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Ok like I get the Salamanders got hit hard by heresy but I refuse to believe there was ONLY a thousand of them left and exactly a thousand at that. Thats downright horsegak. And even if that were somehow true how have they not built up enough geneseed for a couple successors in the ten fething millenia since Horus bit the dust. Like one Tyranid Splinter or sizable Orc Waaghhh hits Nocturne at the wrong moment and the Sons of Vulkan get exterminated. Talk about too many eggs in one basket. Additonal chapters even just 2 or 3 would ensure that a single small Tyranid Hive flest or mid sized Orc Fleet cant wipe Vulkans geneseed out entirely. Doesnt the Imperium the risk of losing access to an entire primarchs genetic material? Even if the Salamanders themselves dont want any successor chapters the Imperium should force them to set up a couple jyst to enusre a single Ork Warlord who decides that the Jolly Green Giants make for a fun fight cant wipe out the bulk of a primarchs genetic material.
Like jesus christ. Youd think thr Imperium of all people would understand the concept of Redundancy..

It's not that they don't have any (although they definitely do now, thanks to Primaris). It's that they don't have any confirmed successors. There's rumours of the Black Dragons, Storm Giants, and Fire Lords being successors, but nothing confirmed. Similarly, there's nothing stopping anyone from making their own Salamanders successors.

Also, even without having successor Chapters, the Salamanders still submit a geneseed tithe.

The only Legion confirmed to have no successors (prior to the Indomitus Crusade) were the Space Wolves. This was due to Leman Russ's idiosyncratic way of waging war and the difficulty of implanting the SW geneseed in other populations.

Don’t try to make any points on logistics or feasibility in 40k. The entire lore is a testament to how little the writers understand about the scale of war in this planet, much less across a galaxy and then some. As stated above, the Salamanders weren’t on the no successor list but they never got any love. If I had to guess it’s a hold over from the older lore that made the effects of the Horus Heresy more drastic. The Drop Site Massacre loyalists at one point we’re still suffering from material shortages 10,000 years later. The Iron Hands didn’t field terminator squads because they had too few suits after the massacre. Of course all of that lore has been retconned.

You could maybe argue they had no second founding chapters because they took grievous losses at the drop site massacre. The Salamanders got screwed because they helped cover the retreat of the Iron Hands remnant while the Raven Guard went to ground. But you’re right, there’s no reason for later foundings to not include them.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
Don’t try to make any points on logistics or feasibility in 40k. The entire lore is a testament to how little the writers understand about the scale of war in this planet, much less across a galaxy and then some. As stated above, the Salamanders weren’t on the no successor list but they never got any love. If I had to guess it’s a hold over from the older lore that made the effects of the Horus Heresy more drastic. The Drop Site Massacre loyalists at one point we’re still suffering from material shortages 10,000 years later. The Iron Hands didn’t field terminator squads because they had too few suits after the massacre. Of course all of that lore has been retconned.

You could maybe argue they had no second founding chapters because they took grievous losses at the drop site massacre. The Salamanders got screwed because they helped cover the retreat of the Iron Hands remnant while the Raven Guard went to ground. But you’re right, there’s no reason for later foundings to not include them.

The contrast between the salamanders popularity in the community and the amount of attention GW gives them is probably the biggest of any chapter. Id argue most important chapters get an amount of attention from GW at least vaguely proportional to there popularity in the community. The Salamanders seem to be by far the biggest outlier on that front. They are a fairly popular chapter. Not the most popular but definitely not unpopular. Yet they get like no attention from GW. Like at all. Like if I remember correctly they were one of the last loyalist legion chapters to get Primaris. They rarely make serious appearences in the lore these days.

chimera0205 wrote:


The contrast between the salamanders popularity in the community and the amount of attention GW gives them is probably the biggest of any chapter. Id argue most important chapters get an amount of attention from GW at least vaguely proportional to there popularity in the community. The Salamanders seem to be by far the biggest outlier on that front. They are a fairly popular chapter. Not the most popular but definitely not unpopular. Yet they get like no attention from GW. Like at all. Like if I remember correctly they were one of the last loyalist legion chapters to get Primaris. They rarely make serious appearences in the lore these days.

Popularity doesnt for a moment equate to chapter size, or number of successors spawned.

Sterling191 wrote:

chimera0205 wrote:


The contrast between the salamanders popularity in the community and the amount of attention GW gives them is probably the biggest of any chapter. Id argue most important chapters get an amount of attention from GW at least vaguely proportional to there popularity in the community. The Salamanders seem to be by far the biggest outlier on that front. They are a fairly popular chapter. Not the most popular but definitely not unpopular. Yet they get like no attention from GW. Like at all. Like if I remember correctly they were one of the last loyalist legion chapters to get Primaris. They rarely make serious appearences in the lore these days.

