The Kham The Ork Resource Document

~AMAL's Hit Show~
Kham the Ork is a 30 minute crime drama aired on Amalgamated Studio's prime networks. It stars Engel Gilligan as Kham the Ork, a loose cannon shadowrunner from the ghettos of Seattle, as he attempts to “make a name for himself” in the dramatized world of the shadows. Originally a pay-by-network only series aired late at night in accordance with acclaimed Korean director Glenn Yuen's eccentric demands, it became exceedingly popular for a night time drama and in order to bring in more ratings, Glenn Yuen was fired after Season 1 and replaced by a newer American director, Hague Bernie. It lasted six years from 2045 to 2051, airing eight seasons. Reruns air frequently on all of AMAL's channels.

The only characters who appear in every season are Kham, who survives the unthinkable without batting an eyelash, and Twist, a human dog shaman who appears frequently whenever Kham needs his advice, always telling Kham to tone it down a notch. All other named characters typically have a low life expectancy. A brief list of characters is as follows:

Kham the Ork: A seattle-born ork, Kham is portrayed as an extremely tall red-skinned ork with enormous, unblinking eyes, a cyberarm on his left side, and baggy clothing to hide his array of weapons. He does not trust anyone because he believes that everyone is out for themselves. Although he prefers to work alone, he frequently finds himself working with others due to job specifications or just dramatic circumstance. He has no code of ethics at all, he will kill men, women and children regardless of race or species. Although his goal in the short term is to make as much money as possible without getting caught, he is not greedy and will usually give away all his earnings he does not use on food, housing and transportation to charity. His long term goal is “making a name for himself”, presumably intended to be a philosophical statement on the dichotomy of cautious indecision and action, but after Glenn Yuen left the show this statement became more and more vague and unexplained. Kham the Ork has wielded many different weapons throughout the show but is most commonly seem with an Ingram Smartgun and an Ares One Monosword.

Twist: Twist is a Japanese-born dog shaman who is Kham's only “friend.” He is a cautious type who works closely with the corporations in Seattle due to his sister, Gertrude Verner, being under employment at Renraku. He occasionally helps Kham out of trouble and always tells Kham that his loner demeanor and tendency to kill at the drop of a hat will eventually turn the whole city against him. Throughout the first few seasons, Twist performed no magic; all of his supposed castings being done offscreen. In Season 4 it was revealed that Twist can no longer cast magic because he suffered an enormous amount of drain saving his sister from one of the spirits he summoned and couldn't control. In the final season, Twist is held hostage by the fictitious dragon Hässlich in an attempt to get Kham to give up a dragon egg he had stolen. After much deliberation, Kham decided that he would rather shoot Twist himself than be made a fool of by a dragon, and Twist bleeds to death soon after.

Sally: Sally is a flirtatious human magician who appeared briefly in the first season under the employ of a gang of bounty hunters, attempting to seduce Kham so his guard is down. Kham does not respond to her advances and in a rare display of mercy, tells Sally to run after killing the bounty hunters. In Seasons two and three, she appears again, this time leading a band of shadowrunners that Kham eventually joins up with. In the climax of season three Kham is nearly ran out of Seattle by Lone Star after a botched run, and when Sally's runners tell Kham to stand down and give up, he kills all of them.

Dodger: Dodger is an elven decker who was engaged in a relationship with Sally. Dodger displayed an intense hatred for Kham and always tried to outdo him. He was killed with the rest of Sally's runners in  the season 3 finale.

Ghost-Who-Walks-Inside: A native-american human street samurai, Ghost was a foil to Dodger in that he maintained a fairly positive relationship with Kham for a while. The two discussed the crude philosophy of their derelict lives and sparred frequently. However, in the season three midpoint, the runners are approached by an employer asking them to assassinate one of the daughters of the Cascade Crow Council. Ghost is extremely offended by the prospect and turns down the job on behalf of his team, but when Kham sneaks out and does the dirt deed, Ghost finds out and the two attempt to kill each other. Their first duel ends in a draw after Kham tumbles out a six-story window, but Kham gets the drop on him when he kills Ghost with the rest of Sally's gang.

Hässlich: A dragon who owns the fictional corporation known as Morningsong, which produces agrinomic food for most of Seattle. Hässlich serves as the main antagonist for most of the series and is often behind many of Kham's failings. In the final season Kham fights the dragon by himself, failing to give in the dragon's demands pertaining to Twist. In what is often considered a poor ending to the series, the second to last episode ends with the two locked in a struggle with no sign of either winning, and the last episode serves as an epilogue, where Kham's fate is left ambiguous, but the dragon died of food poisoning after devouring a poison-ridden Gertrude Verner. Hässlich is an obvious parody of the actual great dragon Lofwyr, who, after learning of the resemblance, manipulated the writer's guilds of UCAS to go on strike, which may have led to the show's declining ratings in the later seasons and rushed ending.

