The 40k Lorecast - Episode 115 - The Salamanders, rise of the 18th legion and Vulkan

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

On today’s cast we talk about the Salamander (finally). Starting with the origins of the 18th legion and their actions during the unification wars. AKA underground bunker attack! We then talk about the after affects of this, namely the 18th legion being a tiny legion in comparison to the other legions. And just before they were potentially going extinct we jump to Vulkan! And his super fun but also weird origin story, namely the point where he meets the emperor and they have a very strange competition.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to 40K lore cast with me, John Barcotti and Brad Chester. This guy. Today, after Brad is fully recovered from his disappointment of Gaines Workshop releasing the other Vulcan model, not the one he wanted. Robble, robble. And also not giving us a codex with salamanders. We're going to cover the almost as noble as ultramarines, salamanders.

Salamanders. As always, 40K lorecast is a weekly show covering the lore of the Warhammer 40K universe. releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern, please follow the cast, comment on it. It really does help us out, and it takes a second of your guys' lives. If you like the cast, you want to hear more of it. Come on over to our YouTube page, the 40K lore cast.

There you're going to find some of our earlier episodes, converted over with imagery, our live Q&A session, and our other show, the history of 40K, plus some other ones coming up in 2026. This is 2026 or 27, and yeah, it's all there already for you guys.

Congratulations. You're late to the party, but you don't have to wait for me. Well done, John. Well done. There's always a win. In the show notes, there's also a link to our Patreon. Our Patreon's really by helping us out quite a bit with equipment, expansion, this kind of

stuff. We're able to actually hire editors and the like to help us expand in new areas. Our Patreon has one tier. It gets you the show ad free. It's $4.99 a month. That's it. Or if you're more of the quiet type, 4.34 euros. Now that's today dollars.

I never know what the euro is going to be when you guys listen to this, by way. But let's just say you live in Memmigan, which is in Bavaria, which I actually visited randomly in 2004 on my way to Octoberfest. We were driving from Italy all the way in and were exhausted and decided we didn't do any with Munich. So we found on a map, because that's how old this was, a paper map. We found a little town pulled over and it was so cool looking. It's like almost gingerbread house looks. And the whole town is centered around kind of quality of life. There's actually a very low speed limit. The goal is to make it so you never feel rushed. That's a nice thing. But they have a really cool piece of history. Memogen or Memingot,

I'm probably pronouncing this wrong and I'm sorry Germans, but your words are not easy. You keep adding letters to everything till we reach a point where it's just, I don't know what we're trying to say here. But in 1525, this is where the 12 peasant articles were written. And for those who don't know history, this was kind of like the Magna Carta, but for the rest of the, of us. The Magna Carta was originally, it did say the king was up to the same laws as the rest of the land, but it wasn't really enforced. It was more the king versus the nobles. The 12 peasant articles are much cooler. They have things in there like rent has to be proportional to the output of the crop fields. Nobles can't come and make you work for free. Oh, and no more serfs. That was a big one,

by the way. No more serfs. Also some cool stuff in there about how the priests get paid. There's a lot of things in there. Really, really great because it's a key part of the Protestant Reformation. So anyway, Memigam. Lastly, we also have our Discord. So please, if you're looking to interact more, if you have questions for us, let me know, if you live in Maminghamen and would explain me how I'm supposed to pronounce that, jump on into the Discord. And I'm happy to hear from you. Great community going on right there. A lot of great conversations. We're now getting some good painting competitions going on there, right? Which is really cool. They've got some legit stuff. Yeah. know it's also awesome watching the fitness journey of people that's that channel's active bro love it we

should do one of you it's not i'd still lift really heavy weights i guess wait is brad's after photo worse than his before photo wildly worse it's all right to be fair you're 54 i'm 44 i'm 44 i'm at the point now where i look at photos of myself 10 years ago and just want to die inside all right but anyway let's get into it 18th legion as with every legion the salamanders were originally called the 18th Legion. Like all the original chapters, they were created with their Primark's gene seed, but well before the Primark was ever discovered. Also before the Chaos Gods teleported, the Primarks away. It's a situation. It's a weird thing. Anyway, each of the legions, the infusion of the Primark would affect them both mentally as well as physically, creating some disparity in them,

sort of kind of. And I say sort of kind of, because in reality, when you read the books, It's not always clear, but the salamanders are apparently one of the ones that is more affected, much like the space wolves. And I think there's another one in there, too. But the Alpha Legion, 20th, it was Alpha Legion. The Alpha Legion are very unique looking. And they are labeled having a mystery around their origins. In the case of the space wolves, the mystery was at one point, it was normal.

And then later writing, there was Wolf DNA in there. And I think that went away again. I love the course of Luke Carter is there. I'll be honest. I love. I love space wolf players. I don't love space wolf lore. But space wolf players make me like space wolf lore and more.

Just candidly, they're fun to play against. If you play against space wolves have a bad game, that's weird. Spaceball players, I think they're the orc players of the space marine factions. The org players, I love everything about that. Well, orc players are fun.

Not all, though. The vast majority of work players are fun. Just calling a spade. Call it Spade of Spade. All right. Anyway. They are on that. But that is the biggest, one of the big things of the start is that the salamanders are listed as unknown origin of far where they went originally until they pick up Vulcan.

Exactly. On not turn. And there's always potential with that. It's my theory on that has always been cloning that them, the wolves and Alpha Legion actually were cloned, not taken from a region. But I digress. One really interesting piece about 18th Legion is that their history dates back to the Unification Wars in a documented sense. So when we talk about 40K lore history, all right, there's a lot of the stuff is here's a

story that's fully redacted and cannot be found anywhere in Imperial Records. And I'm going to give it to you of the next 50 pages of this Codex, right? But it's not official. This one is actually an official story that is told, within the Imperium. And so that makes it a much bigger deal than the super secret thing that everyone's aware of, like the Bedab Wars,

which are you're no one's supposed to know about them at all. But everybody knows. Two hours on them. Yep. So Unification wars were brutal. So the challenge effectively was that all of these techno-barbarbarian warlords were an issue.

