Vulkan
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.
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
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
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 (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.
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.
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 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, 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...
On The Tabletop
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 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).
However, Vulkan's armor is stupid good. 2+/3++ seems par for the course for the best smith in the galaxy, but that's not good enough for dear Vulkan, oh no. His armor 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, and 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 and the strength doesn't weaken as it cuts further into a squad- in fact, it actually gains bonus hits when it passes through more units.
He's not going to win you hand to hand battles against the other primarchs but he excels at demolishing large chunks of troops and vehicles due to the fact he frequently doesn't even have to roll to hit in either shooting or assault. And he hands out buffs like candy to his troops. Utilize that to your advantage, and the fact he can walk through any battlefield sans Titans without fear of taking any sort of damage.
| 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 |