Kharak

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This article refers to a planet in Homeworld

Kharak burning, with the Kushan Mothership in the foreground.

In the first Homeworld backstory, the Kushan race assumed Kharak to be their home planet. It is a desert planet, and the climate is so inhospitable to Kushan life (which seems essentially human) that they can only live on or near the poles. Many animals on Kharak have adapted to live with the heat by hibernating during the hottest months. By studying them, the Kushan devoloped cryogenics technology, which helped them save their species when their planet was destroyed.

When the Kushan violated an ancient treaty signed 4000 years ago with the Taiidan Empire by entering hyperspace, a Taiidan carrier group induced a firestorm on the planet by firing atmosphere deprivation missiles that reduced the poles to charred wastelands.

It is assumed that there were no survivors beyond the crews of the Kushan Mothership and approximately 600,000 cryogenically frozen colonists (whom the player has to rescue from the remnants of the Taiidan fleet).

In canon however, the planet is then seldom referred to. Homeworld: Cataclysm only mentions the planet twice, just before the Kuun-Lan jettisons the Beast-infected hangar and lower engine modules, Fleet Command says "Kharak forgive us" and when the Faal-Corum entered hyperspace to Hiigara to warn the other Kiith fleets about beast threat, the Fleet Command says "May The Martyrs of Kharak protect you". In Homeworld 2, having reclaimed their ancestral homeworld of Hiigara, Kharak was not mentioned again.