LEGION XVIII SALAMANDERS
Loyalist Legion
The Salamanders are one of the Loyalist First Founding Chapters of Space Marines. They originally served as the Imperium's XVIII Space Marine Legion during the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy and for some time before the return of their Primarch were known as the "Dragon Warriors." Their homeworld is the volcanic Death World of Nocturne.
Primarch Vulkan
Vulkan was one of the 20 superhuman Primarchs created by the Emperor of Mankind from his own DNA to lead his Great Crusade and reunite the scattered peoples of humanity within the Imperium of Man. The XVIIIth Legion, created from Vulkan's genome was re-named the Salamanders after the great fire-resistant reptiles native to his volcanic homeworld of Nocturne in memory of the legendary contest between the Emperor and Vulkan that had involved slaying one of those dangerous beasts. The outcome of this contest had revealed the Emperor's identity to Vulkan and restored the Primarch to the Imperium.
Like his genetic father, Vulkan was a Perpetual, a rare human mutant with the ability to be resurrected from death over and over no matter how much damage his body suffered. Vulkan was able to regenerate fully from any injury, including a death that resulted in his complete disintegration. This ability was unknown to him until the Horus Heresy and his near- death at the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan V. During the Great Crusade Vulkan gained a reputation among its participants for his unusual empathy for a Primarch towards average humans as well as his extraordinary ability to craft unique and powerful items of advanced technology.
Approximately a thousand standard years after the Horus Heresy, Vulkan hid 9 sacred artefacts he had created around the galaxy for his Chapter to find, as a test to see if they were worthy of his leadership. He then disappeared, leaving his Chapter with the message that whenever the Forgefather of the Salamanders had found all nine items, Vulkan would return to lead his Chapter to victory over the enemies of the Imperium in its final days of greatest need, according to the signs foreseen in the Chapter's book of prophecy, the Tome of Fire.
The Legion
Warcry
"Into the fires of battle, unto the Anvil of War!"
The Salamanders are one of the Loyalist First Founding Chapters of Space Marines. They originally served as the Imperium's XVIII Space Marine Legion during the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy and for some time before the return of their Primarch 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 families and the people of their homeworld after their transformation into Space Marines. For instance, it is not uncommon for a Salamander to serve as a clan leader among the Nocturneans and live with them when Chapter business does not require him to remain at the Chapter's fortress-monastery on Nocturne's moon of Prometheus. 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 late 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.