Vulkan

Vulkan, The Hammer of Salvation, The Promethean Fire.

Vulkan is the Primarch of the Salamanders Chapter of Space Marines. He is notable for being the only black man 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. 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.

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 Lives. And he's got a big hammer.

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 (what an ass), and with insufferable predictability the stranger revealed himself to be the Emprah. The rest, as they say, is history.

Fate

Vulkan will burn a 'foo to ash instead of pitying him.

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 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 through 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, 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 (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 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 a coffin (or preservation capsule, as he told Johnson 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.

In other words, it didn't really put an end to the debate at all and in fact actually made it even worse. Nerts. Best pick up the pillaging shovel and go coffin hunting...or maybe not, we don't know anymore.

The 6th edition codex more or less confirmed Vulkan was still alive after the Horus Heresy as he talked to Roboute Guilliman about his issues with the Codex (namely the fact that the Salamanders didn't have all that many marines left to fill one chapter left alone two). On the other hand, the 6th edition codex was made before Unremembered Empire was made, so it all boils down to which part of the canon you trust more than the other. Or it could have been simply the First Forge Farther and 10,000 years resulted in people forgetting that wasn't the real Vulkan. However, Vulkan Lives has a quote from a speech that he made to the survivors of his legion on Terra (which hasn't happened yet) so....

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