Vulkan

Vulkan, The Lord of Drakes, The Hammer of Salvation, the BBC. The Promethean Fire. Too cool a guy to complain that Sanguinius got all the glamour genes.

Vulkan is the Primarch of the Salamanders Chapter of Space Marines. He is notable for being one of the very few black men in the galaxy, as well as a fuckawesome smith, advancing a civilization to the Steel Age in a matter of months, as well as being perhaps one of the only likable Primarchs. Seriously, he's like the biggest bro of 40k. He does not pity the Dark Eldar fools who raided his planet.

Like all Primarchs, he was dropped on a far-flung planet as an infant, and worked his way to a position of power. Some Primarchs became powerful by being good at politics and bureaucracy, or by kicking enemy ass. Vulkan did it by being really fucking smart and murdering as many Dark Eldar as he could find with massive hammers, both of which are fine occupations for a Demigod. He also made some really cool stuff, which the Salamanders have been spending all of their free time trying to find. As Primarchs go, he's more or less tied with Sanguinius as being a shining example of this guy, especially compared to some of them.

The only real chink in his moral armor is his out-of-control pyromania. When he banned the use of Destroyers and other terror weapons within his legion as "too cruel," Ferrus Manus pointed out that burning people to death with flamers, volkite rays, and melta weaponry was hardly that much better. He wasn't wrong, but Vulkan was too busy setting a tank on fire with those boosted flamer-pen rolls to notice.

He is also a Perpetual, which means that he regenerates for ANY injury, even the ones that actually kill him. With enough time, he can return from a death which vaporized him to atoms, find the culprit, and kick his sorry ass to one edge of the galaxy to the other. Konrad Curze found this out the hard way. He inherited this ability from his father, which implies that the Emperor is a perpetual as well. This can provoke long and passionate debate.

Notably not the awesome gun, but still a pretty cool guy.

How It All Began

Vulkan will burn a 'foo to ash/slam him into the ground with his BBC instead of pitying him.

The Primarch of the Salamanders legion was Vulkan. Rather than be dumped in a volcano for being a bad omen, as is the fate of many small children who crash on feudal death worlds in space pods, Vulkan grew up the adopted son of a blacksmith, from whom he learned the basics of metallurgy. Of course, being a genetically engineered super-soldier like his brothers he reached adulthood at the age of three and started inventing new alloys like they were going out of style, bringing most of the planet up to the late Steel Age in a matter of months.

Anyway, Vulkan lived out his life more or less as normal for a super-strong genius blacksmith, until the Dark Eldar came to town. Nocturne, it turns out, was a favorite raiding destination for a group of Dark Eldar pirates. The populace, who had advanced to about the iron age before Vulkan came along, generally tended to hide from the space rapists with guns that shoot poisonous glass, but Vulkan didn't share their good sense (possibly having something to do with the fact that he could have tanked multiple RPG-7 rounds to the torso and only gotten mildly pissed off, but whatever). Instead, the first time they came, he grabbed a pair of blacksmith's hammers and went to town on the aliens. He eventually won, driving them off the world never to return, and if this sounds suspiciously familiar then congratulations, you're paying attention. If you also noticed that Vulkan predates that character, making the other one the rip-off, then even better! We will make an expert of you yet!

Shortly after Valt-- I mean Vulkan drove off the raiders, his settlement threw a bigass competition to see who had the biggest man-parts. Amongst the events were to be anvil-lifting, weapon-forging, and bigass fire-breathing dragon-thing slaying. Or something like that. A stranger ended up intruding on the ceremony, and proved himself Vulkan's equal in every contest except the salamander slaying, which Vulkan won by virtue of his own thick-headedness and the stranger saving his sorry ass. Vulkan pledged his loyalty to the stranger immediately after being declared the victor, saying that anyone who valued human life over victory was worth following, and with insufferable predictability the stranger revealed himself to be the Emprah.

...Kind of out of character for ol' Emps, in hindsight. Guess that's what happens when the retcons fly fast and furious in a new age. Maybe he read Vulkan's mind to see what it'd take to get him to join up?

