchoomi and her companion, Corflunk, are remnants of a dissolved clan of Ogres known as the Mudtoes, located in the Butcherblock Mountains. There, they hunted and ate the dwarves during raids in the mountains. Finally, their ilk was hunted and destroyed by a dwarf leader named - appropriately - Trondle Ogrebane. Survivors were few, and these two are the ones the players have to watch out for.

From a player perspective, she has been described as "nightmare fuel." A comment from my reddit post that featured her stated "This painting is exactly how she appears in-game, in my memory. Words and all." Another, stated "She's going to catch you and turn you into dwarf pickles. There's no escape."

While there is some humor to these responses that is equivalent to the irreverence of the picture, there is also a reality of the aggressive, roaming mob in these lower level zones. In fact, I have another very famous one in this catalogue of NPCs that is even more famous named Cazel.

Zarchoomi is also an incredible example of character design. While an NPC, she is a playable character model. A person could, and did choose to look like this - to spend hundreds of hours grinding experience and platinum to achieve the highest ranks looking like...this.

EverQuest didn't hold back when it came to some of the darker, or more monstrous designs, even for the playable races. Missing eyes, fused skin from birth defects, battle, or burns cover large sections of dwarven, troll, and ogre faces. Each race is identifiable by their silhouette with a design philosophy that we aren't seeing replicated that much with modern MMOs.

While visually rough on the eyes, she is a beautiful representation of EverQuest's original designs.