Salamanders army rules, detachment abilities, stratagems and lore for Warhammer 40k, with links to the full unit datasheet table.
The Salamanders are one of the Loyalist First Founding Chapters of the Space Marines. They originally served as the Imperium's XVIII Space Marine Legion during the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy. For some time before their unification with their primarch they were known as the "Dragon Warriors." Their homeworld is the volcanic Death World of Nocturne.
The Salamanders are unusually concerned with civilian casualties compared to most other Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes 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 mortal families and the people of their homeworld after their transformation into Space Marines.
For instance, it is not uncommon for a Salamander to live among the Nocturneans in special Chapter bastions created within each of their homeworld's seven tribal "Sanctuary Cities" when Chapter business does not require him to remain at the Chapter's fortress-monastery on Nocturne's moon of Prometheus, and certainly the Salamanders are looked upon as leaders within their communities. 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 this 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 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 strategic minerals highly prized by the Adeptus Mechanicus, yet the planet has been occupied by Mankind since long before the Age of the Imperium.
When the infant Vulkan appeared on Nocturne, he was discovered by the smith of one of the seven main settlements, a master craftsman who soon taught the infant primarch all he knew. Within a few short Terran years Vulkan had developed into a hulk of a man, his mind as powerful as his body. Soon, Vulkan was teaching the master-smiths of Nocturne metalworking techniques lost to them since the darkest days of the Age of Strife. When Vulkan defeated one of the regular and highly costly Drukhari raids upon Nocturne, he was unanimously acknowledged as their leader.
When the Emperor came to Nocturne to be reunited with His lost son, He chose not to do so with great ceremony as He had in several other cases, and He did not announce His identity, hiding behind an obscuring psychic glamour. Instead, He came as a stranger during the festival to celebrate Vulkan's great victory. By tradition, such celebrations included numerous contests and trials of strength, and so the stranger challenged Vulkan, declaring that the winner of their contest would kneel before the other and declare his eternal fealty.
The resulting challenge saw the stranger and the primarch perform such deeds that no mortal could replicate, culminating in a hunt to slay the largest of the great, fire-loving, native Nocturnean reptiles known as "salamanders" and return to the settlement with its body. During this final challenge, Vulkan slew a gargantuan beast, but upon his return journey the ground opened up beneath him and a torrent of lava surged up to engulf him.
In the great war of the Horus Heresy, many deeds of infamy and valour were writ upon the bloody stars, and at the centre of this maelstrom lay the Salamanders Legion; betrayed, struck down, laid to waste and yet resolute against the foe. There were few Space Marine Legions who paid such a high price for their loyalty and honour as the Salamanders. There are fewer still who have so willingly and so often shed their blood in Mankind's defence beyond their measure and due.
The Salamanders are such a force, and though driven to near-destruction not once, but time and again, they have each time arisen from the ashes of war, stronger and tempered like the peerless steel blades fashioned in the legendary forges of their homeworld: unbroken, undefeated and true to their cause.
As with several of the proto-Legion groupings in the closing stages of the Unification Wars, much remains unknown as to the exact Founding and intake of the XVIIIth Legion. Beyond the usual secrecy and security that the Emperor chose to surround the Space Marine project with, in order to protect the nascent Legiones Astartes both from hostile action and from potential espionage, the origins and early deployment of several early Legion gene-strains are further occluded beyond the modern record's sight.
These Legion-groups were formed and established largely in separation from the rest, and it is generally thought created to very specific ends. There were none save perhaps a handful of the Emperor's closest and earliest confidants surviving from those lost and bloody days who knew the facts regarding this mystery, and the truth likely died with them.
The XVIIIth Legion, that was known for some time as the "Dragon Warriors," and would later become known as the "Salamanders" after the rediscovery of their primarch, along with the VIth (Space Wolves) and XXth Legions (Alpha Legion), comprised this group of proto-Legions. That this "trefoil" of three proto-Legions was somehow veiled from the rest during their creation and establishment was something known to their fellows, but by edict of the Emperor and His agents, it remained unspoken of openly.
