Khan has other uses. Please see Khan (Disambiguation) for other meanings.
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Attention! Spoiler ahead! This article contains plot information that may spoil major story aspects for the reader. Read at your own risk! |
| “ | You reap what you sow, Artyom: force answers force, war breeds war, and death only brings death. To break this vicious circle one must do more than act without any thought or doubt. | „ |
— Khan | ||
Serdar Iskanderov (Russian: Сердар Искандеров), also known as Khan (Russian: Хан, pronounced Han) is a wandering soldier, philosopher, and occasional associate of the Spartan Rangers.
Biography[]
Not much is known about Serdar before the War, except that he took his wife (then girlfriend) Yana to the Tretyakov museum on their first date. According to him, he chose the museum because he wanted to "come across as more refined".
Later at some point, the couple went to an exhibit of local Buryat artists celebrating their Mongolian heritage. It is at that place, Yana somehow was convinced that her spouse is the living reincarnation of Genghis Khan, becoming so enamored of the idea that she talked Serdar into undergoing hypnotic regression. While he didn't remember anything he said under the hypnotic state, both Yana and the psychiatrist assured him that he was "quite the convincing warlord." He however, found it conflicting "to forever be associated with a man who murdered millions of people."
At some point during or after the War, the couple split up, with Yana going to live in Tretyakovskaya, where her son Petya had died.
2018[]
After the war, Serdar, now already being referred by his companions as "the great Khan", was living in Polyanka when one day, the station was attacked by nosalises. After blowing up the airlock, he got wounded; and was forced to close the station gate on his friends, trapping them inside with the nosalises. Few months after the incident, Serdar met Yana, and the couple reconciled over their grief.
A decade later, he revealed that few days before the incident, he had a premonition of it in a dream, but didn't tell anyone to spare himself from getting ridiculed. The fact that he could have saved those people was the main cause of his grief.
More than a decade and half later, he would visit the place again with Ulman, making the latter experience the fateful event through a vision.
2028[]
At some point, Serdar and Yana settled in Akademicheskaya station, where he would occasionally do errands for the station master Max, while Yana would tend to the mushroom farm. Yana's mental health had deteriorated to the point she was suffering from vivid hallucinations, and had to take regular doses of Haloperidol to keep herself in control. Unbeknownst to Serdar however, she had been throwing away her medicine.
One day, Serdar comes back from an errand to find out that Yana, in a fit of delusion, had nearly destroyed the mushroom farm. When he confronts her, he is shocked to learn the truth about her throwing away the medicines. Desperate to bring her back to normal, Serdar goes to Max, who informs him that only a trader named Nata has the medicine, but she is away from the station. Despite Max's warnings, Serdar sets out to get the medicines. Nata and her caravan's path went through the outskirts of the Tretyakov, which made Serdar reminisce on his first date over the radio to Max when he himself is passing through the area.
When going over a narrow portion above the archives section, the floor collapses, causing Serdar to fall down below and pass out. He eventually regains his consciousness and catches up to Nata's caravan. Unfortunately, they were all killed in what looked like some sort of ritual, with a snake-like insignia painted all over the place. Nata seemed to have committed suicide, and the box of medicines with her was empty. As Serdar reports this to Max, Yana walks in and hears the medicine name over radio; immediately suspecting what had happened. Max, however, diffuses the situation saying it's just a scavenger working for him and goes radio silent to avoid further trouble.
As Serdar is making his way back, he comes across a group of scavengers who had lost some men of their own, and after fighting/sneaking past them, Serdar reports this to Max over the radio. Unfortunately for him, it is Yana on the radio, having already squeezed the truth out of Max. Disappointed and angry at her husband for risking his life over some "stupid medicine", she lashes out at Serdar for "trying to fix what cannot be", and storms out. By the time Serdar comes back to the station, Yana is nowhere to be found.