Some were pacified more easily than others. And one of the ones that was really, really hard to pacify were the ethnarch, which lived in the caucus wastes, which is, by the way, lazy writing on the part of GW, but also genius use of the English language. And I don't know which way I want to go with this, because ethnarchy means a government ruled by an ethnarch, and an ethnarch is a ruler of people with whom he holds like a similar ethnicity or alignment, religion. So a lot of times you would call a religious leader of an area. He's the ethnark. So clever use of the word, but also kind of lazy that they just went, oh yeah,

this is these people over here, they're all the ethnarchs, and then their leader is the ethnarch. All right. Good job, guys. I'll be honest, I'm going to have a part of writing the notes for this. The only reason I knew that word was a real word is because if I typed it into Microsoft Word and didn't get a red squiggly line. And I went, huh, so this is a real word. As opposed to the rest of the things that you type in. Dear God, Aramon. Oh, anyway, so situated in the Caucasus Mountains of Europe, the ethnarchs provide to be one of the toughest tests for the Emperor and his forces. The ethnarch were this incredibly advanced group of techno-barbarians, and it's because they actually possessed a large array of tech dating back to the age of technology. What's interesting about that is it's not clear if that technology they possessed the whole time or if it was just in the region they went to.

Yeah, because they have a legion of psychers that are effectively thrall psychers, but also this is before you had psycher armies. Yeah, they had chikers. They also had their own thunder warriors effectively. So they could go toe to toe. And really on defense is where they got nasty. So the ethnarch had built their entire civilization under the mountains, like deep underground. Yeah. But in dwarven fortresses, basically.

They're in bunkers, like miles deep bunkers that their entire civilization's under. Which is a really cool story until you add to the fact they also had a force field surrounding them that was impenetrable. So they didn't have to dig down into the mountains. They just had a big forest field anyway. They didn't need to, but they wanted to. Yeah, because everyone wants to live up. You know, it's funny. I was supposed to everyone wants to live underground, but I remembered what Earth looked like at this era.

Underground is probably nicer. You probably want to go underground. Yeah, actually it was better. Hey man, how's it outside? Radioactive and weird. Let's go inside. Basically, these were akin to the force fields of Dune, where you cannot shoot them.

The only way to deal with his forcefield is to actually walk up to it and try and penetrate it. Now, the emperor did try and do that in the early stage in the unification wars, and he lost tens of thousands of thunder warriors, plus millions of regular troops. You know, I'm going to get on my little soapbox again. The emperor, just the way they write it, the emperor is either a genius.

Next, you can't even figure out what he's doing. He's playing 40 chess. Yeah. And then there's times like this when you're like, which is eventually what he does. And you're like, hey, man, these guys are underground and they don't really affect anything. Leave them there. They don't have any way to affect me. And I'll just come back eventually.

and do something about it. They're like, why are you wasting everybody? You could just go, oh, there's three exits to their fortress. Just don't let them leave there. Cool. Yeah, the emperor is a master of poor impulse control. Those guys called me a stupid face. I have to go kill them now.

And so to Brad's point, exactly what the emperor did. He just surrounded it with some of his troops and then went and fought the rest of the unification wars. But he knew he had to go back there. And so the plan came. He conquered all of the rest. of the planet. Now I have to deal with the ethnarchs. And it's funny. This is one of many great culminations of the end of, so whatever. It's like the writing is so freaking annoying with this stuff.

Because I'm like, well, wait, that wasn't the last battle of the Unification Wars. No, it wasn't. But if you're reading the Salamander Codex, it sure sounds like it was. It's the one that counted, baby. Yeah, so the one that counted the most in this novel. Anyway, plan is to do this massive assault to take down the shields and then kill all of them. and this was known as the assault on the tempest galleries. Now, this is how the 18th Legion make their name. The emperor decides to deploy his special legion of a Star-Daze to the task of taking down the force field

and not Obi-1-Kinobi-style. Rather, they were going to deploy and just basically blow up the power supplies, if they could. However, the power of supplies are built during the golden age of technology, and what is really an impossible depth, hundreds of kilometers below the surface. They're like so far.

Yeah, which by the way, fun John's side story, this is impossible to dig down that deep. And I know this because we tried. Well, the Russians tried. No, no, no. Both of us, you know, come on. Sell this story well, John. The U.S. and Russia were basically going at it

in the way we always used to go at it because of the Cold War. And the Russians, well, sorry, the U.S. just went, we're pretty done with this, and the Russians being Russians went, no, we're going to keep going. How far? Forever. Well, forever was not forever.

Forever was pretty deep, but. No, it was not. I mean, this was in 19- For us. If you look at it from a comparative standpoint, so in 1970, Russia started digging a hole in the earth. That's the best way to explain it. They gave up 20 years later with the fall of the,

of USSR, by the way. And they discovered something fun. If you try to dig into Earth, it gets a lot dense and also gets oddly hot. Yeah. It melted drill bits. So after 20 years of drilling down, they made it 12 kilometers, so 7.5 miles. I can, by the way, you can see that far. The horizon is 13 miles away.

I was just going to say, you also have the fact that is a speck of dust if you talk about the actual width of the earth. Yeah, the width of the earth. You're nowhere near the mantle. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. According to this story, they were 10 to 20 times that depth. I assume using unobtainium and nanotechnology. Duh.

Yeah. So anyway, speaking of going deep, the 18th Legion is going to even further. So the 18th Legion are tasked with penetrating this subterranean facility, and they can't go through it at the front door. So they go journey to the center of the earth, which wasn't a good movie, but the sequel was actually worse. However, I think you meant to say the core. With on a podium, it just drill it in, baby. Good God, that movie.

Our suits only protect us to 3,000 degrees and we're going to hit with 6,000 degrees. No one's going to come back if he comes out there. You're not going to make it two feet. Sorry, if you didn't see the movie that makes absolutely no sense. Oh, my God. But it was so dark. Yeah. That's like no one can, I see this audio cast.

