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Something that I've been curious now for a while:

I seem to remember an old bit of the fluff stating that because Vulkan was created on Terra, and is not a Nocturne native, he was actually white. The black colouration of the Salamanders is an evolutionary aspect due to the environmental conditions on Nocturne, and as such while all other Salamanders are black, Vulkan himself wasn't.

Is this accurate (probably retconned a while back), or am I thinking of something else?

 Valkyrie wrote:
Something that I've been curious now for a while:

I seem to remember an old bit of the fluff stating that because Vulkan was created on Terra, and is not a Nocturne native, he was actually white. The black colouration of the Salamanders is an evolutionary aspect due to the environmental conditions on Nocturne, and as such while all other Salamanders are black, Vulkan himself wasn't.

Is this accurate (probably retconned a while back), or am I thinking of something else?

the black skin, and note we're talking black not "africian american" is actually a mutation of one of the Space Marine organs. So Vulcan likely was black too.

Your answer is in his name; Vulkan he's tan (a remnant from a time when 40k/gw was more silly)

Actually, the surname dates from after GW tried rolling back the lightheartedness. In 1st and 2nd edition he was just "Vulkan".

 Valkyrie wrote:

I seem to remember an old bit of the fluff stating that because Vulkan was created on Terra, and is not a Nocturne native, he was actually white. The black colouration of the Salamanders is an evolutionary aspect due to the environmental conditions on Nocturne, and as such while all other Salamanders are black, Vulkan himself wasn't.

This may come as a surprise to you, but there are actually black people on Earth too.

Salamanders having a cola black skin instead of African black is the retcon. I don't remember when that happened, after third edition anyway.

 Crimson wrote:

 Valkyrie wrote:

I seem to remember an old bit of the fluff stating that because Vulkan was created on Terra, and is not a Nocturne native, he was actually white. The black colouration of the Salamanders is an evolutionary aspect due to the environmental conditions on Nocturne, and as such while all other Salamanders are black, Vulkan himself wasn't.

This may come as a surprise to you, but there are actually black people on Earth too.

Salamanders having a cola black skin instead of African black is the retcon. I don't remember when that happened, after third edition anyway.

Funnily enough, I'm well aware of black people on Earth. My point was that the fluff I was trying to recall stated a difference in the skin colours that was due to Vulkan's creation rather than Nocturn-ean conditions.

shortymcnostrill wrote:
Your answer is in his name; Vulkan he's tan (a remnant from a time when 40k/gw was more silly)

Vulkan He'stan is a "current" character in the setting. He'stan is a completely different guy from the Salamanders' Primarch, who is presumably the subject of the thread.

Valkyrie wrote:Something that I've been curious now for a while:

I seem to remember an old bit of the fluff stating that because Vulkan was created on Terra, and is not a Nocturne native, he was actually white. The black colouration of the Salamanders is an evolutionary aspect due to the environmental conditions on Nocturne, and as such while all other Salamanders are black, Vulkan himself wasn't.

Is this accurate (probably retconned a while back), or am I thinking of something else?

Even if you recall correctly, proto-lore was weird and had very little in common with 'modern' 40K. See what once used to be Leman Russ for one: https://i.redd.it/di9zppo4v7201.jpg

Crimson wrote:This may come as a surprise to you, but there are actually black people on Earth too.

Salamanders having a cola black skin instead of African black is the retcon. I don't remember when that happened, after third edition anyway.

Technically, there is no such thing as 'African black'. Maybe it looks like that in USA, where people from only one corner of Africa ended up, but Africans have actually more color skin variation than all the other continents combined. Including people with actual coal black skin color. Homo Sapiens spent hundreds of thousands of years in Africa, that is a lot more time to diversify than mere 20+ thousand years splinter groups on other continents had...

Why couldn’t some of the primarchs be ‘black’ was t the empire middle eastern?

Khan is very obviously either of Mongolian or Eastern Asian ethnicity. Dorn, Fulgrim, Horus and many other Primarchs appear Caucasian. The emperor always struck me as looking somewhat Native American (which is cool as that is a group of people who generally don't get much representation outside of cliched stereotypes). I don't see why Vulkan can't be black. The emperor seemed to have implanted his genetic material into fetuses with different genetic backgrounds.

I always thought that the Salamanders legionnaires all had black skin because of the geneseed from their primarch turning their skin dark, even if they did not have dark skin before the implantation.

Pretty sure the Emperor is from around Turkey. I thought Vulkan and the Salamanders were black because of mutation.

Greywing wrote:

shortymcnostrill wrote:
Your answer is in his name; Vulkan he's tan (a remnant from a time when 40k/gw was more silly)

Vulkan He'stan is a "current" character in the setting. He'stan is a completely different guy from the Salamanders' Primarch, who is presumably the subject of the thread.

Oops! Wait, I mean that I totally realised that when I made that post, er.. uhm.. I was just testing you?
*scuttles back under his rock*

pm713 wrote:
Pretty sure the Emperor is from around Turkey. I thought Vulkan and the Salamanders were black because of mutation.

