Pokusný dlouhý dokument


1.kapitola- Přehled
2.kapitola- Vulkan
Předposlední kapitola- Outlander
Poslední kapitola- The Hunt

1. kapitola- Přehled

The Salamanders as a Chapter are unusually concerned with civilian casualties compared to most other Space Marines 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 families and the people of their homeworld after their transformation into Space Marines.

For instance, it is not uncommon for a Salamander to serve as a clan leader among the Nocturneans and live with them when Chapter business does not require him to remain at the Chapter's fortress-monastery on Nocturne's moon of Prometheus. 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 the 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 late 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 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, 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 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.

With one hand clinging to a rock and the other gripping the tail of his huge prize, Vulkan hung perilously over the surging lava, his mighty strength seeping away after the many days of trials. Only by abandoning his trophy could Vulkan save himself, yet he refused to do so, even in the face of death.

Then, the stranger appeared before him, but His path was blocked by yet another lava channel. Vulkan saw that the stranger dragged behind him a prize even greater than his own, the body of the largest salamander ever seen, which he cast into the lava to form a bridge.

A moment later, the stranger took Vulkan's hand and lifted the primarch and his prize straight up, saving him from death. Upon their return to the settlement the elders declared Vulkan the winner of the contest, for the stranger had returned from the hunt empty-handed.

But it was not the stranger who declared his eternal fealty, but the primarch who did so, going down on one knee and declaring that a man who valued another's life over his own victory was a man worth serving. In that moment, the stranger cast off His disguise and all could see Him for what He truly was, the Master of Mankind, come to Nocturne to find His son and to reunite its people with the rest of Humanity.

Vulkan assumed the mantle of primarch of the XVIIIth Legion, thereafter called the Salamanders. Recruiting from the hardy men of Nocturne, the Legion soon became known for the strength, courage, and honour of its battle-brothers, as well as the skills with which they fashioned their weapons of war.

But the age of Imperial glory was not to last long, for along with the Iron Hands and the Raven Guard, the Salamanders were deceived by Horus into taking their place amongst the doomed first wave of Loyalist Space Marine Legions at Isstvan V, where they were decimated first by the Traitors' defences and then by the treachery of the Legions forming the second wave.

The Salamanders are known to have suffered tragic losses at Isstvan V as one of the so-called "Shattered Legions," though sufficient numbers escaped to save the Legion from extinction.

Records of this age are incomplete at best, and little of the Salamanders' actions or the deeds of their primarch are preserved. The events immediately following the galactic civil war are even more obscured and perhaps known only to the taciturn masters of the Salamanders Librarius.

The XVIIIth Legion appears to have sired no immediate successors, and it is likely that their numbers were so depleted by the events of the Isstvan V Drop Site Massacre that it was not possible to divide it into Chapters.

Several Chapters created much later in subsequent Foundings may share the genetic inheritance of the Salamanders, but no evidence exists of any Second Founding Successor Chapters having been sired.

The extent to which the dictates of the Codex Astartes were adhered to in the aftermath of the break-up of the old Legions varied much, and the Salamanders appear to have obeyed it in some respects, while ignoring it in others.

The fielding of only seven, over-strength companies by the Chapter is one example of this, though in other respects the Chapter is largely compliant with Roboute Guilliman's tome. The ultimate fate of the Salamanders' primarch is a matter of much conjecture, for he disappeared many years after the Horus Heresy.

Some sources state that Vulkan led his Chapter for three entire standard millennia before he departed on some mission he never declared to the Imperium at large, though scant evidence of any of his deeds throughout that age remain. The tale is made all the more mysterious by the fact that Vulkan appeared to have left behind him a text, called the Tome of Fire, within which is locked the nature and location of nine artefacts the primarch willed to his Chapter.

Only when all nine of these "Artefacts of Vulkan" are recovered, as five now have been, will Vulkan judge the Salamanders sufficiently tempered to have passed the ultimate contest. Then, so the legend states, he shall return to lead the Salamanders in the final war against the enemies of Humanity.



1.kapitola- Přehled
2.kapitola- Vulkan
Předposlední kapitola- Outlander
Poslední kapitola- The Hunt

2. kapitola

Vulkan

The Promethean Opus (source of much Imperial knowledge of Vulkan) tells the tale of how one of these children ended up on the feudal Death World of Nocturne. Among the hardy and stoic people of Nocturne, the infant Vulkan had fallen like a blazing comet, and into the home of a "Black-Smiter," a metal worker by the name N'bel, in the city-settlement of Hesiod, who took the infant primarch as a foster child.

N'bel recognised the child as the one prophesied to be a saviour by the teachings of the Promethean Cult, and named him Vulkan. Like all the primarchs, Vulkan grew very quickly, reaching full adulthood (and a size bigger and more muscular than any man on Nocturne) by the age of only three Terran years. He was also highly intelligent, able to vastly improve the already considerable metalworking skills of the famed smiths of Nocturne.