No one can see my face. my jaw started dropping as you began quoting a movie that I looked at and went, yeah, no, I'm not watching that. It was terrible. Yeah, because I looked at and went, yeah, no, I'm not watching that. I'll go rewatching. You were correct, sir. When you went, hey, that looks terrible.

I went, let me take a look and see here. And I went, that's doing pretty bad. Yeah, pretty shit. All right. So the 18th Legion had to get down there. So how do they do this? Well, for those of us who played prior editions, we had a really cool forge world model. And it was so busted, but it was.

Alan has so many of these, by the way. I think I have three. They're, oh, it's funny. Some of the stuff that goes to legends, I actually threw away. But I've kept all my orcs and all my termite drills and a couple other random things, just in the dream that they might come back. Because termite drills were amazing. The burying rhino transport, the front drill could kill a knight.

Because it was three attacks, strength 14, AP4D3 plus six damage. And it had a melta. No, no, no. It had multiple meltas. Yeah. Yeah. These things were awesome. Oh.

Meltta or Ray. Yeah. Oh, they were really good at my death god army in the ninth and eighth. Oh, anyway. So the rest of the Legion and the custodes are all looking at this going, sorry, the rest of the legions and the custodes look at this plan of taking these termite drills in

and go, all right, well, those guys are all going to die. Because, A, the drills aren't going to get there. And even if they did, they were all going to die taking up the power supply. So the drills take off. The story is kind of cool. The drills take off. and almost immediately the emperor's scanners, including his psykers, can't pick them up anymore.

No, I haven't put the soapbox away, so I'm jumping back on it. Yeah. What is even going on in the 41st millennium? With scanning? Yeah. Yeah. Like, what your scanners are?

Hey, Ted, what is the scanner saying? Ted's just staring out going, I don't see anything. You're like, what about the scanner? Yeah, scanners apparently don't work in this. I had a thought about that. And, you know, when in the aliens, when they go to LV-428, Right. And they have the scanner for the motion detector. Like, that's technology we had. So maybe at a certain point, we just stopped developing and go scanning's for chumps.

It's just, they never know it's everybody's always sneaking up on everyone. Yeah, but it is. It's the entire, it's the same thing with aliens. Think about aliens. Yeah, but like in the writing. And also with Starship Troopers, so many of these things, we deploy to some random place and they're like, oh yeah, we can't see anything down there. Really? Yeah. Nothing. And also sometimes they go back and go, I've identified every single person on the planet and what they're wearing. You're like, I, yeah, I can mark down hair and eye color for every single person inside this entire hive city. Really? Cool. Well, is there anything under the hive city? Ah, it's too far to see. Absolutely no idea. Does anybody got guns? I can't tell you that.

I can tell you what kind of jeans they're wearing, though. And size, too. Yeah. So anyway, the 18th Legion go in and they disappear from censors. And the emperor's forces just wait, holding their defensive posture, hours, days, weeks go by. And then in classic writing, a bunch of the advisors go to the emperor and say, hey, we have to change tactics. Your thing failed. And the emperor turns to them and says, they shall not fail me. They will return from this fire.

This, it shall ever be. a terrible phrase. But anyway. It's awesome. You didn't even say it right. You got to give some oomph to it. Because I actually want to believe the emperor has like a bad lisp. Mowage. Yeah, Mowich, exactly. They found, they foul not fail me. Like, it would be amazing. The most powerful man on earth. He's got those incredible lisp.

Super high pitched. Yeah. Oh, that would be equally good. Yeah. Anyway, so right after he says that, of course, the ground begins. to shake, the force fields collapse, and all hell breaks loose. Effectively, the entire emperor's forces go, oh, cool, the force fields down. Let's go stab all of them. And they run in there and begin killing everybody. After they achieve victory as they're dragging the last ethnarchs out to be interrogated and executed, one of the local volcanoes explodes and out pops a termite drill, or maybe a couple of them, carrying a thousand 18th legionnaires.

the 20,000 that went down. And they, of course, talk to them, they learn the story. And the story of their battle underground is pretty cool. So they arrive in the underground facility. The 18th Land Legion is mostly intact. About 90% of them survive the journey. So good job, Mechanicum.

Nice job on that drill. The inhabitants of the underground facility are a little surprised. They just, they have in effect, for those of us, we've talked about necrons before, they in effect tunneled into a tomb world. The power supply of the ethnarchy was not their own. It's most likely they conquered something where this was already there because whoever put it there, it was millennia prior. And the 18th Legion opens up and they just get blank stairs from the things that are all sitting down there. Now what sucks for them is that the things that are down there,

this whole area is so deep that rock is molten. Metal is molten down there. So you've got men of iron who are, in effect, who are built to work in this area, who haven't seen a biologic being in... And yes. 10,000 years? And the answer is yes. Yeah. And then they kind of look at it.

So I like the idea of they looked at each other, both of them, and then these Denzians just went, right, let's just kill all them and attack. The 18th Legion learns a pretty fun story. These things were very well armored, so armored. that all the weapons they brought with them did nothing but make them angrier like Mongo. But unlike Mongo, they were not

only pawn in Game of Life. I love that movie so much. I love that movie so much. Anyway, after about the two-thirds of the Legion die pretty quick, they discover that they need a plan because they run away.

The only way they're able to destroy these men of iron super-rope. robots was to collapse a building on top of them. They could crush them to death, but they couldn't shoot them. They couldn't hit them with thunderhammers. It just did nothing. So they decide, or they figure out however it works, that all of these men of iron have a central processing intelligence, not that dissimilar from the Votan cores. So if they can just take out the main node, then everything else will fall apart. Now, of course, the main node is not just sitting there hanging out, having tea. So they had to do.

go deal with it. It's very heavily defended. And this story makes the 18th Legion sound more badass, so that's why we're going to cover it. They're going to make a diversion. So someone has to make a diversion over there so that it'll open up the core so they can hit the core. And the problem is the people who do the diversion are going to die. And the 18th Legion has to do a lottery. The lottery, though, is not for the diversion. The lottery is for the main assault, because every single Astarteus at the 18th Legion volunteered for the suicide mission. Because they all were saying, I would rather die and save my brother than be the one who survives. And which I was like, all right, that's actually pretty badass.