This element of mystery surrounding them can be seen to establish a distance between the three and the other Space Marine Legions, at least subconsciously in the minds of their fellow Astartes, particular in regards to their earliest intake of initiates (around which dark rumours circled), which would later blossom into a level of distrust. This distrust would magnify for very different reasons in regards to what would later become the Space Wolves Legion and Alpha Legion over time, but would be ameliorated in the case of the Salamanders by their later conduct and the influence and person of their gene-sire, the Primarch Vulkan.
However, this was not so in their early days, and it is forgotten now by most that at the outset of the Great Crusade, in ca. 798.M30, the reputation being forged by the XVIIIth Legion was a far more bloody and bellicose one than they would later carry. In many ways, the pattern of their early fate was set and prefigured by the first major battle for which they became publicly identified; the Assault of the Tempest Galleries in the dying days of the Unification Wars on ancient Terra.
In this, the Legion alone achieved a victory against impossible odds and survived, although barely, taking savage losses which reduced the newly invested Legion's active strength from around 20,000 to little more than 1,000 warriors, although in doing so they secured themselves a place of glory and honour in the roll of the Imperium's forces.
When Vulkan took over his inherited Space Marine Legion the XVIIIth had already, in the relatively short time since its departure from Terra and the start of the Great Crusade, developed a distinct character of its own.
Although still largely following the guidelines and dispositions laid down by the Principia Belicosa of the Imperial High Command, its scattered deployment and tendency towards asymmetrical engagements (relative to the common operation patterns of the other Space Marine Legions) had created a considerable bias in its structure and tactics.
Company level detachments, numbering a nominal 100 to around 200 Astartes under a single captain, were the principal unit of strategic action and logistical support, with larger battalion and Chapter distinctions in practice seldom needed.
The Legion's senior command conversely acted as a kind of heavy strategic reserve, weighing in with a concentration of force where it was most needed, and dispatching reinforcements as it could across numerous fronts at any given time.
At the battlefield level, circumstance as well as natural temperament focused the Legion's tactics on relatively short-range engagements, where it sought to counteract enemy numbers by the use of confined area engagement or shock assault.
Here the individual physical power of the Space Marine, their ability to endure and relentless fury in battle, could be relied upon to inflict disproportionate damage on almost any foe, although the inherent risks were high. Such tactics naturally lent themselves to short-range but devastating arms such as flame, Volkite ray and Melta Weapons being preferred by the Legion.
Supporting this tendency was the telling factor that even before the Nocturnean influence came to the fore, the technical aptitude demonstrated by the Legion's rank-and-file further served to allow them to maintain and indeed field-manufacture such advanced weapons, even while subjected to scattered deployments and uncertain supply.
One of Vulkan's first actions after taking command was to largely unify his scattered Legion and do away with its ad hoc strategic operations, but he did so in a way that preserved, where possible, the spirit of autonomy and self-sufficiency the component units of the XVIIIth had developed, which he saw as inherent virtues where tempered with purpose.
At the strategic level, Vulkan ordered his Legion into the formation of seven "realms", each linked both in name and spirit with one of Nocturne's seven great city-settlements. To each of these he assigned a lord commander, known also as a "protector," as it was their sworn duty, in addition to that of a warrior of the Emperor, to protect the city-settlement in time of attack (the lord commander of the 1st Battle Company being "Protector of Hesiod," and so on).
Each Nocturnean city-settlement served as a focus of the Legion's recruitment and their governance of the planet, anchoring the Legionaries to the mortal Humans for whom they fought, and each city-settlement went on to exhibit its own unique influences on the XVIIIth Legion's evolving traditions.
The strong links between the Salamanders brethren and the people of Nocturne came quickly to create bonds of kinship and loyalty within each company's ranks. An inevitable degree of competition was also fostered by the nature of this relationship as well which, tempered by Vulkan's teachings, spurred the Salamanders Legionaries to greater heights of achievement and attainment.