Serdar finds Max near the old smuggling tunnels, and is informed that Yana went in there alone, despite Max trying to stop her. The tunnels stretch all the way to Tretyakovskaya, which is where Yana's son Petya died. Ignoring Max's warnings, Serdar goes after Yana, with a reluctant Max agreeing to guide him over radio. En route, Serdar starts hearing strange voices over the radio, one of them matching his own. Max however, can't hear them, and brushes it off as someone being in the same area. Serdar indeed finds a few scavengers looking for items in a railcar, and fights/sneaks through them.
After opening a lever-controlled door, Max's signal gets lost. Serdar encounters another group of bandits; after passing through them, he somehow ends up on the same room again; the door closed. However, after opening the door again, Max tells him that it had just been moments since Serdar got cut off. Afterwards, Serdar finds himself to have arrived at Tretyakovskaya, which Max doesn't believe as it is impossible to reach there this fast without a trolley. However, Yana is nowhere to be seen near the memorial, and as Serdar is looking around, he is knocked out. After seeing a vision of a ritual sacrifice, Serdar gains consciousness and finds himself locked in a cell beside Yana.
Yana reveals that a group has been preying on people who come to the memorial; capturing them for a slave ring. Serdar pleads Yana to come back with him, but Yana tells him that Petya is there. Serdar gets angry, calling her delusional and rebuking her for not taking her pills. Their conversation is however cut short as the slave merchants come and take Yana and an old man locked up with them away. Serdar eventually breaks free and hears a female voice over the radio after retrieving his backpack. The owner of the voice identifies herself as Oksana, looking for her husband Alex; both were attacked by the slave merchants near the memorial. Just then, the power goes out across the whole station.
When Serdar asks Oksana about Yana, she says the slave merchants are loading people in the train depot, and agrees to guide him. Serdar makes his way through the ventilation and plumbing section, witnessing the slavers running away. Oksana reports that something supernatural has attacked the station. As Serdar makes his way out of the station, he encounters the old man from earlier, and asks him about Yana. The old man only replies that they went to Hell's Mouth, and the Worm likes children, but Yana won't understand that. Confused, Serdar leaves him.
Afterwards, Serdar asks Oksana about Hell's Mouth, to which she says it could be a place that is supposedly haunted by the souls of missing children. Serdar is dismisses it as superstition. Upon reaching the train depot, he finds a few people enslaved in a cage on a train. However, when he comes back after opening the doors, they are not to be found anywhere. Serdar eventually stumbles upon hanged corpses with the same insignia drawn everywhere, followed by the remains of a mutilated corpse (evident that it was cannibalized). Despite being shocked and horrified, he pushes forward to find another train with cages on it. The prisoners and the guards are all dead from poisoning, but luckily neither Yana nor Alex is within them. Stumbling upon yet another mutilated corpse beside the insignia drawn on the wall, Serdar realizes that the insignia represents not a snake, but a worm. Just as he moves forward, a strange man shoots at him with a blow dart before vanishing in the dark. When Serdar tells Oksana this, she tells him that a woman she once met in Oktyabrskaya claimed her son was kidnapped by the dead who used blow darts. Serdar again dismisses it as superstition. He soon hears people trapped in a metro car who request him to bring power back so they can go home. Upon turning on the generators and entering the railcar however, the voices suddenly stop and Serdar finds no one except skeletons that has been lying there for ages. When he reports this to Oksana, she says that she didn't hear any people. She then informs Serdar that the slavers are sending reinforcements to the depot. After fighting his way through them, Serdar finally finds Yana trapped in a cage, but she refuses to come along; instead telling him to go away. As Serdar holds onto the departing train with Yana on it, he suddenly gets pushed by Yana which knocks him out and he sees the same vision again. The ritual is revealed to be performed by Genghis Khan for "eternal peace to prevail".
After waking up he decides to search for Yana, and while talking to Oksana she reveals to not know where she is, and is unable to touch or see anything, which leads Serdar to believing she could be a hallucination, and after accusing her of not being real Oksana stops responding to him. While continuing on he ends up in a room within the metro that inexplicably loops onto itself, forcing him to listen to voices in the pipes to escape, after which he somehow finds himself in Polyanka, with his friends from the station seemingly alive. Barely believing what he is experiencing, he decides to entertain the idea and help them against a group of nosalises. Serdar lives through more experiences with ghosts, including finding a book for one of his friends from the station so he can be at rest, which leads to Serdar finally accepting that the ghosts and the experiences he has been living through are real.
