Editing Salamanders (Chapter)

The Salamanders are a [[Space Marine]] chapter based on the Death World Nocturne. Nocturne is a volcanic planet with some truly ridiculous gravity. As such, its people developed a slow, methodical approach to life, coupled with a healthy respect/fetish for fire. The planet's only reason for continued settlement is its rich mineral deposits, making metalworking an important profession to the point of bordering on a priesthood. These traits carried over to the Salamanders, who are known amongst other things for fielding very small numbers of faster units (Landspeeders, Assault Marines, etc.) and for giving every man and his servo-skull a flamer or melta gun. They are also well known for making almost all of their own equipment by hand, importing the few things they cannot manufacture on their home world directly from the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]], with whom they share a less strained relationship than some other chapters.


== 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 spuer-special snowflake just like his brothers, he quickly started teaching the smith and all his buddies about advanced alloys and such. Presumably he had it burned into his brain by the Emprah before he got shot into space. Whatever.

Anyway, Vulkan lived out his life more or less as normal for a super-strong genius blacksmith, until the [[Eldar]] came to town. Nocturne, it turns out, was a favorite raiding destination for a group of Eldar pirates. The populace, who had advanced to about the iron age, generally tended to hide from the guys with shuriken catapults and psychich powers, but Vulkan didn't share their good sense. 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 [http://whfb.lexicanum.com/wiki/Valten familiar] then congratulations, you're paying attention.

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. A stranger ended up intruding on the ceremony, and proved himself Vulkann'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 revealed himself to be the Emprah.

The rest, as they say, is history.


== The Salamanders ==

The Salamanders themselves are perhaps the second most bro-tier of all Space Marine chapters, second only to the [[Space Wolves]]. They regularly act in thankless rearguard or civilian defense actions, as seen on [[Armageddon]], and rather than spend their free time in their super-awesome orbital fortress monastery, they hang out on the planet's surface chilling with the locals.

In terms of tactics, the Salamaders are one of the simpler chapters; "Wait for it...", "Burn that shit" and "Never say die" are about the sum of their tactics. The number of heat-based weapons they can field is truly alarming, as is a certain special character of theirs who can make them twin-linked. They field few if any vehicles, and those they do field tend to be big mobile blocks of armor rather than zippy little flyers. 

Of course, if you ask a fa/tg/uy what comes to mind first when they hear the word "Salamanders," you're likely to be answered with a racial slur. This is because, due to some fuckup in their gene-seed, all Salamanders are black. And not that pussy brown that certain varieties of normal human favor, fuck no. We're talking coal black, hexidecimal code #000000, the missing word in the phrase "...as the void of space." That kind of black.

Did I mention they're big on chicken?