Despite being brought into the fold, the Emperor took the unusual step of not officially revealing Vulkan and keeping him close by for an extended period of time, quite possibly because a massive charcoal-black dude with red eyes might have been too much for a puritanical Imperium to deal with at least initially (all of the initial Terran Salamanders were only "slightly" darkened and had ember eyes, and it was quite likely that Magnus was not discovered yet) or the Emperor considered Vulkan to be too soft and compassionate and needed some tough-love. For a few years during the Great Crusade, Vulkan would not act without wearing his armour or travelling very far from the Emperor himself, thus for a time all people knew was that the Emperor had picked up a gigantic, nameless, emerald champion from somewhere. The only people privy to Vulkan's existence were the other Primarchs who were already discovered, and the Priesthood of Mars.

Vulkan was only officially revealed at the right moment: when 19,000 members of his Legion were under siege by a force of over a million Orks, they were relieved by a "new" force of 3000 marines drawn from Nocturne accompanied by an entire battlefleet composed of warships & war machines of Vulkan's own design, which explains what he was doing with the Mechanicum for those years. Collectively they demolished the Orks and the old Terran Salamanders got to find out who their forefather was.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Fate

Vulkan Lives. And he's got a big hammer.

While the rest may be history, what happened after the Horus Heresy is an absolute records nightmare. During the Drop Site Massacre, the Salamanders took such severe losses that they were reduced to 780 battle-brothers. But the worst part of the Horus Heresy was the fact that Vulkan disappeared (when it happened is somewhat in flux; older fluff and codex:space marines states that it happened some time after the adoption of the Codex Astartes (which Vulkan refused to support), but the new Horus Heresy novels indicate that it happened at the Drop Site Massacre), with no trace of him besides a book listing a set of nine artifacts he had left behind.

In response, the Salamanders created the position of Forgefather, chosen from a Company Captain who would travel the galaxy searching for information on the fate of Vulkan and his nine Artifacts of Vulkan. So far, five have been discovered, three of which are pieces of wargear used by the Forgefather. Another is a massive laser weapon used to shoot out incoming ships trying to attack Nocturne. The fifth is a downed forgeship used to create wargear for the Chapter, which, alongside their unique practices, is the reason they have so many master-crafted weapons. The locations--and even the form--of the other Artifacts are completely unknown. The Salamanders hold that once all nine Artifacts have been located, Vulkan will return to the Salamanders and lead them once more. Like Leman Russ, but with more style.

The Horus Heresy novels Vulkan Lives and The Unremembered Empire threw some new wrinkles into the equation: Vulkan lived and died. Like the Emperor, John Grammaticus, and Ollanius Pius, Vulkan is a Perpetual: a being who can be killed by any means (decapitation, immolation, asphyxiation, having his heart torn out with a rusty fork, etc) and will regenerate from it. He first death occurred during the Drop Site Massacre, where the Iron Warriors launched a tactical nuclear missile at the Salamanders, killing Vulkan and the bulk of the XVIII Legion. Vulkan survived, however, and was given over to Konrad Curze for sick torturous fun. This turned to unstoppable rage when Curze learned he couldn't fully kill Vulkan, so he just kept killing him over and over, getting even more pissed off, which is strange seeing as Curze is a murderous psychopath one would hypothesize this would be a vision come true (one must assume Sevatar and Sheng were pulling straws on delivering Curze bad news at this point) before Vulkan managed to steal Dawnbringer, a thunder hammer originally intended as a gift for Horus with teleportation function included. The hammer teleported Vulkan off the Nightfall (though not before he beat Konrad, who had apparently forgotten "It's also a hammer", to a pulp) and sent him to Macragge, where he burned up on re-entry and resurrected himself again. Unfortunately, the constant deaths drove Vulkan completely insane, into little more than a feral beast, attacking everyone he saw, including Roboute Guilliman.