Popularity doesnt for a moment equate to chapter size, or number of successors spawned.

Naw I mean attention from GW in general

Again, the Salamanders have had just as much attention as Chapters like the White Scars?

So the Salamanders suffered worse losses than any other loyalist at Istvaan. They were already a small legion to begin with.

After further losses during the shattered legion campaigns and the end of the Heresy Vulkan was one of the primarchs who refused to break up he legion further.

My guess is that while there were more than 1000 marines it was not many. The Salamanders also remember have overstrength companies but only 7 of them while having a scout company half the size of a normal loyalist chapter.

The Salamanders likely developed successors but just not in the second founding.

 Generalstoner wrote:
So the Salamanders suffered worse losses than any other loyalist at Istvaan. They were already a small legion to begin with.

After further losses during the shattered legion campaigns and the end of the Heresy Vulkan was one of the primarchs who refused to break up he legion further.

My guess is that while there were more than 1000 marines it was not many. The Salamanders also remember have overstrength companies but only 7 of them while having a scout company half the size of a normal loyalist chapter.

The Salamanders likely developed successors but just not in the second founding.

And yet not a single confirmed Salamanders successsor

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Again, the Salamanders have had just as much attention as Chapters like the White Scars?

More, actually. They got their own official army list (with Initiative 3!) back in the Eye of Terror campaign. White Scars, Iron Hands, Ravens and Imperial Fists limped along for a long while with nothing but maybe a few modifications in a WD article. The 'also rans' of the chapters that would be designated First Founding.

Though I'm not terribly convinced they were terribly popular, what little they got was because they had that army list of their own back in 3rd.

I think GW is honestly too lazy to do any established successor chapters since then they would also have to potentially flesh out their differences and ties to the Salamanders. So they basically give the players carte blanche to do their own unofficial Salamander successors.

And they have gotten more than their fair share of Heresy and current era Black Library coverage than other chapters. Nothing to whine about at all.

 totalfailure wrote:
And they have gotten more than their fair share of Heresy and current era Black Library coverage than other chapters. Nothing to whine about at all.

I kinda feel like they were shafted for both 30k and 40k representations tbh. I know they're Nick Kyme's baby at this point, but I feel like someone more capable writing wise should give a whack at them given that the 30k books really only focus on Vulkan dying constantly before becoming a glorified toilet watcher at the very end. There's no real stand out Salamanders characters in the HH and in 40k I haven't heard good things about the Salamander trilogy.

I'd argue the chapter with the biggest clash between popularity vs attention given them is proably the Fists.

chimera0205 wrote:Thats downright horsegak. And even if that were somehow true how have they not built up enough geneseed for a couple successors in the ten fething millenia since Horus bit the dust.

Doesnt the Imperium the risk of losing access to an entire primarchs genetic material? Even if the Salamanders themselves dont want any successor chapters the Imperium should force them to set up a couple jyst to enusre a single Ork Warlord who decides that the Jolly Green Giants make for a fun fight cant wipe out the bulk of a primarchs genetic material.
Like jesus christ. Youd think thr Imperium of all people would understand the concept of Redundancy..

There's no building up of gene seed. The Mechanicus just takes one marine's worth of gene seed and duplicates it into 1000 identical copies, that's how they make a new chapter. They also do it all on their own, the Salamanders never have anything to do with it, the Imperium does it without "forcing" them, they can completely ignore the original chapters when making new ones.

That's also why they don't always know about successors. If the Storm Giants or Black Dragons have Vulkan's gene seed, the Imperium didn't need to tell the Salamanders about it.

Voss wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Again, the Salamanders have had just as much attention as Chapters like the White Scars?

More, actually. They got their own official army list (with Initiative 3!) back in the Eye of Terror campaign. White Scars, Iron Hands, Ravens and Imperial Fists limped along for a long while with nothing but maybe a few modifications in a WD article. The 'also rans' of the chapters that would be designated First Founding.

Though I'm not terribly convinced they were terribly popular, what little they got was because they had that army list of their own back in 3rd.

It was Codex: Armageddon. They were a niche army because while the Black Templars from the same book had extremely minmaxed rules tailored to the edition, Salamanders couldn't even get lascannons in their troop squads and had the pretty bad i3 in an edition where lasplas and close combat were the main tools marines had.

It means they were more favored than Iron Hands, who hadn't ever had a character until last year, or white scars whose signature bikes are hecking expensive and don't come in the boxed game the way tac squads do.