Khan has another hallucination of the ritual, and after waking up talks to Oksana and accepts that she is a ghost, and seeks to find Yana's lost son, Petya. Finding himself back in Akademecheskaya after cultists had attacked it, he sees that a gigantic ball of spirits, which is the worm that the cultists praise, consumed Max. Khan finds the Orthodox Shrine and reunites the spirit of Oksana with the spirit of her husband, with both of them bidding farwell. While searching for Petya, Khan follows his voice on the pipes of the metro and finally finds his spirit. Petya tells Khan that he can hear his mother's voice, which can lead them to her. Both of them pass through catacombs filled with spirits and find themselves in a very decorated snowy station. Khan leaves Petya there while he searches for Yana.
Khan finds himself in a station filled with cultists, and after fighting through them, finds the room from his visions relating to the ritual, only to be knocked out. After regaining consciousness, he finds himself locked up in a cage. He sees Yana on the table, with the priest recognizing Khan as Genghis Khan and sacrificing Yana in front of him, only for the worm that the cultists praise to appear and start going through the station which drops the cage and lets Khan talk to Yana's spirit. Khan tells her that he has finally found Petya, but that she has to follow him. After fighting through the station while the worm destroys it, both of them get back to the snowy station which lets Yana finally be with Petya again. Afterwards, a ghostly white train appears alongside many white spirits in the station, and both Yana and Petya bid farewell to Khan, with Yana telling him that they will see him later, after he is done with what he has to do in this world.
2033[]
Khan in 2033 is a mysterious person and is familiar with the various paranormal or mystical phenomena in the metro and possesses a very powerful and charismatic personality, which even lead to Artyom wondering whether he was a wizard. With his aid, Artyom manages to survive a trip through a hazardous ghost-occupied tunnel. The questions Khan asks Artyom will echo in his mind multiple times.
Khan is first encountered at the end of the Dry level, where he comes down from a hatch after Bourbon's death. He tells Artyom that he's returning to Cursed Station, and advises to follow if he doesn't want to share Bourbon's fate. The two of them then travel though a tunnel where "neither man nor beast walk", as Khan puts it. The tunnel is full of ghosts, and Artyom discovers the rumors of the "singing pipes" to be true. Khan is revealed to have been the only surviving member of a group of men guarding a barricade near the end of the tunnel a long time ago.
Upon arriving at said barricade, Khan tells Artyom to remain silent and stay behind his back. Khan begins to chant something that makes the ghosts of his former comrades move and allow them to pass. He asks him not to question what he chanted and to forget seeing or hearing what he did. During the Ghosts level, Khan gives Artyom several survival tips, and speaks about a variety of legends of how everything came to be. Upon reaching Cursed station, Khan tasks Artyom to blow up the station's airlock and side tunnel while he helps the survivors fend off a nosalis attack. After that, he sends off Artyom through a hatch that leads to Armory Station, advising him to look for a man named Andrew. He is last encountered at Sparta Base.
Khan seems to be one of the few people that believe that the Dark Ones have a right to live. He is also notable for believing that nothing in the world truly is evil; it is just its nature, and it is not man's place to judge.
Khan explores the more mystical and darker parts of the metro featuring ghosts, deadly anomalies, and hordes of mutants attacking human settlements.
2034[]
Khan is the first person the players see a year later, waking Artyom up from a bad dream as he is sleeping in D6. Khan tells Artyom that he spotted a surviving Dark One in the ruins of the Botanical Gardens. As Khan is telling Artyom about the Dark One, Ulman passes through the hallway and glances into Artyom's room and berates Khan, telling him to leave D6. Ulman agrees to take Khan and Artyom to talk to Miller. Khan informs Miller about the Dark One and proposes that him and Artyom should go and look for it. Miller agrees but assigns a sniper along, his daughter Anna, to kill the Dark One. Khan objects and is restrained before being escorted out by the guards on Miller's orders, as Artyom and Anna continue the mission on their own.