While this was going on, xenos were doing their thing: plotting. The Cabal, a group of xenos who believed that allowing Chaos to win the Horus Heresy would get the Chaos Gods addicted on human emotions and then destroyed when humanity destroyed itself, sent John Grammaticus with a fulgurite, a piece of the Emperor's psychic lighting encased within a spear, to give to a Primarch with which to kill Vulkan, as they feared he might turn the tide at Terra. However, Eldrad, in an incredibly undickish move, told John Grammaticus that if he killed Vulkan, he could instead heal Vulkan's mind, allowing him to do his desired role. After Konrad Curze arrived on Macragge (after jumping off Lion El'Jonson's battle barge after playing an extended game of hide and seek) Vulkan went apeshit and made a beeline for Curze. During the battle, John Grammaticus stabbed Vulkan with the spear, but it didn't raise him, instead killing him permanently, while making Grammaticus fully human. Guilliman hoped he might revive himself, so he placed him in a coffin (or preservation capsule, as he told Lion El'Jonson and Sanguinius) where he was guarded by some Salamanders who had made it to Macragge, who thought they might have heard a heartbeat. Before you get your hopes up, however, the coffin was named The Unbound Flame, the last of the aforementioned Artifacts of Vulkan. Confusingly, Vulkan had also assigned the post of Forge Father to one marine before leaving for Istvaan, with instructions to destroy all his masterwork creations (what?) so they could never be misused in the future. The new Forgefather protested, leading Vulkan to relent, and tell him to pick out 7 artifacts to remain. Whether these are the same artifacts as in 40k is currently unclear.

Those of you who enjoy plotholes speculation should be getting a kick out of this. While internally consistent, it is almost completely incompatible with Vulkan He'stan's lore, which is just as canon as Vulkan Lives as of the 6th ed Marines codex. Ignoring for a moment the question of "Unbound Flame" was lost to the Salamanders (we'll get to that in a few), "Unbound Flame" was Vulkan's name for the artifact, not Guilliman's, and it's a name that predates the Drop Site Massacre. Also, how the hell did they fit that spear into the coffin? Meh, maybe they just lined it with handwavium. The Horus Heresy Novel Deathfire is based around the Salamander remnants trying to return The Unbound Flame to Nocturne...which lies on the wrong side of the Ruin Storm, giving good pretext for it to go missing.

Deathfire

The novel Deathfire ended up resolving a few issues and creating a few more mysteries. After First Captain Artellus Numeon of the Salamanders is rescued and relocated to Macragge, he goes a bit...crazy over finding out that Vulkan is dead. Weird things happen and the body is briefly stolen (by whom is unknown, though current bets are on the Lion) before being reclaimed by the Salamanders and fast tracked back to Nocturne. In spite of Vulkan's previous resurrection powers (now removed), the remaining Salamanders believe that returning the body to Nocturne would bring him back to life, according to the Promethean Creed. After fighting off a variety of parties trying to get the body back (including a surprising turn from Magnus the Red), Numeon is told, not surprisingly, that the story was allegorical - any resurrection was a rebirth of spirit, ideals, and resolve; not a literal one. After getting a little suicidal about the whole thing, Numeon climbs the slopes of an erupting Mount Deathfire. A rescue party is sent out to find him (or his convection broiled corpse) but instead they find Vulkan, alive and well.

Critical opinions aside, it does at least explain how Vulkan was able to do things post-heresy. It also turns out that the Unbound Flame (or Immolus as it was known on Nocturne), as well as being a title occasionally attributed to Vulkan, was a central concept to everyone on Nocturne - the all destroying fire. Vulkan was also known to place great significance to naming objects, so it's entirely possible that one of the 7 artifacts could still be called the Unbound Flame anyway.

The big question remaining is, just how the hell did he come back to life if he's not a perpetual anymore or why he's not around the present again either? The Dick still seems to think he has something important to do..

Post-Heresy

The 6th edition codex and Vulkan Lives have included quotes from Vulkan after the Horus Heresy, arguing with Roboute Guilliman about his issues with the Codex (namely the fact that the Salamanders didn't have enough marines left to fill one chapter, let alone two) and a speech that he made to the survivors of his legion on Terra, so there's hope that more will happen in the future of the (yet unfinished) Horus Heresy books. But all of this hits a snag when one realizes that it could have been simply the First Forge Farther and 10,000 years resulted in people forgetting that wasn't the real Vulkan.

On top of all this, the February 22nd issue of White Dwarf has hinted that he belongs to a certain Necron's personal collection. Although even this isn't set in stone, because some of the Horus Heresy writers confirmed hey want to give Vulkan Lives a sequel. Get ready for more retcons folks, we'll be dancing this one for a while...

On The Tabletop

Vulkan's model is an instructional manual on how to deploy Hammertime.