So they had to do a lottery for who didn't get to go on the suicide mission. Good job. You're welcome. Yeah. This, if you want to know more about this, it's in Horace Heresy Book 2. It's over about three pages, and it's well written, but the quick hits are the distraction works. The attack force makes the central node, but it's not just some computer. It's basically a super AI, and it's about the size of a Titan.

So the Titan rises up to kill them all, and just as they're doing that, one of the groups leading a diversion basically got control of one of the drills. He just Leroy Jenkins, dude. Yeah. So fantastic. It's really well written. So I'm giving you the quick hit. If you wanted it's more in detail, go read the book. It's a pretty badass moment.

As always, the very last second, the great hero, which saves them all. But as the main processing unit dies, this chain reaction, because of course, as a chain reaction happens, and the whole chamber means to fall apart. And so the remaining 18th legionaires just aren't running back to their termite drills. But while they're doing it, they're grabbing stuff. They're like, ah, this looks might be important. And just grabbing random things, like early fallout when you're playing early fallout. just grabbing random stuff to go sell later.

They're just grabbing, oh, here's a toaster. Oh, you know, here's a CPU from one of the men of iron. And they grab it all, jump in the termite drills, and escape. So after the battle, the emperor personally commends the 18th Legion for their actions and the assault of the Tempest galleries. He directs the manufactorums, I was pronounced that wrong, and recruitment centers to place a precedent on rebuilding the 18th Legion because he wanted to show everyone how much he valued loyalty and bravery amongst his soldiers. Interesting side note,

some of the other legions weren't overly thrilled by this. It's every time anybody gets something. All of the legions with their prime arcs, everyone's unbelievably jealous of everything forever. Because they're being overshadowed. Now, from that, we're going to jump a little bit to post-unification wars. Now, the challenge is even with the Emperor's Edict to resupply the 18th Legion, they were still a minuscule force because it's not easy to make a space marines. At this stage, the emperor only had Terra to pull recruits from, and Tara had spent the last millennia waging a war across it, and he still had to supply recruits to the other 19 legions, because we still had 20 at this stage. As such, the 18th Legion had to be deployed in a unique

fashion. Firstly, they were used only as support. So they fought along the 11th, the The eighth, they didn't fight with the first because the first were doing some crap that need to stay quiet. Exactly. But over time, the 18th Legion began deploying largely with the regular military, not Astarte's humans. Yeah, so we're at the Salamanejah. They were the one as the Dragon Warriors for a while. We're going with 18th Legion. It's just easier.

What I like about this is that they were deployed in battles where a few space Marines could turn the tide without a need for a full Legion. and mostly they were deployed to handle events behind the main thrust of the Great Crusade. Because as the Great Crusade pushed outward, the bulk of the military was the front lines, obviously, as it should be. But the galaxy is a big place. Warp exists and humans will human. So you're going to get these small Zeno incursions behind you. Space Hulk suddenly appearing. Imperial governors decide that they didn't be part of the Imperium anymore.

All of these require almost an entire regiment of Imperial Army, or not even a full, regiment, just a few extra Astardis on top of it. What made the 18th even more special, though, is that they were deployed in groups of like less than a dozen, not as warriors, but as commanders. Because the 18th is one of the few ones where we do get stories that, as we talked about this during our space marine episode a long time ago, about how Astartees are light years intelligent. They can process data. They are incredibly tactical, much more so than even a very good guardsman general would be. So for a lot of the incursions, the sounders would actually become the general of the fight. But there's a funny bit to that story, which I do like. When we covered the space wolves,

we talked about how remembrancers didn't want to get placed with space wolves because they'd have to run alongside a space wolf while he ran head first into fire wearing power armor and the Remembrance was wearing a tunic. So it wasn't really an ideal moment. Also, usually a colorful tunic and white so you could immediately be seen. Yeah, and also. Let's also talk about, there's a couple of things we didn't jump into on that, which is the salamanders are,

were, and still kind of are, known to be the guys that, as you're saying, everybody wanted to be sacrificed. They keep that mentality. Yeah. So they keep getting into shit. Multiple,

the high-level commanders were like, the salamanders will effectively just are a doom chapter because they constantly run in, to run into sacrificial things. You know, like, did you really need to sacrifice yourselves? That's what we did. So if you were remembered, so you're like, we're with the salamanders? Oh, cool.

It's really funny. The Imperial Army starts going, oh, I got Star T's with me. That's going to be crap. It's the 18th. This next battle is going to, yeah. And so in effect, if the 18th were there, your day was going to be bad. What ends up happening, though, is after the events, assault to but brad's point though is after the events of the assault at tempest galleries the 18th legion

start doubling and tripling down on this like stoic suicidal attack of foes not to be confused with the exact same way every other legion does this by the way like look every sacrifice is their thing dog come on as opposed to sacrifices their thing look it up it's in the context it is now tell me the legion that doesn't sacrifice themselves for the great glory and victory of the chapter. The salamanders do it sacrificing times two. Yeah. It's all I'm saying. I have for a long time and I'm going to die on this hill.

We needed 10 leeches. We could have had 12 and lost two. That's fine. We didn't need 18. It gets repetitive. And it drives me insane. We'll be right back after a quick break. In my professional life, one thing I know well is how challenging managing a global team can be.

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Go to high pebble.aI to get a free estimate. That's high p-e-b-l-a-I for a free estimate. I can't wait to talk about the stuff that happens when the emperor meets Vulcan. So after 50 years of Great Crusading, the 18th Legion are still struggling to get a solid footing. Their battle style, the combat attrition is a problem. And it is to Brad mentioned earlier the point where some of the Imperial High Command are wondering if the 18th Legion will survive. Ooh, ominous. Ooh, whatever are they going to do.

