FALLOUT Lore: Ch.9 - Great Khans
This entry was posted on April 4, 2014
At night the wasteland is dotted with towns that light up the darkness. Each one is some settler's attempt at rebuilding civilization. The wasteland holds endless wonders and mysteries and you'll never see them from within the walls of one village. Life on the road doesn't leave time for growing crops or herding brahmin, so some people survive by taking what they need. Such predatory behavior is hardly commendable, but it does take strength to live the life of a raider, and who doesn't respect strength?
Every few miles there's some new group of raiders on the prowl, always certain that their strength gives them the right to prey on the weak. And every damned one of them has a theatrical name and flamboyant heraldry. The Fiends, the Jackals, the Yakuza. Every pack of chem-addicts that stumbles across a history book just decides to play dress-up and terrorize the nearest village.
Fallout New Vegas Fiends
Fortunately, most raider gangs don't last long. Entire groups can be exterminated in one fight gone wrong, or the whole lot can overdose on a batch of Med X that's been cut too pure. But a few of the raider gangs have managed to stick around for generation after generation, and the most resilient by far is the Khans.
A long time ago, many years before even the Great War, there was a place called Mongolia. Home of the Khans, some of the toughest warriors the world had ever seen. They were led by a man called Genghis, and under his rule they came closer to conquering the world than anyone else. Even a thousand years later people still know the name.
The Khans of the modern wasteland aren't actually descendents of the originals from Mongolia. They came out of Vault 15 in 2121, along with a few other raider gangs, and the people who founded the village of Shady Sands. The folks that settled down in Shady Sands couldn't wait to start rebuilding civilization, but the rest - they took a liking to the wasteland just as it was.
Some of those survivors from Vault 15 formed a gang called the Vipers, a band of kooks that worship snakes. They'll be remembered in the holotapes because one of them managed to kill the High Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel a century ago. But the Vipers are nothing compared to the most infamous raider gang that came from Vault 15. The Khans.
The Khans value strength above all other qualities. When that vault opened they knew that the world had become a place where the strong would thrive while the weak became prey. For years they ranged through the remains of Arizona and California, stealing what they could carry, razing anything left behind. Under the leadership of a man called Death Hand they thrived in an age where other bands barely managed to survive at all.
In time Death Hand grew old, his body covered in scars from a lifetime of battle. Even then there was only one person who had the might to best him in a fair fight, his own son Garl. The Khans would only accept leadership from the greatest warrior among them, and there is no truer test of a person's strength than a fight to the death. Garl killed his own father for the right to lead the Khans and took the title of Death Hand as his own.
He led the Khans in their raids against Shady Sands and other towns in New California for years afterwards. Many settlers considered him nothing more than a bullying low-life brute, but others suspected that Garl Death Hand was merely seeking a worthy foe.
If Garl had played his cards right, he might have lived long enough to have a son of his own and one day pass on the title of Death Hand but, before he could produce an heir, he met his end. In 2162, Garl and his gang had kidnapped a girl from Shady Sands, and she turned out to be the mayor's daughter, Tandi. That was a step too far for the people of Shady Sands, and it wasn't long before some do-gooder in a Vault 13 jumpsuit showed up at the primary Khans camp demanding that Garl release her. The legend of the Vault Dweller had just begun, and the Khans couldn't have known just what they were up against, but Garl had finally found a true equal to face in combat.