Quickly, he had risen in strength and wisdom, embracing the culture which had taken him up, working in his adopted father's forge and hunting the great saurians and other beasts bestirred by the planet's fiery temper, becoming a legendary champion in his world's defence against far more dangerous foes; "Dusk Wraiths" as they were known in Nocturne.

In reality, these creatures were of the most degenerate and vile class of Aeldari slavers (Drukhari), nightmarish beings to whom pain and slaughter were as meat and drink, who sought to prey periodically on the hardy people of Nocturne for their own wicked sport.

The Opus tells that during Vulkan's fourth year, his town was attacked by the Drukhari, who were on a slave-taking expedition. The people of his hometown hid, as they usually did when the decadent xenos came raiding, but Vulkan refused to hide. Armed with only a pair of blacksmith's hammers, he roused the people from hiding and drove back the assault, single-handedly slaying a hundred Drukhari warriors.

As word of the battle spread, the headsmen of the seven most important settlements on the planet came to pay homage to Vulkan, swearing to forevermore crush their foes rather than hiding from them. Against this threat Vulkan became transformed, and his legend spread across his world.

He was the "fire-born" -- an undefeated warrior whose superhuman strength had torn the slave-barges down from the sky and crushed the xenos in droves, and whose granite-like flesh had scorned their poisoned blades unmoved, driving the Dusk Wraiths from Nocturne.


1.kapitola- Přehled
2.kapitola- Vulkan
Předposlední kapitola
Poslední kapitola

Předposlední kapitola- Outlander

Outlander

The stranger asked only to be allowed to compete. The stranger claimed that he could best any man at the competitions, causing many people to laugh at the seemingly inadvertent comparison to the superhuman Vulkan. Vulkan accepted the challenge, and the stranger wagered that whoever lost the challenge would swear his eternal loyalty and obedience to the victor. With a smile at such effrontery, Vulkan agreed to the stranger's terms.

Lasting for eight Nocturnean days, the contest included many tests of strength and endurance. The people of Nocturne were treated to the spectacle of two godlike beings competing against one another, utterly astonishing the mere mortals around them with their superhuman prowess. Many of the contests had to be called a draw between Vulkan and the fair-skinned stranger, for there was simply no way to determine a victor.

For instance, the anvil lift, where the contestants were required to hold an anvil aloft above their heads for as long as possible, ended in a tie when the two superhuman competitors both held anvils aloft for half a local day with no sign of tiring, while all the other competitors had given up after mere solar minutes.

All the subsequent contests saw similar outcomes, and by the end of local day 8, Vulkan and the stranger were tied in the overall tournament. To break the tie, the elders of Nocturne decided that the winner would be determined by the test of salamander hunting.

Assessing that this task, impossible for any others, would be a formality for both godlike contestants, the elders included the caveat that the contestant who brought back the largest salamander would be proclaimed victorious.


1.kapitola- Přehled
2.kapitola- Vulkan
Předposlední kapitola- Outlander
Poslední kapitola- The Hunt

Poslední kapitola- The Hunt

The Hunt

Vulkan had forged a huge warhammer, and the stranger a keen-edged sword. They both climbed to the summit of Mount Deathfire, a massive volcano said to be the home of the largest Firedrakes, the most fearsome species of salamander, on the planet. Vulkan found his prey first, smashing its head off with a single blow from his hammer.

As he carried the carcass back, the volcano unexpectedly erupted. Vulkan was nearly thrown off a cliff, but managed to grab onto the edge with one hand, stubbornly grasping the tail of his prize with the other. Vulkan held on for several solar hours, but his hold finally began to slip. It was at that time the stranger reappeared, carrying a salamander larger than his own. The stranger quickly threw his carcass into the lava flow, using its heat-resistant hide as a bridge to cross over and save Vulkan.

Vulkan was declared the winner when they returned home since he had a salamander hide and the stranger had lost his, but Vulkan silenced the crowd. He knelt before the stranger, stating that any man who valued life over pride was worthy of his service. At that moment the stranger at last revealed Himself to the primarch as his genetic father, the Emperor of Mankind.

Vulkan would take his rightful place as primarch and master of the XVIIIth Legion and ruler of his adopted world.

Vulkan's only reservation on departing Nocturne for the Great Crusade was that he would not leave its people undefended, but in this the Emperor countered that Vulkan's duty was not simply to one world but to many, worlds that knew the terror of the darkness and the feasting of alien horrors uncounted as Nocturne had, and that Nocturne itself as the homeworld of a primarch would forever be secured by his sons, the XVIIIth Legion which bore his blood.

Tuto stránku spravuje V.Soukup