It could be the salamanders are too nice for the high lords of terra to approve of. Maybe they didn't want chapters dedicated to actually serving and protecting the common people like the salamanders are.

Look at armageddon, the sals were assigned mostly defensive duties and hand holding of civilians. Plus they actually live among the common folks of their home world.

Maybe the high lords would rather have scarier chapters less concerned with the welfare of the expendable, disposable masses.
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That fits the grimdark thing.

I'd say that they were too badly beaten up to form multiple second founding chapters (after all, the chapters that did basically split up, it's not like there is anything special about the ones who got to keep the name and homeworld). For later foundings, that would have made it harder to use the Salamanders because I would assume that the cadre would usually be drawn from a chapter with the same geneseed (if only because the apothecaries that get trained know it better), so that puts them at another disadvantage. I would assume that there would still have been a few such foundings, but the small start makes the growth much slower than for other chapters like the Ultramarines, Imperial Fists or Blood Angels.

 Dolnikan wrote:
I'd say that they were too badly beaten up to form multiple second founding chapters (after all, the chapters that did basically split up, it's not like there is anything special about the ones who got to keep the name and homeworld). For later foundings, that would have made it harder to use the Salamanders because I would assume that the cadre would usually be drawn from a chapter with the same geneseed (if only because the apothecaries that get trained know it better), so that puts them at another disadvantage. I would assume that there would still have been a few such foundings, but the small start makes the growth much slower than for other chapters like the Ultramarines, Imperial Fists or Blood Angels.

Training cadres do not have to be drawn from the parent chapter. The Swords of Haldroth, for instance, were given an Ultramarine cadre, despite being Blood Angels. It caused them problems later in life obviously, but it shows that if the parent chapter isn't available, another chapter can be asked to lend a hand. This is also likely how some of the Salamander's 'assumed' successors were trained.

pelicaniforce wrote:
There's no building up of gene seed.

Yes, there is. That's what the Geneseed Tithes are for. Both Mars and Hydra Cordatus had massive stores of geneseed for future use of creating new chapters. Mars' is still intact whilst Hydra Cordatus had theirs stolen by the Iron Warriors to give to Abaddon, which is how he had such massive numbers to assault Ultramar with when Guilliman was reborn. Abaddon pretty much just shoved thousands of geneseed from every chapter imaginable into "recruits" to push the Black Legion to, well, legion strength.

 Platuan4th wrote:

pelicaniforce wrote:
There's no building up of gene seed.

Yes, there is. That's what the Geneseed Tithes are for. Both Mars and Hydra Cordatus had massive stores of geneseed for future use of creating new chapters. Mars' is still intact whilst Hydra Cordatus had theirs stolen by the Irojn Warriors to give to Abaddon, which is how he had such massive numbers to assault Ultramar with when Guilliman was reborn. Abaddon pretty much just shoved thousands of geneseed from every chapter imaginable into "recruits" to push the Black Legion to, well, legion strength.

Nothing says that those stocks are used to directly supply 1000 sets of zygotes straight out of storage. The tithes are specifically to evaluate chapters for mutation and to put a leash on their ability to reproduce.

The article by Priestly was explicit. From that huge tithe and all the stocks on mars and hydra cordatus they take just one set of organs for each chapter. They are hyper focused on control and gene seed uniformity, so they use just one single template for each chapter, not any group of 1000:

“ A single suitable gene-seed must be selected for each zygote. Zygotes are then grown in cultures and implanted into human test-slaves. These test-slaves must be biologically compatible and free from mutation... From the original slave come two progenoids, which are implanted within two more slaves, from which come four progenoids and so on. It takes about 55 years of constant reproduction to produce 1,000 healthy sets of organs.”

If they were too small in number to be broken up by RGs edict then that makes sense but also they all live on one planet and live a very different lifestyle to most other chapters. They probably have subsequently built up a huge force that has gone under the radar of terra. They’re all about family aren’t they

Relevant wiki excerpts:

Regarding a previous battle, towards the end of the Unification Wars (which they did later recover from):

...taking savage losses which reduced the newly invested Legion's active strength from around 20,000 to little more than 1,000 warriors.

Then:

Although a proportion of new recruits continued to be fed into the Legion from Terra and Proximal, this was not sufficient in size to significantly ameliorate (lower recruitment from Nocturne), nor did Vulkan pursue the rapid-induction techniques favoured in later years by certain Space Marine Legions.

It's not so tough to see how the Salamanders were not only decimated at Istvaan - but weren't even that big a Legion to begin with, compared to the others.
There's also this:

With the Salamanders exempt from dividing their numbers, Vulkan's initial misgivings about the Codex Astartes were quashed, and to this day the Salamanders are largely compliant with its dictates.