Later, Khan, along with the Hanza police, saves Artyom and Anna at the exit of Oktobraskaya. Upon being released from quarantine, Khan takes Artyom to a supernatural place in the Metro which he calls the River of Fate. The River of Fate brings much of Artyom's deeper memories to surface. Artyom is shown a vision of the Dark One on a train and he and Artyom set out to save him. Upon reaching the train, Artyom jumps aboard to save the Dark One as Khan is seen being led down a different path by the rails.
Artyom brings the Dark One to Saint Basil's Cathedral, located at the Red Square in Moscow, where Khan and Miller are waiting for him. Miller is about to kill the Dark One, but Khan convinces him otherwise. Khan and Artyom are shown a vision of the Dark Ones trapped in D6 and urges Miller to open the door to set them free. Khan, Artyom, Miller, and the Dark One travel to Polis, where the peace conference between the Metro factions is being held. Khan interrupts Comrade Moskvin mid-speech, calling him a liar and uses the Dark One to open Moskvin's mind and reveal Korbut's plans to attack D6. Discovering that the Red Line assault force is already in route to D6, Khan joins Miller, Artyom, and the rest of the Rangers in defending the bunker from the Red onslaught. In the C'est la Vie ending, he perishes with the rest of the Rangers when Artyom detonates the bomb to destroy D6 while in the Redemption ending, he leaves the Ranger and disappears without any trace.
In the Chronicles Pack DLC level, Khan and Ulman, the player character, travel to Polyanka station after blowing up the train from the Chase level, by going through an abandoned tunnel. Strange things begin happening to Ulman in the tunnel with many ghostly visions appearing to him. After passing an anomaly, they enter an air vent, but are forced to retreat when a huge horde of hungry rats attack them. By using a torch and a drum with fuel in it, they make a wall of fire between themselves and the rats. Ulman is able to jump-start some of the electrical devices around them to attract the anomaly nearby, which roasts the rat horde and gives Khan and Ulman a clear route to Polyanka. In Polyanka, they see the ghosts of some of Khan's old companions, as well as the vision of a younger Khan and his companions defending Polyanka from nosalises, ultimately resulting in him closing the gate. Khan tells Ulman that he hopes that he will never have to make such a decision again.
Metro Exodus[]
Khan briefly appears in the Eternal Voyage ending of Metro Exodus. After Artyom passes away from radiation, he wakes up aboard a darker version of the Aurora. Upon arriving to the bridge, he meets a shadowy version of Khan, who seems to be reaching out to Artyom from the land of the living. At the time Artyom meets Khan, it seems that Khan was leaving offerings and lighting candles and incense for the deceased; similar to real-world practices in that doing so can help a spirit, or in this case, allow Khan to briefly communicate with Artyom as he is carrying out his task. He says to Artyom he had not thought he would see him there as he expected Artyom to have a better fate, and reminisces a time in which Artyom was a boy who simply wished to remember his mother's face. He also informs Artyom about the world they are in, that the sun never shines, that he can neither stop the train or leave it, and that there are no stations. Khan subtly admonishes Artyom for forgetting his teachings, and tells Artyom that he will be returning to the Metro soon and that he will give everyone in Exhibition Artyom's regards, bidding goodbye.
In the Novel[]
Unlike in the game, Khan doesn't play a large part in the novel. First mentioned by Zhenya as the magician in the metro, Khan helps Artyom at a diseased station before escorting Artyom and Ace to the next station. After a Nazi attack, Khan, Artyom, and Ace are separated from one another, but Khan does find Artyom's home station and gets a message to Artyom regarding his decisions in life as well as Artyom's mission.
According to Artyom, in the English translation of the novel, Khan looked very similar to his in-game model. In the novel "the man was over fifty, but he looked surprisingly fresh and robust. His arms, which were supporting Artyom [at the time of his description], were firm and didn't once tremble with fatigue the whole way back. His short hair was turning grey and his little sculpted beard surprised Artyom - the man looked too well groomed for the metro, especially given the godforsaken place where it seemed this man (Khan) lived". Also in the novel, Khan uses a "strange gun", which could quite well be the Helsing from the game.
