Salamanders - Salamanders: The Salamanders are one of the Loyalist First Founding Chapters of the Space Marines. They originally served as the Imperium's XVIIIth Space Marine Legion during the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy. For some time before their unification with their primarch they were known as the "Dragon Warriors." Their homeworld is the volcanic Death World of Nocturne.The Salamanders as a Chapter are unusually concerned with civilian casualties compared to most other Space Marines and believe that one of their most important duties is to protect the lives of the Emperor of Mankind's innocent subjects whenever and wherever possible. This is an attitude that developed as a consequence of the Salamanders' own unusually close connections to the Nocturnean people, as they are one of the only Chapters of Astartes who continue to interact with their mortal families and the people of their homeworld after their transformation into Space Marines.For instance, it is not uncommon for a Salamander to live among the Nocturneans in special Chapter bastions created within each of their homeworld's seven tribal "Sanctuary Cities" when Chapter business does not require him to remain at the Chapter's fortress-monastery on Nocturne's moon of Prometheus, and certainly the Salamanders are looked upon as leaders within their communities. The Salamanders and their people as a whole are also defined by their adherence to a variation of the Imperial Cult called the Promethean Cult.The story of the Salamanders and the legend of how their Primarch Vulkan was reunited with the Emperor is one of the few stories from the time of the Great Crusade told in a coherent form across many different worlds of the Imperium. How much of the so-called Promethean Opus is factually accurate is unknown, and in many ways unimportant. The fact that the Salamanders have stood for ten thousand standard years as paragons of strength, honour and resolution is the true legacy of their primarch, and one that endures into the dark epoch of the 41st Millennium.The Salamanders hail from a world wracked by constant volcanic instability, but possessing the very rarest kinds of mineral resources. The violence of the cyclic volcanic activity creates and churns up minerals highly prized by the Adeptus Mechanicus, yet the planet has been occupied by Mankind since long before the Age of the Imperium.When the infant Vulkan appeared on Nocturne, he was discovered by the smith of one of the seven main settlements, a master craftsman who soon taught the infant primarch all he knew. Within a few short Terran years Vulkan had developed into a hulk of a man, his mind as powerful as his body. Soon, Vulkan was teaching the master-smiths of Nocturne metalworking techniques lost to them since the darkest days of the Age of Strife. When Vulkan defeated one of the regular and highly costly Drukhari raids upon Nocturne, he was unanimously acknowledged as their leader.When the Emperor came to Nocturne to be reunited with His lost son, He chose not to do so with great ceremony as He had in several other cases, and He did not announce His identity, hiding behind an obscuring psychic glamour. Instead, He came as a stranger during the festival to celebrate Vulkan's great victory. By tradition, such celebrations included numerous contests and trials of strength, and so the stranger challenged Vulkan, declaring that the winner of their contest would kneel before the other and declare his eternal fealty.The resulting challenge saw the stranger and the primarch perform such deeds that no mortal could replicate, culminating in a hunt to slay the largest of the great, fire-loving, native Nocturnean reptiles known as salamanders and return to the settlement with its body. During this final challenge, Vulkan slew a gargantuan beast, but upon his return journey the ground opened up beneath him and a torrent of lava surged up to engulf him.With one hand clinging to a rock and the other gripping the tail of his huge prize, Vulkan hung perilously over the surging lava, his mighty strength seeping away after the many solar days of trials. Only by abandoning his trophy could Vulkan save himself, yet he refused to do so, even in the face of death.Then, the stranger appeared before him, but His path was blocked by yet another lava channel. Vulkan saw that the stranger dragged behind him a prize even greater than his own, the body of the largest salamander ever seen, which he cast into the lava to form a bridge. A moment later, the stranger took Vulkan's hand and lifted the primarch and his prize straight up, saving him from death. Upon their return to the settlement the elders declared Vulkan the winner of the contest, for the stranger had returned from the hunt empty-handed.But it was not the stranger who declared his eternal fealty, but the primarch who did so, going down on one knee and declaring that a man who valued another's life over his own victory was a man worth serving. In that moment, the stranger cast off His psychic disguise and all could see Him for what He truly was, the Master of Mankind, come to Nocturne to find His son and to reunite its people with the rest of Humanity.Vulkan assumed the mantle of primarch of the XVIIIth Legion, thereafter called the Salamanders. Recruiting from the hardy men of Nocturne, the Legion soon became known for the strength, courage, and honour of its battle-brothers, as well as the skills with which they fashioned their weapons of war.But the age of Imperial glory was not to last long, for along with the Iron Hands and the Raven Guard, the Salamanders were deceived by the Warmaster Horus into taking their place amongst the doomed first wave of Loyalist Space Marine Legions at the Drop Site Massacre of Isstvan V, where they were decimated first by the Traitors' defences and then by the treachery of the Legions forming the second wave. The Salamanders are known to have suffered tragic losses at Isstvan V as one of the so-called "Shattered Legions," though sufficient numbers escaped to save the Legion from extinction.Records of this age are incomplete at best, and little of the Salamanders' actions or the deeds of their primarch are preserved. The events immediately following the galactic civil war are even more obscured and perhaps known only to the taciturn masters of the Salamanders' Librarius. The XVIIIth Legion appears to have sired no immediate successors, and it is likely that their numbers were so depleted by the events of the Isstvan V Drop Site Massacre that it was not possible to divide it into Chapters.Several Chapters created much later in subsequent Foundings may share the genetic inheritance of the Salamanders, but no evidence exists of any Second Founding Successor Chapters having been sired.The extent to which the dictates of the Codex Astartes were adhered to in the aftermath of the break-up of the old Legions varied much, and the Salamanders appear to have obeyed it in some respects, while ignoring it in others. The fielding of only seven, over-strength companies by the Chapter is one example of this, though in other respects the Chapter is largely compliant with Roboute Guilliman's tome.The ultimate fate of the Salamanders' primarch is a matter of much conjecture, for he disappeared many standard years after the end of the Horus Heresy. Some sources state that Vulkan led his Chapter for three entire standard millennia before he departed on some mission he never declared to the Imperium at large, though scant evidence of any of his deeds throughout that age remain. The tale is made all the more mysterious by the fact that Vulkan appeared to have left behind him a collection of sacred texts and other objects, collectively called the Tome of Fire, within which is locked the nature and location of nine artefacts the primarch willed to his Chapter.According to Chapter belief, only when all nine of these "Artefacts of Vulkan" are recovered, as five now have been, will Vulkan judge the Salamanders sufficiently tempered to have passed the ultimate contest. Then, so the legend states, he shall return to lead the Salamanders in the final war against the enemies of Humanity.