Shao Kahn POV
The Warp whispered endlessly, but Shao Kahn did not listen. He commanded silence in storms, discipline in madness. The voices of the gods were many, screaming in ten thousand dialects of hate, lust, decay, and ambition. But his own voice — deep, brutal, absolute — drowned them all when he chose to speak.
He did not worship Chaos.
He used it.
The Orks of Mundrak-Thresh were a blight on the galactic edge — unruly, savage, endless. They tore at anything with engines or flesh. But they also lacked something Shao Kahn valued: direction.
He did not come to enslave them. No. That would be wasteful.
Instead, he came to conquer.
Not their minds — too dull. Not their souls — too wild. But their instinct. Their need to follow the strongest. To charge into slaughter behind the loudest roar. That was something he understood.
That was something he would take.
He landed alone.
No legions, no banners. Just his hammer — Wrathgore — and a crown of fused bone and iron etched with runes of Khorne and disease-spread sigils of Nurgle. His blessings burned like bloodfire under his skin, yet he felt no pain. Only hunger.
From a mountain peak of rusted metal and fungus, he called out.
"BRING ME YOUR WARBOSS!"
His voice echoed across the twisted valley. It broke rocks. It silenced gunfire.
And it worked.
Within hours, they came. Hundreds. Then thousands. Green-skinned, stinking beasts, drawn by the challenge, the promise of violence. Their chieftains bellowed, demanded, threatened.
Shao Kahn crushed the first ten without speaking.
He left their skulls impaled on a spike of his own ribs — torn from his chest and reformed by Nurgle's gift of grotesque regeneration. He let the blood soak into the soil, a promise and a curse.
Then came Graghkutz, the warboss of Mundrak-Thresh, twice the height of a man and wielding a double-chainklaw ripped from a Salamander Dreadnought.
"OI, YA WANNABE GIT! WHO D'YOU FINK YA ARE?!"
Shao Kahn answered by walking through his army.
He didn't dodge. Didn't block. He let bullets and blades scrape his armor, let their crude weapons gouge sparks from his skin. Each wound healed. Each scream he answered with a hammer blow.
Until he stood before Graghkutz.
"Who am I?" Shao Kahn asked, lifting Wrathgore.
"I am your Khan. Kneel."
Graghkutz roared and charged.
The fight was short.
The hammer struck once — through jaw, skull, spine, ground. Graghkutz didn't even twitch before his head exploded into fungal gore.
Silence followed.
Then, a low chant rose.
"KHAAAN! KHAAAN! KHAAAN!"
They didn't even know what the word meant. But it didn't matter.
They followed now.
Massacre at Rho-Vermar
He led the horde to Rho-Vermar — a feudal industrial planet of Mechanicum loyalists and scattered Imperial militia. A testing ground. A message.
The skies broke first — waves of Orks in looted ships, crashing through void-shields, screaming and killing without tactics. But behind them came something worse.
Shao Kahn.
He didn't need to lead in battle. That wasn't his role.
He was the symbol.
Where he appeared, Orks fought harder. Where he pointed, they charged. And when defenders saw him — this towering titan wreathed in plague-smoke and war-energy — they fled. Or died.
He walked through fortress walls.
He snapped Knights in half.
He broke a Titan's kneecap with one swing of Wrathgore, then climbed the wreck and drove the hammer into its exposed core.
By the end of it, Rho-Vermar burned. Its people were bones. Its cities, ash.
And atop a throne of bloodied steel, Shao Kahn sat, watching his "allies" feast on machine priests.
He did not smile. He did not gloat.
He planned.
His Thoughts
"These Orks are not an army. They are a storm, blind and deaf. But storms can be directed. Nudged. Not controlled. That would be a fool's task. But aimed? Yes… they can be aimed."
He had no intention of ruling the greenskins.
They were a tool. An extension of his will. Their belief in strength could be harvested, molded. Nurgle had shown him how to rot their spores selectively. Khorne had given him the strength to endure their frenzies.
But it was his will that mattered.
The gods bickered above — Tzeentch schemed, Slaanesh whispered, Nurgle sulked.
Only Khorne respected action.
That's why Shao Kahn was chosen. Not for his loyalty. But for his victories.
He stood over a pile of skulls and let blood drip from his gauntlet.
He thought of the Joker.
That mad thing in a man's skin.
He didn't trust him. But he recognized him — like a wolf recognizes a jackal. Dangerous. Unpredictable.
But useful.
"Joker is chaos in flesh. But I… I am its hammer. One day we will clash. But not yet."
For now, Shao Kahn would bring more worlds to ruin. Let the Imperium feel the weight of his kind of war. Let the other Champions play at corruption and whispers.
He would bring annihilation.