In the novel, it's implied that Khan makes Artyom nervous, considering the fact he wanted the conversation with him to end as soon as possible.
It appears Khan has a gift when it comes to convincing people to do something: when he and Artyom were in Sukharevskaya station, Artyom witnessed a man was who was being prepared for execution, having been suspected of carrying disease. Artyom tried to save the man but Khan stopped him with just the look on his face and a few words. Also, when the people of the station were confused on what to do after this event, Khan convinced them to leave the station with him and Artyom without an argument, and lastly Khan managed to scare Ace into surrendering to him when the latter aimed his pistol at Artyom.
Personality[]
| “ | Khan was an unusual man...but I suppose he was also a man of his time, moving between the dark and the light, searching for answers buried in the rubble. | „ |
— Artyom | ||
Khan considers himself "a wolf among jackals" and considers Artyom a "wolf cub". In other words, he is considered a bit of an outcast due to his beliefs and he considers or wants Artyom to be someone like him in sharing or passing on his beliefs, almost like a Khan-in-training. Unlike most other characters in the series, he seems to be quite spiritual, and is acquainted with many of the mystical or supernatural phenomena found throughout the Metro system. This often makes him appear strange or in some cases, crazy to other characters since he knows something they do not, such as how Miller dismisses Khan's attempts to argue that the baby Dark One should be spared. He knows a few hymns to repel ghosts, and knows how to avoid electrical anomalies and use their motion-sensing tendencies to his advantage. He also speaks cryptically to Artyom throughout the game, and one of the things Khan says will come to Artyom's mind depending on whether or not Artyom has been acting morally throughout the game.
He is quite charismatic and knows his way around words, and speaks like a true philosopher at times. He generally accepts the present situation no matter how grim or hopeless it may be, which could also indicate that he is in atonement with the new and hostile reality that he and the rest of mankind now live in.
Khan doesn't believe in one universal time for all Metro system, instead believing that the Sun was the only worthy representative of Time and that once the humans had cut ties with the Sun, continuation of keeping the same time everywhere was meaningless. Furthermore, Khan believes that for some people time goes by faster (or slower) than for the others and by that standards people should time their own time.
Trivia[]
In the novel[]
- Khan calls himself the last incarnation of Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan was the founder, Khan (ruler) and Khagan (emperor) of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death. It's possible that, because of this, the original concept art of Khan depicted him as being more Mongolian in appearance.
- Khan states that he is only known as Wolf in some stations.
- Khan states that his surname is Aitmatov.
- When first meeting Artyom, Khan was wielding a "strange" gun in one hand. He never pulls it out again instead using Artyom's new Kalash, the one he got from Bourbon, or the pistol he took from Ace. In all instances he never fires a single shot, winning with intimidation alone.
- In the novel, Khan is a smoker.
- The manually-powered flashlight that Artyom starts off with in the game is actually given to him in Chapter 6 of the book by Khan, in exchange for the map that Artyom gave him.
- The message Khan delivered to Artyom's station later became his iconic quote in both Metro Exodus and Metro Awakening. It said, "He who has enough courage and patience to stare into the darkness for his entire life, shall be the first to see the flash of light."
- Of all the major characters from both games, Khan is one of the few that appears and is only ever mentioned in just the first book - never to be heard of again in Metro 2034 or Metro 2035.
In Metro 2033[]
- In the Russian versions of both games, Khan is called Хан - which is actually pronounced Han, not Khan. In the Polish versions of the games, Khan is also known as Han. In both cases, it's most likely due to the fact that the "Khan" in Genghis Khan is written and pronounced differently in some Slavic languages (Russian: Чингисхан - Polish: Czyngis-chan; both are pronounced Chingis Han, not Genghis Khan).
- Artyom can earn quite a few positive moral points towards the end from Khan. Simply do everything he asks the way he asked it, and one will earn Moral Points (Example: Listen to the pipes, Avoid Ghosts - don't shoot them, don't shoot the nosalises when the Anomaly is present).