The post-Second Founding Salamanders follow the Codex Astartes, but their doctrines are also strongly influenced by the Promethean Cult of Nocturne, an accepted variant of the Imperial Cult, which places a high regard on self-reliance, self-sacrifice, and loyalty to each other as well as to the Emperor.
The hammer and the fire are both important symbols of the cult, and the Chapter makes widespread use of Flamers, Meltaguns, and Thunder Hammers in their Armoury. As one can imagine, this preference for Flamers and Meltas leads to a strong affinity among the Salamanders for close-range shooting when in combat.
Because of their universal early training as blacksmiths, all Salamanders are fully capable of maintaining and performing moderate repair work on their weapons and armour, leaving the Chapter's Artificers with the free time necessary to create great works of technology and metallurgy.
As a result, the Salamanders Chapter has an unusually high number of master-crafted weapons and Artificer Armour. The Chapter also favours the use of Land Raider Redeemers. In an interesting example of juxtaposition, however, the fluctuating gravity of Nocturne makes training with certain units such as Land Speeders and Assault Bikes difficult, therefore the Chapter makes little use of them, favouring instead Devastator Squads and Terminator Squads (the Chapter has 120 Veterans as opposed to the typical 100).
Indeed, it is fitting that the Salamanders should lack fast attack capabilities, as for some inexplicable reason, they naturally have slightly slower reflexes than most Space Marines, probably as a result of mutations in their gene-seed. However, a Salamander's reflexes are still significantly faster than those of a normal Human.
Also, as a result of a reaction between their genetics and the high levels of radiation present on Nocturne due to the constant volcanic churning of rare earth elements from the planet's deep crust, Salamander battle-brothers usually have dark or jet black skin and bright, burning eyes with the capability to see in the infrared band of the electromagnetic spectrum, which gives them a natural form of night vision.
This appearance is entirely superficial, but has intimidated more than one rebel against the Emperor into submission without firing a shot. Trained never to give up or retreat, Salamanders are capable of going on even when their entire squad is dead, holding positions for solar months on end. This is one of the more significant effects of Promethean doctrines upon the Chapter's collective psyche.
Before each battle every Salamander receives an honour-scar from a Promethean brander-priest. This symbolises their respect for the Chapter and the Promethean belief that one must be cleansed by the pain of fire before every major undertaking.
Only Veterans ever receive honour-scars on their faces, as it takes several centuries of battles before every other space on the Astartes' ebon-skinned body has been filled up with the scars.
The Salamanders follow most normal Imperial tactical and strategic dogma, as emphasised in the Codex Astartes, with only slight variations. The Salamanders have a preference for close-ranged fire fights and use many Melta and Flamer weapons to burn whole swathes of infantry troops and to smash armoured foes.
The Salamanders also have an intimate knowledge of the ways of metal and fire, forging great relics and powerful Artificer items. They have more Techmarines than is normal for a Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes, although not a disproportionate number.
Because each Salamanders battle-brother can completely repair, service and modify their own arms, power armour and wargear, the Techmarines of the Salamanders are free to craft intricate and powerful items of incredible workmanship and advanced technology.
This is most evident in the unusual numbers of Terminators in their force, as well as a greater portion of master-crafted weaponry. Their technological resources are also supplemented by regular trade with the Adeptus Mechanicus, made possible by Nocturne's abundant strategic mineral resources.
Self-reliance and craftsmanship are both highly prized traits within the Salamanders Chapter as their primarch Vulkan himself was a great Artificer, forging many wonders. The only primarch able to match Vulkan's skill at crafting was his iron-handed brother Ferrus Manus of the Iron Hands Legion, although Vulkan himself preferred to work the steel over an open flame rather than using advanced machinery and automated smelting technology, just as he had when he was young.
To emulate their primarch, most Salamanders battle-brothers also prefer this pre-industrial method of fabrication and artifice when possible.
Nocturne is the homeworld of the Salamanders Chapter, located in the Segmentum Ultima of the Imperium of Man. It is usually classified by the Imperial Administratum as both a Feudal World and a Death World.
Lore excerpt from Warhammer 40k Wiki on Fandom, available under CC BY-SA 3.0.