I know, but there's like big characters that are like, hey, man, they talk about doing something. How do we make these guys stop jumping in front of every bullet? I know. We also had this problem with Emperor's Children. The first Legion, don't forget, we're almost destroyed because of the Ragdan. This happens every freaking time. So obviously, if we're talking about a Legion about to fall in. into oblivion. I wonder what's going to happen next. Oh, yeah, Primark. Anyway, Vulcan. All right,

I really do stand by my statement. We had too many prim marks. You step away from Vulcan. I mean, look, let's call it a spade of spade. If we had only 12, the Horace heresy is a five-on-five thing, we don't lose much. And there are easy eight primarks to get rid of. Tell you what, the next time we do our Q&A, which will be December 2025, I'll make sure, let's talk about which are the, was it, eight prime marks we can get rid of? Spoiler alert, Jagot icon's one of them. Not my fault, GW doesn't care about him. It's not my fault.

GW, give me anything. You know what? You know why we need Vulcan? Screw this. You know why we need Vulcan? Falkin's fine. Tall, super tallest of the primarks. He's also Ebony Jet Black.

I like how you care about that so much. 100%. It's all I want to be. It's so tall. Not just tall. tall est. He's also glowing red eyes and he is ebony black

gigantic and just bananas strong man strong. He's wildly strong. Oh yeah. Valkan's cool. Vulcan's actually one of the ones I would keep. Jackadai is not. Anyway. All right. Let's talk about Vulcan.

Vulcan like every primark is sent to a random planet in the galaxy to face temptations of power and or corruption. And Vulcan gets more the sanguineous Gilliman treatment, where he's tempted with leadership. The idea was to show him, you're a better leader than the emperor, and therefore you would betray the emperor seeing the flaws of the emperor. Didn't work on Vulcan, but it's a better method than what they did, the Mortarian, which is,

let's just make him, or freaking Conrad, let's just make him crazy. Also, Mortarian's story. It was just like, hey, man, does everything suck? Yes. Cool. Continue on sucking. So Vulcan lands on the planet Nocturn. Out in the ultimate segmentum, which is on the right side of the galaxy, Nocturn sits a little bit below the galactic core. And probably because of this location, it's a nightmare world. Nocturn has a few things going against just a few. I mean, massive tectonic disturbances.

Yeah, which we're going to have to cover, unfortunately. So the first issue with not turn. It's just volcanoes blowing up all over the place. Yeah. So here's the. thing. They wrote this. There's a giant moon that's locked in a binary, like, satellite orbit with Nocturn. And this causes, quote, massive disturbances on their forces because G.W. says that this causes significant volcanic activity. There's so many things in this sci-fi fantasy magic thing

that you're cool with. You're going to put on your glasses with the tape in the middle to go on the fact that the moon... I'm loading the pocket protector. It has the mood's force would not cause this. Yes, because it wouldn't. I'm sorry. Because I read it and I go, oh, that's pretty interesting. Yes.

And I have Google, so I go to Google. And yeah, the moon can push a volcano over the edge if you have a really close, but it doesn't move tectonic plates. Tectonic movement is what causes volcanoes. So this is just wrong. And it annoys me when people put science into something and the science is wrong. That's what drives me nuts. It was the same issue I had with freaking Fenris, where it's like, how does anyone live on Fenris?

John, I hate to tell you this, but if you really don't like the science being wrong, you're going to really hate the internet. That's a fair point. That's a fair point. I'm sure there's some writing on the internet. No, it's exactly how the moon does. And also, there is no moon. There it is. Thanks, guys. Awesome. Aside from the volcanic activity, Nocturn also is totally awash with solar radiation. Yeah, they apparently just don't have an ozone.

Yeah, well, which this one, by the way, actually is correct because the volcanic eruptions would erode it the same way that the chlorofluorocarbons did, like when we used to have aerosol cans. So there would be no ozone on this planet. So that part, they were correct on it. I think they were lucky with guessing, but they were correct. As a result, all the people of nocturned skin is described as obsidian black. Now.

Which is awesome on the tabletop, by the way. It is because it makes them really easy to paint. But the flip side of that is, I will give GW some credit here. What this implies to me is that everything that's going on in nocturn is a function of the age of technology. The reason I say that is it took humanity hundreds of thousands of years for our genes to add in basically skin tone to adjust for solar radiation. That took hundreds of thousands of years. These guys did it in, I don't know, 300. So radiation.

I play fallout. You get all kinds of stuff happening. Yeah, that's also not how that works. But anyway, but what I'm thinking is that... It isn't Fallout. Fallout's also not correct. What? You take that away.

But so what I think this is, because this is John theory, but the reason why I think this is we learned this with Leagues of Votan. When the Votan ancestors first got to the galactic core, they used genetic modification to actually adapt them to be able to survive there. So I think,

that's what you saw here. I also think that much like with Fenris, Fenris, they state, is a function of kind of almost an experiment that was going on during the age of technology. I could see Nocturn kind of falling into both of those being, we call about Fallout, like the way Volt Tech goes, all right, well, we're going to pick a couple planets and let's just do some weird crap there and see what happens to the people there and we do some other weird crap to. That's what I think Nocturn was. I think Nocturn is a, is basically vault You know, 107. That wasn't a good fault.

It was not a good fault. It was like three good ones. Anyway, the other problem is that because it was settled in the early part of the Dark Hage technology, Nuckerman barely survived this. Binary planet, all these issues. Every 15 years, by the way, because of the binary thing, the two planets get close to each other and these giant waves crash all over the planet, accurate. thousands of volcanoes explode and earthquakes cover the land.

Not accurate. And then it's dinosaur time because the entire sky gets blocked out with volcanic dust. All the plants die. Winter sets in for, quote, a quarter of a year. Now, I call this out again. That's what they wrote. All the volcanoes explode. They fill the sky with ash.