- When finding Khan in Sparta Base, he tells you the quote that can be heard near the end of the game, depending on Artyom's morality. This quote is still said even if Artyom does not speak to Khan. Regardless of the moral points you have, you can always listen to him in the Sparta Base, which will give you more moral points.
- If Artyom chooses stealth approach in the level "Dry", Khan will assist Artyom by silently killing bandits with his Helsing, and the arrows can be scavenged for free. Khan is also the only NPC that uses a pneumatic weapon like the Helsing.
- Khan owns a unique variant of the Kalash, with bayonet and laser sight attached.
- Khan, along with Bourbon, Miller, Ulman, and Pavel, is considered one of the main companions of the video game Metro 2033.
- The very last finishing lines of the game's "enlightened ending" were originally said by Khan in the original Metro 2033 novel.
- The game further accentuates Khan's presence in the ending if Artyom has enough moral points to get enlightened ending. In it, Khan's speech can be heard after Artyom survives the dark one's attack at the end of "Ethereal".
- Khan's hymns in the level "Ghost" is Latin. Khan encourages the ghost to 'walk towards the light' (rough translation).
- Khan and Artyom are the only two known characters to have used pneumatic weapons.
In Metro: Last Light[]
- In Last Light, Khan uses a variant of the Ashot unavailable to players.
- In a lot of promotional images, Khan is shown with a VSV yet he never uses one in the game.
- In early builds, Khan had a Triquetra tattoo known as "Trinity Knot" on his left hand. In the final build of the game, this was changed to a stylized Hand of God tattoo on his right hand which is an ancient Slavic symbol.
- In one of his notes, Artyom wonders about the true nature of Khan, a traveling philosopher, a wizard, or a guest from another dimension.
- During the level "The Chase", he destroys a railcar with an Ashot despite having only one shot.
- Despite being a smoker in the novel, he criticizes Ulman on his smoking habit during "Sparta" and "Khan (Chronicles Pack Level)".
- Khan seems to be distrusted by the Rangers, possibly because of his opinions on the Dark Ones. Artyom himself states that he doesn't trust him. Despite this, he is one of the few non-Ranger members to have access to D6.
- Khan himself is probably not a full-time member of the Order, since he lacks any kind of uniforms and Ulman urges him to leave D6 since it's "classified and Khan shouldn't be there". Although Khan is seen sharing the Order's duty and tasks such as protecting Cursed Station or helping at Oktyabrskaya.
In Metro: Awakening[]
- Serdar used to despise the name Khan because of its association with Genghis Khan but has since accepted the name during his journey with Petya's ghost.
- Khan's bandana as seen in Metro: Last Light and the Redux versions is revealed to be Yana's as seen in the ending.
- Serdar is often called Doctor by both himself and the people around him. Whether he earned that designation before or after the war is unknown.
- It could simply be due to him treating people in the Metro, he earned it.
- Serdar is also called "Mr. Rational" by Oksana and Max due to his refusal to believe in supernatural and paranormal events.
- The whole "Serdar to Khan" transition can be attributed to Serdar slowly discarding the rules of the old world; opening up his mind and accepting the supernatural world of the metro along with the possibility of him being the reincarnation of Genghis Khan.
Gallery[]
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| Metro 2033 | Ace • Anton • Arkadiy Semyonovich • Artyom • Artyom's Mother • Bourbon • Currency Exchange Booth Survivor • Daniel • Hunter • Khan • Kirill • Lenka • Loginov • Melnik • Mikhail Porfirevich • Oganesyan • Oleg • Pavel • Ruslan • Sukhoi • Ten • Tretyak • Ulman • Vanechka • Vitalik the Splinter • Zhenya |
|---|---|
| Metro 2034 | |
| Metro 2035 | |
| Universe of Metro 2033 | Anna • Czeslav Korbut • Euan • Danila Dobrynin • Franz • General Manager • John Daniels • Kamila Czapnik • Paweł Remer • Pavel Morozov • Wesoły • Zhabdar |