Thank you, Forgeworld. We have rules for Vulkan now because of Horus Heresy Book 2: Electric Boogaloo. Remember how Mortarion in the first book got a ton of rules that basically made him unkillable? T7, a bajillionty wounds, saving throws coming out from places he didn't even know he had, rerolling failed It Will Not Die saves? Well, Vulkan gets all that fun stuff too except in a slightly different variety, AND he's as McHUEG deadly in both shooting and assault phases.

	Pts	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Sv
Vulkan:	425	7	5	7	7	6	5	4	10	2+

Firstly, your entire army gains +1 Ld and Adamantium Will while he's deployed, because fuck psykers. He gets to reroll failed It Will Not Die and 5+ Deny the Witch, making him the fourth best psyker-proof Primarch (After Lorgar, Mortarion and Horus) on par with Guilliman.

Vulkan's armor is stupidly good: as if 2+/3++ wasn't good enough, the Draken Scale also reduces the strength of any flamer, fusion, volkite, melta and plasma weapons used against him, BY HALF, rounded down. That means Plasma is only Strength 3 against him. Oh wait, he's T7. That means he's LITERALLY IMMUNE TO PLASMA DAMAGE. The only way to reliably cause wounds on Vulkan is heaping gobs and gobs of ordnance on him or unleash a few dozen Lascannons and hope he stops moving before he gets too close. Or just being a Dark Eldar, with all guns poisoned 4+ or S8 AP2. No wonder Vulkan hates them.

His close combat weapon, the Dawnbringer, effectively makes him Sauron in that one scene before Sauron gets his finger chopped off in the Lord of the Rings movie. You know, where he bats entire legions of dudes around in a single swing? Yeah, that. Not only is the weapon itself Strength 10 AP1 ConcussiveArmorbaneInstantDeath without also being Unwieldy, he can choose to not make attacks normally in combat to place a small blast template (you know, the 3" kind you use with grenades) anywhere in base to base contact with himself that does not cover friendly models. All models under it take a beefy S8 AP3 hit with Strikedown automatically. AKA: Thunk.

Vulkan is fairly shooty, too, something kind of odd for all the primarchs released so far save Ferrus Mannus. Go figure, Vulkan's line-drawing gun was created by the liquid metal-armed one. The best part is both ranged weapons Vulkan carries do not require you to roll to hit, so his below average (for a primarch) BS5 doesn't come into play. One is simply a strength 6 heavy flamer, while the other is an 18" S6 AP2 beam gun with rending. You know how you utilize Beam psychic powers? It works just like that, except there are no deny the witch rolls to be made.

Vulkan VS other Primarchs:

Primarch fighting, while fun to see, isn't a very competitive thing to do as it'll usually tie up both Primarchs for the entire game without either of them dying (Especially in the case of Vulkan. No other primarch is resilient as he is, not even Mortarion. In your face, Khan!) With that in mind this section is about how Vulkan fares against other Primarchs Mathhammer wise. Please note that all the various abilities are taken into accounts when possible and the match-ups assume the Primarchs are the only ones involved in the fighting, so various abilities like Angron's "The Butcher's Nails" and Rampage do not provide any bonuses. In essence, the fights are supposed to happen in a "Vacuum" for simplicity, but notes are added to make things clearer in particular instances. Also all of the Primarch use their most powerful weapons (because why have a contest if you don't do your best?).

• Vulkan VS Horus
  • Horus hits 4.667 times (Worldbreaker), wounds 3.333 times, 1.111 after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.556 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Vulkan hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times, 0.556 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.222.
  • Vulkan lose.

• Vulkan VS Angron
  • Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 3.555 times, 1.185 after saves, and IWND take it down to 0.63.
  • Angron Round 2: hits 4 times, wounds 2.666 times, 0.889 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Vulkan hits 2 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.833 wounds after saves (ID Negates FNP) and IWND will take that down to 0.5 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Thanks to his sheer resilience, Vulkan comes out on top.

• Vulkan vs Mortarion
  • Mortarion hits 2.5 times, wounds 1.25 times, 0.415 wounds after saves and 0 wounds after IWND.
  • Vulkan hits 2 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.833 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.278 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Vulkan wins as mathematically Mortarion is incapable of harming him.