I'm curious as to whether the current Salamanders supplement Codex sheds any light on this, if anyone can advise?

---------------------------

 Karhedron wrote:
The only Legion confirmed to have no successors (prior to the Indomitus Crusade) were the Space Wolves. This was due to Leman Russ's idiosyncratic way of waging war and the difficulty of implanting the SW geneseed in other populations.

I had to correct this, because the story of the one successor Chapter the Space Wolves did have, explains why they didn't get any more from their geneseed until Primaris came along.
To put it bluntly... it did not go well.

Voss wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Again, the Salamanders have had just as much attention as Chapters like the White Scars?

More, actually. They got their own official army list (with Initiative 3!) back in the Eye of Terror campaign. White Scars, Iron Hands, Ravens and Imperial Fists limped along for a long while with nothing but maybe a few modifications in a WD article. The 'also rans' of the chapters that would be designated First Founding.

Though I'm not terribly convinced they were terribly popular, what little they got was because they had that army list of their own back in 3rd.

If we look at more recent sources for sallies attention they STILL are getting a fair bit of love.they got a codex supplement, where featured in fasith and fury. (lore wise not rules wise) going through 8th edition lore referances to chapters.


doing a break down of who got attention in 8th edition

Ultramarines:
- Dark Imperium Set
-Wake the Dead Set
- Shadowspear Set
-2 character resculpts
- Inferior Upgrade Sprue
- Prominant place in the Vigilus Narrative
- Chapter Supplement

Dark Angels:
- Character resculpt
- PA suplement
- Inferior Upgrade Sprue
-Place in Vigilus Narrative

Blood Angels:
-character resculpt
- PA Supplement
-Inferior Upgrade Sprue

Space Wolves
-Character Resculpt
- Tooth and Claw Set
- Prophecy of the Wolf Set
- PA supplement
- Inferior upgrade sprue

Salamanders:
-New Character
- Supplement
- Narrative Place in PA: F&F
- upgrade sprue

White Scars:
New Character
supplement
- Narrative Place in PA: F&F
- upgrade sprue

Iron Hands:
New Character (their first)
- Supplement
-upgrade sprue


Imperial Fists:
-New Character
- Supplement shared with Crimson fists (the practical impact of this BTW is IFs received 2 less relics then everyone else)
- upgrade sprue
Raven Guard:
-Resculpted character
Supplement
upgrade sprue
Black Templars
- PA supplement


Over all Ultramarines certainly got the Lion's share of the attention, (although generally most boxed sets about Marines tend to be ultramarines since they're the "generic" faction and if we drop shadowspear and dark imperium it;s a bit less lop sided that way)

Space Wolves are, of the "chapters not deemed the generic marine chapters" the one that got the most attention in 8th edition, although their role in the narrative is proably "less great" (although a year from now Ghaz could be positioned as the big bad of a massive event that makes Armageddon look like a border skirmish with the space wolves front and center in fighting him and I'll be eating my words)

of the "big 4" the blood angels got the least attention, but part of this is due to Imperium Nihlus, if and when GW shifts their focus to imperium nihlus I expect the blood angels to get LOTS of attention.
for the "additional first founding chapters" at least one plus came out. their chapter upgrade sprues are a MUCH better deal. coming with twice the bits, and a transfer sheet for a little less then twice as much.so in this case good things came to those who waited.

Of the first founding chapters I think Imperial fists got the short straw. losing out to Iron Hands on account of losing 2 relics to the crimson fists

Of the first founding chapters I think Imperial fists got the short straw. losing out to Iron Hands on account of losing 2 relics to the crimson fists

Imperial fists are always going to lose out. One of their successors is just as popular/relevant (and has more game history) and another is _far_ more popular.

Its worth noting that 'First Founding' chapters wasn't a thing initially. And the double page color spread in the Rogue Trader rulebook that really showed off marines only featured 12 chapters, only 6 of which later became one of the original legions. Sallies, Imp Fists and Ravens weren't there at all. Instead the Rainbow Warriors, Crimson Fists (also on the cover, of course), Silver Skulls and 3 that would become BA successors (Flesh Tearers, Flesh Eaters and Blood Drinkers) made the initial lineup of named marine chapters.

It was an odd mix, just for the bland repetition of the paint schemes- 3 blue, 3 red, 3 black (yes, DA have black armor), a white, a grey and a silver/grey. The distinction is mostly a single color for a helmet strip and the left pauldron studs.

Ranks and badges were done in the Crimson Fist colors.