~Themes~
Glenn Yuen described the Kham's quest as “a development of individual consciousness.” A common feature of each episode is a two to five minute long stream of consciousness speech from Kham the Ork, thinking to himself but appearing to be talking directly to the audience. As the show continued, these speeches became less about what Kham thought about each run and more what he thought about his own actions.

The pitfalls of Kham's runs frequently involve the risks of individualism in a profession where thoughtless, nimble adaptivity is valued above all. Though Kham frequently reaps a large amount of profit from doing runs “his way”, he makes many enemies throughout the way that make his life difficult.

On occasion, the show has been somewhat political. In one particular case in Season 5, Kham began investigating the reason why elves live so long and orks do not. These tracts were harshly criticized by Tir Tairngire and Tir Na Nog and the plotline was dropped as a result.

~Reception~
The show was AMAL's biggest hit upon it's first airing and continued to maintain it's popularity during reruns, securing Kham a place in the biggest names of pop culture. With the exceptions of seasons six through eight, all seasons of the show were well reviewed amongst critics.

In spite of it's generally warm reception, Kham The Ork has received scathing words from various outlets. Syndicalist Elves and Orks in particular are generally not fond of the show. Kham The Ork's elven characters are almost always snide, catty, egocentric and demonstrably racist, and as a result the show has been accused of pedaling anti-elven attitudes. Orks feel much the same way, believing that the show enables negative stereotypes about their kind. It does not help that Kham's actor,  Engel Gilligan, had to maintain extensive makeup to look as “rowdy” as Kham and has shaken hands with the leaders of supposedly anti-ork governments like the CAS and Aztlan, so he is often considered a “traitor to his kind.”

~Merchandise and Marketing~
Kham The Ork's popularity has gone down a little since the 2060s in favor of more modern crime dramas like CrimeTime and Orxanne. However, back in the 2050s a number of Kham merchandise was produced, including clothing, figurines and simgames. After the Ares “One” Monosword took off when Kham used it on the big screen, Ares Global Entertainment attempted to sell specialized “Khamblades” made to more closely resemble his blade, however, it was removed for the markets after Knight Errant complained that Ares had begun to encourage shadowrunners.

Kham the Ork had a short-lived animated spinoff called “Kham's World”. It was a Rick & Morty-esque cartoon where Kham experienced a spontaneous unexplainable awakening and began to explore the Metaplanes with Twist, which increasingly ridiculous results. The absurd, hole-filled storyline combined with the poor animation/voice acting and the lack of resemblance to the original show led to the show's early cancelation.

~The Real Kham~
The character of Kham is based on a real shadowrunner who of course went by Kham. He goblinized in 2024 making him one of the first sixth world orks and one of the first ork shadowrunners.  Contrary to his portrayal on the trideo screen, Kham was not a team killer by any stretch of the imagination. He actually worked with nearly a hundred different runners and had a good reputation amongst almost all of them. This is likely how trideo executives got word of him in the first place.

The real Kham looks nothing like the Kham on screen—Kham is short, fair-skinned, and has short blond hair. He was, however, a street samurai with a cyberarm on his right side who indeed used an SMG and a sword. He too was a fierce fighter who gunned through dozens of professional killers without taking much damage. He's a bit smarter than the Kham on the trideo and is much less keen to use black humor or individualist soliloquy. In fact, Kham is not an individualist at all. Nearly everything he did he did for advancing the rights of ork-kind. He was one of the main factors in the advancement of the Orzet language and believed that elves were naturally predisposed to hate and oppress Orks. Because of this, he is a controversial figure amongst Ork radicals and the shadowrunners who still remember him. Nearly all of these people, however, agree that the show is over the top and ridiculous.

In 2050, Kham was forced to make a deal with Lofwyr after a toxic mage ran off with one of the dragon's lodestones. Knowing that he would be indebted to the dragon for life, Kham vanished without a trace after that run and has never resurfaced.

Kham was actually a homosexual, contrary to his completely asexual portrayal on the trideo. One of the reasons for this discrepancy might be his relationship with a young ork named Trilby. At the time, Trilby was 16 and Kham was 29. Sexual relationships with minors is more common amongst orks than humans, however, it remains illegal throughout the americas.