• Vulkan vs Fulgrim
  • Fulgrim Round 1 (And every round he is not Concussed): hits 6 times, wounds 3 times, 1 wounds after saves and 0.444 wounds after IWND.
  • Fulgrim (Every round he IS Concussed): hits 4 times, wounds 2 times, 0.667 wounds after saves and 0.111 wounds after IWND.
  • Vulkan hits 2 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.556 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.222 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • A really close (and long) fight but ends in victory for Fulgrim for even with the 55% chance of being concussed is average damage is 0.261, a little bit higher of Vulkan's.

• Vulkan vs Ferrus Manus
  • Ferrus hits 2.5 times, wounds 2 times, 0.667 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.111 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Vulkan hits 2 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.556 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.222 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • The fight between the two big tanks end in victory for Vulkan, 'cause even though Ferrus does marginally more damage, Vulkan his a bit tougher (or better, he regenerate a lot faster).

• Vulkan vs Konrad Curze
  • Curze hits 4 times, wounds 2.222 times, 0.741 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.185 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Vulkan hits 2 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.833 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.5 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Vulkan win as he is just too tanky for Konrad.

• Vulkan VS Lorgar
  • Lorgar hits 2.5 times, wounds 1.667 times, 0.556 after saves and IWND will take that to 0 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Vulkan Round 1: hits 2.37 times, wounds 1.865 times, 0.932 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.599 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Vulkan Round 2: hits 2.666 times, wounds 2.221 times, 1.11 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.777 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Vulkan wins as Lorgar can't even put a dent on him.
  • Note: as always, psychic powers not included. You know how it would end anyway...

• Vulkan VS Perturabo
  • Perturabo hits 2.667 times, wounds 2.222, 0.741 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.185 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Vulkan hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times, 0.555 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.222 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Vulkan (Blinded): hits 1.333 times, wounds 1.111 times, 0.37 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.037 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Perturabo wins against Vulkan thanks to his Hammer.

• Vulkan VS Alpharius
  • Alpharius hits 2.92 times and wounds 1.136 times, 0.379 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Vulkan hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times, 0.833 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.5 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Vulkan wins without breaking a sweat.

• Vulkan VS Rogal Dorn
  • Dorn hits 2.667 times, wounds 1.481 times, 0.494 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Vulkan hits 2 times, wounds 1.333 times, 0.667 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Vulkan wins again while still not getting wounded back.

• Vulkan VS Corvus Corax
  • Corvus hits 4 times (Scourge)/3 times (Shadow-walk), wounds 2.222 times (Scourge)/1.667 times (Shadow-walk), 0.741 wounds (Scourge)/0.556 wounds (Shadow-walk) after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.185/0 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Vulkan hits 2 times/1.333 times, wounds 1.667 times/1.111 times, 1.111 wounds/0.741 after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.778/0.408 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Vulkan wins.
  • Note: even with Hit & Run Corax will struggle to keep up with the damage output of Vulkan, and if he uses Scourge (the only way to really do more damage than him) chance are pretty high that Vulkan will Hammer him to I 1, thus making almost impossible for him to escape.

• Vulkan VS Roboute Guilliman
  • Guilliman Round 1: hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.083 times, 0.694 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.139 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Guilliman Round 2 and thereafter: hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.778 times, 0.926 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.37 wounds at the start of the next turn.
  • Vulkan hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times, 0.833 times after saves, 0.417 after Armor of Reason and IWND will take that down to 0.083.
  • Guilliman take the win because (after a loooong fight) because he does more damage than Vulkan.

• TLDR version: Thanks to his mere resilience Vulkan is actually one of the strongest Primarchs when it comes down to 1 vs 1 fights, losing mathematically to only four of the Primarchs released till now (5, if we include Lorgar transfigured), and they all will take some time to kill him, even Horus. Also, even though he strike less than most of them, he strike really hard, making him hurt in the same way everyone (except for Rogal Dorn..). Then again, even though he would win almost every fight, he will take his sweet time to do so, so don't ever stuck him in a fight with a Primarch; in his case it will never ends.

The Primarchs of the Space Marine Legions
Loyalist Corvus Corax - Ferrus Manus - Jaghatai Khan Leman Russ - Lion El'Jonson - Roboute Guilliman Rogal Dorn - Sanguinius - Vulkan
Traitor Alpharius/Omegon - Angron - Fulgrim Horus - Konrad Curze/Night Haunter - Lorgar Magnus the Red - Mortarion - Perturabo