----
I'm not actually sure when the Salamanders first turned up. It may well have been Space Marine (1st edition 'Epic'), though apparently they were in Codex Ultramarines (2nd edition) and in a painting guide in WD 119.

The original story of the Heresy (in RoC: Lost and the Damned) doesn't bother to name most of the primarchs, or even number them, so Vulkan was left out there. Slaves to Darkness doesn't even have the concept of 'Primarchs,' and the chapters involved in the Isstvan massacre aren't even named. Though surprisingly the Imperial Fists and White Scars are named as the only marines left to defend Earth. (GW isn't using 'Terra' yet)

Woo, late night fantasy history digresssion!

Voss wrote:
I'm not actually sure when the Salamanders first turned up. It may well have been Space Marine (1st edition 'Epic'), though apparently they were in Codex Ultramarines (2nd edition) and in a painting guide in WD 119.

I can only personally vouch for seeing them in Codex Ultramarines as the earliest source I'm aware of (which was released in 1995). However, the other two both date back to 1989 - two years after the release of Rogue Trader, four years before 2nd ed, and bang in the middle of the two Realm of Chaos books. It's not exactly beyond the realms of possibility that they just existed as a colour scheme first, and the decision to flesh them out came later.

 Super Ready wrote:

Voss wrote:
I'm not actually sure when the Salamanders first turned up. It may well have been Space Marine (1st edition 'Epic'), though apparently they were in Codex Ultramarines (2nd edition) and in a painting guide in WD 119.

I can only personally vouch for seeing them in Codex Ultramarines as the earliest source I'm aware of (which was released in 1995). However, the other two both date back to 1989 - two years after the release of Rogue Trader, four years before 2nd ed, and bang in the middle of the two Realm of Chaos books. It's not exactly beyond the realms of possibility that they just existed as a colour scheme first, and the decision to flesh them out came later.

Oh, that I'm almost certain of. Most of the marine chapters were just color schemes they decided to run with... or not.
Poor Rainbow Warriors. I expect the 'eavy metal painters just didn't want to paint seven colored stripes across the front of the helmet on every single marine.

Though the helmet stripes vanished pretty quick in general.

I found something!


Turns out they were definitely around in Rogue Trader, and Vulkan's named too - although looks like the homeworld's changed over time, and back then they were known as "the 8th Chapter", as opposed to being either the 8th Legion or the goodness-knows-however-many-umpteenth Chapter.

Source, with loads of other interesting old-school stuff.

Yeah, 'legion' is a weird term that has almost no traction originally. Even the second edition boxed set (the Codex Imperalis book) has the standard chart with the 20 First Founding, but refers to Founding Chapters, not Founding Legions. By the 3rd edition SM codex they've changed that chart to 'Founding Legions.'

The Realm of Chaos books were still talking about the Thousand Sons Chapter (with no rubrics in sight yet) and Death Guard Chapter in 1990. Though Slaves to Darkness refers to the World Eaters and Emperor's Children as both Chapters AND Legions. On the same pages. Even in the same sentence: "The Chapter name has been retained unchanged throughout the Legion's exile" :/

But then it also has a quote attributed to Fabius Bile, exhorting his followers to sing and dance in praise of the Lord of Pleasure. So... yeah.

---
Sadly I can't find my Epic stuff beyond Epic Armageddon, but that's too recent to chase down origin stuff.

Though I did find the red 'Warhammer 40,000 Compendium,' published 1989, which consisted of reprints of various White Dwarf articles.

The Badab War entry has two pages of color schemes (including camo variants, campaign specific colors, and speciality troops for a few chapters), and I almost missed the Salamanders. Because they aren't green- they're bright yellow with wavy black stripes, and the chapter symbol is a skull with red eye sockets (on the right shoulder of course). Its pretty similar to the Chaplain badge in your pic, except fill in the eyes with red.

Second picture here on this page (listed as from WD 101), Salamanders are 4th along the bottom row:
http://eldritchepistles.blogspot.com/2013/07/bryan-ansells-rogue-trader-space.html
----
Also trivia note, from the first 'Origin of the Legiones Astartes article (Chapter Approved). Remember this is 1989 (or 1988 depending on when the article was originally printed).
But-

Those chapters created at the time of the First Crusade are known as the Chapters of the First Founding. There were originally 20 of these, but only 7 survive in the forty first millennium

Now I know from Warhammer Siege that Ultramarines were originally a late founding Chapter (only gaining 'full status' after the Battle of Macragge), but the idea that only 7 chapters were the originals is kinda mind-blowing. How this lore changes.

Don't Sallies have a really high mutation rate in their gene seed? I imagine it only takes a few chapters turning out like the Black Dragons for the High Lords to decide it's a bad idea.