The sun is blocked out. And it lasts for four months. Brad lives in Ohio. I live in Michigan. would love a three a three month winter that would be awesome that would be a giant step up for both of us yeah right three month winter yeah oh talk easy peasy yeah talk to me in february exactly yeah yeah oh it's the third month of my winter was when i start wanting to kill myself also it's snowed in halloween yeah it's snow on thanksgiving it looks like too but anyway this time by the way it's

called the time of trial, because sometimes GW just phones in a naming mechanic. The people of, to protect the people of Nocturn, this is the cool thing on Noctur. There are seven sanctuary cities built around it, and they're all independent kingdoms. But during the time of trial, they all open their gates to all the refugees to the outlying lands, because people basically go out and they farm for these like 15 years in between. But when this comes in, they then run into the sanctuary cities for protection. Vulcan arrives on Nocturne during one of the times of trial, which obviously is completely over about the time he turns two. So he, GW spent a bunch of time explaining this whole thing and then it has no effect on Vulcan whatsoever because he's gone before the next one anyway.

Just saying it. So anyway, but there's a bigger problem with Nocturn. The biggest problem with Nocturn is Drew Carrey. And we talked about our last episode we talked about Drew Carrey. The Dr. Cari need to make raids in order into real space. into the galaxy. And these raids, they murder people and they capture slaves, take them back to the dark city. This, though, is occurring well before VEC, because VEC doesn't rise up until M36. We're talking M30 right now. So these are the early ones. These are the ones where they're...

This is early M30. So the Jukari had at least one but likely numerous Webway gates all on Nocturn. And because this planet's isolation with the rest of humanity and the dark age of technology, it became perfect prey for them. Easily accessible, largely unarmed local populace, fun times. So for hundreds of years, by the way, Slenesh, because Slinash was born in M30, and this is around 832 of M30. So we, but 800 years, 700 years, the Dukari had been raiding nocturn, almost like livestock style, where they're just, they're letting them, we'll go grab a bunch of them, we'll let them repopulate, we'll go back through and do it again. And so what happened, is the people there whenever a Dracari raid happens,

the bell rings and everyone just goes to like their special shelter to hide. Like the movie Purge, which I also haven't seen. I don't think I'm missing out. You're not. Cool. All right. Anyway, back to Vulcan.

So discovered at birth and brought into one of these cities on Nocturn. Vulcan is another prime arc, which is labeled as a prophesized hero. I mean, hold on, though. It's pretty easy to prophesy somebody's going to be. a hero when the baby is jacked gigantic. He's like, yeah,

he's got, I'm gonna predict. Yeah. You're like, hey, man, I think that baby's gonna be somebody. You're like,

why? Because he's four times as big as a normal baby, and he's currently doing pull-ups. Like, I think he's going to do well. Yeah, so he's discovered by a blacksmith named Nebel,

who's part of the Prometheum cult, What? This is a big deal. I know. Come on. We're on like footnote 42 of our, we're trying to tell this thing. We're having more side stories. Come on. The permutia cult still is important in Salamanders to this day. But this cast is turning into Witcher 3 where we're doing more side stuff than we are actual main story.

So anyway. Oh, God. Witcher 3. Come on now. If you haven't played Witcher 3, what is wrong with your life? Also, two, if you're playing Witcher 3, and you haven't completely lost track of the main quest because you've got somebody side quest.

You're playing it wrong also. Oh, yeah. But first time I beat which are three, I'm like, I actually don't know if I just won the game or not. It's like, I don't even remember what I was supposed to do. So anyway,

the people of Nocturn had developed their own, like, philosophy slash religion. I'm not getting into trouble here debating the difference between the two because it's just semantics. By the way, but their philosophy was known as a Promethean cult. Now, there's two Promethean cults, by the way.

There is the preemithian cult of this time, and there's a Promethean cult post-emperor. So we're talking about the original, not the latter. But the Prometheum cult was a set of beliefs that centered around nobility, self-reliance, altruism. Under the cult, you're supposed to be the best you can be, striving toward perfection, but not personal glory. Listen up, emperor's children. Yeah, but it's for the good of all and not for personal glory, which is fair. You're supposed to be fully self-reliant, but also always self-sacrificing. Anyway, this planet blows up every 15 years.

That's the best way to explain it. Everyone's like, hey, everything the planet blows up, be cool to your neighbors, as opposed to Fennerous, where every time the planet blows up, they go, murder all your neighbors. And just want you to know that right now, John and there are in separate places recording this, because if we weren't, I definitely would have thrown something at him because he just summed all of the awesome. this up in that.

Yeah. Don't make things trivial, John. It is trivial. Their whole thing is we should be self-sacrifice. We should do all these things, but also we should be perfect, but also, but also, yeah, no. Podantic. It's just, this is Renaissance man BS that I hate. So anyway, all right. For Vulcan, though, there's one more key piece. They believe that a savior was going to arrive at some point, and a savior would drive the darkness away, and I uplift the people of Nocturn, like Sangu. Lorgar, Theris Manus, look, we don't need 18 Primarks. That's all I'm saying.

All right. Vulcan's adoptive father, Nibel, saw in Vulcan the potential to be the savior for the teaching. Because as Brad said, this is the biggest baby I've ever seen with bright red eyes. So he then endeavors to take this baby. And this is, we say baby guys, like Primark's age quickly, to teach him. everything that he knows. And so two years later, Vulcan knows everything there is to know.

Yeah. He did an 80s montage training video. Yeah. He's also... The best. The best. Vulcan is the best of learning things. So by age three, Vulcan's the largest and smartest being on the planet, which also

a little fun side note. How much did Primarks eat? Several. Because like I... It's got to be a pretty big bill, as all I'm saying. That's say, because I have a child. I've also had dogs where you should take from puppy to full grown. It's impressive how much they eat.

We're talking about some of these planets like with sanguinius that didn't have a lot of food. In order for him to grow this fast, you know what I mean? How much of a bummer it is? Everybody's starving and you're eating 40,000 cows. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You look over there and like, hey, what happened to the silo of grain? Oh, Sanguinius ate at all. Well, he does keep us safe, I guess.

I'll go a month without food. Good God. Anyway, weird side don't. So within a year, he takes over his father's forages. He starts crafting his own weapons and actually making up his own technology, by the way. The one thing that we talk at Vulcans really cool is he will just, he's a great forgeman, but he also is technologically savvy, as opposed to fulgram, Ferris Manus, Rogel Dorn. God.

