Image Credit: RuneScape Wiki

Well, hello there! In this edition of Forgotten Lore, we’ll focus on one of our dearest Mahjarrat friends, the ever-so-shifty General Khazard. Please note that this article will contain spoilers about some of the more recent lore content in the game, so if you’re not fully up-to-date in that regard, you have been warned!

General Khazard was released in-game almost 20 years ago, in July of 2002. His introduction came in the form of two short but iconic quests, Fight Arena and Tree Gnome Village. In Fight Arena, we helped Lady Servil rescue her husband and son from having to participate (and die) inside Khazard’s fight arena. In Tree Gnome Village, we aided the Gnomish King Bolren in his war against the Khazard troops, who had stolen the orbs that protected the Gnomish people living in the village. Although there’s wasn’t much to his character at that point, he has been incredibly fleshed out since then. So what have we learned since then?

Unlike most of the Mahjarrat that we know, Khazard was not born on the Mahjarrat home planet of Freneskae. Instead, Khazard was born shortly before the end of the Third Age on Gielinor. His parentage was somewhat of a mystery in earlier quest content; his mother was the Mahjarrat Palkeera, who enjoyed a short cameo as a corpse in Uzer during Dishonour among Thieves. In a later quest, Children of Mahi, the identity of Khazard’s father was finally revealed. I suppose, for suspense, I will not mention it just yet either.

After his birth and the sad demise of Palkeera during the Battle of Uzer, Khazard ended up under the tutelage of Hazeel. Hazeel raised him to be a powerful, manipulative and sadistic warlord, although we have to give credit where it’s due; Khazard has been able to gain a massive amount of human following, which is virtually unrivalled within the Mahjarrat ranks. During the Fourth Age, Hazeel and Khazard started their conquest in southern Kandarin. Their conquest was quite successful, with Hazeel gaining control of the area that is now known as Ardougne, and Khazard being able to set up his Fight Arena and Port Khazard on an enormous stretch of land just to the south of modern-day Ardougne. General Khazard did experience an enormous setback when the Gnomes, tricked by our dear friend Glouphrie, declared war on Khazard. This is really a story for another time, though, as Gnomish lore is an entirely different can of worms.

One very important detail about Khazard is that he had a dog, Bouncer. The player slayed this dog during the Fight Arena quest. General Khazard finally took his revenge during the events of a largely forgotten miniquest called The General’s Shadow, in which he tasked the adventurer to find his shadow scouts located all around Gielinor and relay their information back to Khazard, in preparation for the next Ritual of Rejuvenation. Afterwards, with the promise of reward, Khazard lured the player to a cave near the Fishing Guild, where they were attacked by the ghostly form of the deceased Bouncer. During Ritual of the Mahjarrat, General Khazard again opposed the player and allies in their fight against Lucien, but he was swiftly defeated by the power of friendship.

After a small cameo during Missing, Presumed Death in which Khazard and other Zamorakian Mahjarrat intended to stop Sliske’s ascendance, the General saw his next big featuring role in the quest Dishonour among Thieves. In this quest, he was recruited by the World Guardian to be a part of Zamorak’s heist crew in an attempt to steal the Stone of Jas from Sliske. The player finds him in the ruins of Uzer, looking into leads regarding the identity of his father. In the Shadow Realm, the World Guardian finds Palkeera’s corpse and a bloody journal, in which it is revealed that Khazard’s father’s name starts with the letters “Za”. That doesn’t leave that many suspects now, does it? Moreover, the journal talks about Palkeera wanting to prove to the other Mahjarrat that the birth of Khazard hadn’t taken too much of her Mahjarrat prowess, although her attempt wasn’t incredibly fruitful; she was mortally wounded during the Battle of Uzer and retreated into the Shadow Realm to die. Khazard laments this fact, and he joins Zamorak’s heist crew, which subsequently fails to actually steal the Stone of Jas from Sliske. Tough luck.

Things really escalate for the Mahjarrat race during Children of Mah. With the race virtually on the brink of extinction, it is finally revealed that Zamorak fathered Khazard. Luckily or not, everything works out extremely well, and the Mahjarrat live to see another day. The reveals during this quest are phenomenal and have been covered in a previous article of Forgotten Lore, so feel free to check that out!

Most recently, General Khazard was called on by Zamorak to aid Gielinor in the war against the Elder Gods. Not only did he turn up to participate on the battlefield in Senntisten, he was also central to Zamorak’s plan to foil Seren’s attempt on using a mysterious Kharidian relic as a permanent source of necromancy. With the help of Khazard, who steals the relic from Icthlarin after the World Guardian restored it from the ruins of the Duel Arena, Zamorak got his hands on the Eye of Het. He destroyed the relic, believing that the use of the relic would’ve kept everyone trapped in Senntisten in a permanent state of battle. Zamorak did not see this as a good resolution to the Elder God Wars, stating he would rather die free than be trapped in permanent battle in Senntisten.

And that’s it! We have caught up with the current state of the RuneScape storyline. Throughout all of this, Khazard has just sprung out to me as an incredibly unique Mahjarrat, one definitely deserving on his own spotlight in an instalment of Forgotten Lore. Here’s to a bright future for our favourite sadistic Zamorakian warlord!