Come on, now. Give him up, give him two sticks of gum, rubber band. He'll make this McGuiver happen, baby. Yeah, he's more McGruber. But anyway. Oh, God. I told you the throat rip worked. Dude, God.

All right. So when Vulcans 4 years old, the Jukari attack the city. And by the way, 4-year-old Primark is full-grown prime mark for the record. Let's talk about how much of a bummer this is for this particular, because we just did Jukari Real Space Raids. this one sucks you just you just planned this out you're like these guys have never posed oh these guys guys watch this yeah dude we don't even need to pay attention we barely it's not even this is autopilot baby so the jukari raid happens everyone runs and hide

vulcan grabs two hammers throws on the boots of mighty ass kicking throws a little extra pumps into the top of them you know gets them nice and tight and walks into the town square Now, the cool thing about the people of Nocturn is he walks on the town square. Him just doing that, people start coming out of hiding to join him. So it's not like he does this whole fight by himself. No, he inspires everybody. Yes. And things start fighting.

This is really cool because he just tells people you can fight back. I love this. It's like an anti-bully thing. Exactly. And so they do this whole thing. Now, again, as usual, a fight breaks out. And the prime arc and the people are doing stuff. So the prime mark against Droucari, who they're not slower at this stage.

They're just as fast as current Dr. Carrey. So I think we know who did most of the fighting. But the people were present, Luther, looking at you, Luther. But anyway, after killing over a hundred Drucari himself, I think he may have even blown up on our ships, the Drucari retreat. And Vulcan is standing victorious in the middle of the city. Word spreads to all of Nocturn. and all of the settlements reach out to Hessoid,

which is where he's based, and they send emissaries to greet Vulcan. And Vulcan teaches them how to forge weapons that they can use against the Drukari, tactics strategies. And I had to look this next bit up three times because it makes no sense. Yeah, this is kind of dumb.

It bakes me angry on this one. Because it is funny. What should happen is everyone immediately goes home and puts 47 harpoons and it fortifies everything, every single place is ready to defend themselves instantly. No, it said they just declare victory

and have a party. They're like, cool, Vulcan shows how to beat the Droucari. We're not going to test any of this. We're just going to go, he was right, go team awesome, let's have a big party. That's it. And because they say, we're going to, all they all got to say,

we're going to stand up to the Droucari next time they show up. And Vulcan went, yeah, give us a big thumbs up and then they have a... Yub. Now, they then have a giant tournament of strength and crafting, which unfortunately was not crochet. It would have been a lot funnier if that was one of the ones.

Volka just knitting a sweater. He would have definitely done an afghan. Oh, yeah. Oh, it would have been a really good sweater. But on the eve of the great tournament, a lone wanderer enters Hessoid, described as being pale, which is compared to everyone there who has...

obsidian skin and wearing silly clothes. That's what he's described that. He asked to enter the contest. By the way, when I first read this, I couldn't help myself because they do actually say silly clothes. Yes. I just imagine the upper just wearing like a clown outfit. Just like, hey, guys.

Oh, I went the other way. Juggling. I'm thinking of it. He's dressed like you were in the 80s. Oh, God. He's wearing hammer pants. He's got hammer pants. He's got a 11.

Cardigan with. no shirt on. Yeah, cardigan. Numerous colors all through the cardigan. His hat is really well bent. Because then we used to, now it's all flat rim. We used to bend the hats.

Oh, and it's backwards. Oh, yeah, maybe he's got some, what were the, oh, he has a mullet for sure.

And he's got Oakley's on. You're doing Oakley's? I wasn't going to go the, what were the ones the quarterback for the bears used to wear? Oh, you're wearing the sheriff glasses? No,

not the shepherd, the ones with the shades in them. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You had a pair of them. those. I know you're talking about McMahon's glasses. Yeah, that McMahon's glasses. Just say.

Just that would have been a good look. So anyway, he comes in, he's wearing silly clothes and the people laugh at the stranger because he says, I'm going to challenge Vulcan. This whole thing's really weird story because everyone's saying to him, the emperor, but it comes in and says,

I wish to challenge Vulcan, everyone says, oh, you silly goose, you could never, no one will ever beat Vulcan. But then there's a hundred other people who are also competing with So anyway, the reason it's silly that anyone else is there is that this is an effect of strong man competition where it's Eddie Hall and like me. I am strong. I'm big. You know, I'm almost, I'm over two meters tall. You are not Eddie Hall strong. But yeah, Eddie Hall, oh my, Eddie Hulk would juggle the dumbbells I lift with. That's what we're talking about difference. So apparently other people were looking at Vulcan, who's the biggest prime mark and going, I think I can outlift him.

which is basically the story of how Brad's back hurts. I would have beat him. I would have won this contest versus Vulcan. Yeah. How many times did a person minding their own business lift more weights than you? And you decided while minding your own business. I was about to say, not while I was around. Just minding their own business, lifting heavier weights than Brad.

And Brad goes, I don't need a lower back. Well, they did lift heavier weights than me for a while. Yeah, sure, I couldn't do anything after. Yeah. You know what, screw this. I need to tell that because I told John recently, I went to the gym and I was already not doing well. And I said, hey, man, I'm really hurt because somebody was lifting weight and I got ego lift and I had to lift more. And then I hurt myself and then I had to ride my bike home for the gym while it poured down raid. And the initial response from John was, you deserved everything that happened. You have some very tragic issues with your body. Those are not your fault. This one, you have a bunch of them, though, that are 100% your fault. I have just so sadly unadulterated.

Yeah, Brad did that to Brad. Writing a bicycle home in the pouring rain is my background. Yeah, I have a bunch of them too. I have a bunch of like weird scars, that kind of stuff. Well, what happened there? I'm not smart. That's what happened there. Poor impulse control.

Let's go back to the emperor. But let's do one thing when I remember, the emperor appears as either whatever people want him to see, but effectively he appears as whatever he wants them to see. So he shows up and he's just a guy to them right now. Yeah, a guy in weird clothes. Yeah, but he's not showing up as the traditional. Let's get into.

I apologize, salamander fans. I know I am dumping all over their lore. It's about to get worse. All right. So they have a contest and some of them are just dumb. Like at one, they're holding two anvils over their heads. Anyway.

No, no, hold on, because they declare, Vulcan goes with the emperor. They declare that whoever wins this con, loses the contest has to declare fealty. Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.

This is a big deal. Yeah, the emperor is a dick. I was figuring with that part of it. Yeah, you have to declare fealty to the emperor. Anyway, I do like that they had this whole competition.

It staged over eight days. And the only one that the GW bothered writing was holding anvils over their head. Was there a tug of war? Did they do Atlas Stones, bodybuilding? There had to have been, they had to been a grease stop moment. For me, there's at least an entire day of Flipcup. Flip cup. I mean, it's got to be what they would.

Cornhole, flip cop. There's cornhole, the emperor and Vulc. playing cornhole, but it's a mile apart. Eventually, it's a tie. There has to be a tie breaker. So the two contestants are sent off on a hunt, and they're given 24 hours to forge their own weapon, and then go hunt down, and I'm quoting here,

one of the reptilian salamanders, the nocturn volcanoes. Sorry, I have a child, and I like going to zoos. Salamanders are not reptiles. Salamanders are amphibians. They're like frogs and toads. They breed through their skin. They're born as tadpoles. I have no idea what the GW was doing here with this writing.

It makes they have zoos all over the UK, really, really good ones. Call them a Drake. Fine, they call them Drake. But like, they go to Mount Deathfire to go hunt down these salamanders to find the largest Drake there, which in England. Fire Drake, thank you much. Yeah, it's a term for dragon, but also male duck. Just so you know, when you see a male duck, the duck's, that's called a dresser.

If it's large enough to ride, it is fearsome. Thank you very much. Yeah, I mean, duck, no, goose. Like, you know, I don't. Canadian goose. Those things are monsters. Yeah, we don't mess. You don't mess with geese.

It's the old thing of, it's every time the goose hisses at you, you're like, look, I know I'll win this fight, but I don't want to, like, if it bites me in the face, that's been the rest of my life with a scar on my face and explain how how that happened. Get your ass kicked by a goose. Yeah. I got bit by a swan. Like, that kind of sucks. Back to the actual writing. Up on Mount Deathfire, Vulcan finds the largest fire Drake he's ever seen and smashes it in the head with a hammer killing it.

And then he grabs it and starts walking home. But oh, no, what could go wrong? The volcano erupts while he's on it. Hold on. Back up, though. If you're going to be his shit about it, you have to go with the, what happened on Mount death fire. Yeah, a Mount Death Fire.

The volcano suddenly shook and Vulcan fell. And with one hand, he held onto the edge of the cliff because below him was lava. And with the other hand, he held his Drake. And he couldn't pull himself up. And so he hung out there for six hours. And just as, I hate this part. Of course you do. For sure, he just take, he literally would just chuck the lizard up and do a pull-up.

He'd do a set of pull-ups. Nope. And move on. Nope. The strongest, largest, Primark couldn't do that. Anyway, story gets worse. So while hanging there after six hours as his grip is beginning to fail, again, primar. The mysterious stranger arrives. But the mysterious stranger is on the other side.

And it sees Vulcan about to fall. And does, I'm just going to tell you what he does, guys, deal with this story. By the way, the emperor is holding a larger Drake than the one like a real gentleman. he throws his salamander over the lava so that Vulcan can cross the street. No, no, you got that wrong. He throws it. He then jumps on the lava and jumps up to pull Vulcan up. I mean, yes, but I'm just saying it.

It's better when I say the gentleman. He throws his Drake into the lava and then jumps on it and then jumps off it. Sometimes you got to double jump. Sometimes you got to kill Yon. to get to the other side with the double jump, John. God. Anyway, they, I will say it actually made me laugh because it made me think of a curse of Monkey Island.

That's something you would do across lava. You'd have to throw something and then jump on it. But I digress. All right. They get back to Hesswyd and Vulcan is declared the victor because he has a salamander and the stranger didn't. But Vulcan and is a noble person says, no, he lost. And he kneels in front of the stranger declaring him the victor.

and because in his mind, anyone who valued life over pride was worthy of his fealty, which I almost choked on the irony of that statement being said to the emperor. Like, no. And at this moment, of course, the emperor reveals his true self, which is a pale person dressed very funny, but also the emperor. So we'll have that. I'm always torn with the emperor doing these things because I've always convinced that he's like Thor and Ragnarok, where he actually looks like the emperor the whole time.

but has a little veil in front of his face. But the next thing the emperor does is, of course, shitty. The emperor tells Vulcan he's going to come with him and he's going to join his forces they conquer the stars. And Vulcan said, yeah, I'd love to go, but I can't leave Nocturn, my people undefended. They're my people and they rely on me. And the emperor said, yeah, of course, I'll garrison the force here and they'll keep the people alive.

Don't worry about it. Just kidding. He didn't do that at all. The emperor looks at him and says, well, his duty is not to one world, but all of them. Why protect a single world when through duty the emperor can protect thousands? And Vulcan goes, okay, fair point, and just ditches nocturn. That's what he does. And he joins his legion.

That's the story. Story sucks. Sorry. Vulcan's awesome. But emperor and Lehman Russ, cool story. Emperor and Gilemon, cool story. Emperor and Dorn, cool story. This one I don't like.

like just being asked. It's fine. I think Vulcan's cool. I think Vulcan's great. I just think the emperor's story is like, the mysterious stranger has arrived. They're going to do a contest of strength that we're not going to actually add a lot of detail to. Whatever.

All right. But actually, that's a good break point though, because the next week we're going to get into salamanders as they go into Horace heresy, all die inside Horace heresy and some of the Vulcan actions post. I hope you all like it. And then next week we'll dive more into salamanders, or as I like to call them, they and not quite ultramarines of the Space Marine legions. Lab.

So until next week, John Barcotti, Bradchester. The sky.