Is it bad that I really want Vulkan to be ethnically black instead of "gene seed mutation" black, and have the entire Salamanders legion all be dark skinned because of the geneseed implantation from their Primarch? Much in the same way that Space Wolves acquire wolf characteristics after being implanted with Russ' geneseed. I just think that is much more interesting than "lol random mutation and now you have an entire legion+Primarch with charcoal black skin" not to mention the icky implications of considering black skin a "gene seed defect".

w1zard wrote:
I just think that is much more interesting than "lol random mutation and now you have an entire legion+Primarch with charcoal black skin" not to mention the icky implications of considering black skin a "gene seed defect".

Well, the geneseed story is IIRC that the organ protecting their skin from powerful UV etc has been damaged and doesn't dial their skin pigment back down. Nothing says the natives of their recruiting world (Nocturne, was it?) couldn't be a darker shade than my pasty white hide.

Modern fluff says Nocturnean natives are naturally dark-skinned, as in they've evolved that way due to living on Nocturne regardless of the original colonists' ethnicities. Salamanders geneseed just makes their skin even darker. It's never described as a 'defect' these days, just an unusual interaction of geneseed, host genetics and environment.

Salamanders never looked like real-world sub-Saharan Africans even in the Rogue Trader era. The very first bareheaded Salamanders models pictured in White Dwarf in the late 1980s had purple-black skin and white-blonde hair like D&D drow. They didn't have glowing red eyes yet, but that's an obvious drow influence too. As is the whole living underground thing.

My interpretation (I don't think it's ever been explicitly stated) of the primarchs' physical appearances has always been that they took on those features that would help them become accepted on the worlds they found themselves on. It would be a ludicrous coincidence if the 'Black' primarch just happened to land on the world of black-skinned people, the 'Mongol' primarch just happened to land on the world where everyone looks Central/East Asian, the two 'Middle-Eastern' primarchs just happened to land on the desert world and the faux-Egyptian-Iranian-Aztec-mishmash world, and so on. No, they took on those appearances because of where they landed. If Fulgrim had landed on Chogoris instead of Chemos (as Scars claims was 'supposed' to happen), he would have been the Mongolian-looking one and Jaghatai the white-haired bishounen.

So Guilliman is blonde because most Macraggians are blonde. Sanguinius has wings because he landed on a world of mutants where the few non-mutant humans had myths about angels being embodiments of purity (it is made abundantly clear that the Emperor never intended him to look like that). Leman Russ is wolfish because he was literally raised by wolves.

Primarchs are not just genetically modified humans. They're powerful warp entities with a veneer of humanity. Their physical appearance is malleable, if not necessarily consciously chosen. They each modified their appearance to give themselves the best chances of rising to leadership of their adopted worlds.

Also, we should not think of the Emperor as being or looking 'Turkish'. He may have been born in what is now Turkey, but he predates the arrival of the Turks from Central Asia by several millennia. Hell, he predates Çatalhöyük. We have absolutely no idea what the people of Anatolia of that time looked like or what their genetics were. Plus, it's pretty clear he looks how he wants to look, not how his genetics originally built him.

Pretty sure Leman Russ is wolfish because the Emperor shoved wolf DNA into him for some reason.....

Ha haaaa mon
Pretty sure it wasnt til he was stuck in a old cars boot and booped a toad.
Friends.. Adventure.

 Duskweaver wrote:
'Mongol' primarch just happened to land on the world where everyone looks Central/East Asian

Offtopic.
Catch is that on arts Khan don't look too C/E Asian to me but like Max von Sydow in his Ming the Merciless makeup (and that makeup definitely was inspiration for artists , look at Path of Heaven cover) - while many (but far from all) Scars definitely asian.

I believe the older lore was that although Vulkan was black like midnight/charcoal the environment on Nocturne gives people darker skin.

It’s an interesting theory that the Primarchs essentially take on the genetic appearance of the natives. That really would be something special but also improve the infant Primarchs survival rates upon discovery.

pm713 wrote:
Pretty sure the Emperor is from around Turkey. I thought Vulkan and the Salamanders were black because of mutation.

The people that currently occupy most of Turkey weren't there yet when the Emperor would have been created.

This image comes from the original Space Marine Painting Guide. A handy little booklet that GW used to give away that taught you how to paint Blood Angels, Ultramarines, Salamanders and Space Wolves. This is, so far as I know, the first time a Salamander was depicted as black skinned. And while the guide does go into a bunch of specific things, like Salamanders medics painting their arms red due to an event early in their history or how they don't have the usual patterning on their banners. Or rather how they do, but it's only visible in the ultra violet spectrum (which all Salamanders have slightly). What it doesn't mention, at any point, is that Salamanders are all dark skinned. Not a trivial point in a painting guide. A unique but ubiquitous feature is the kind of thing a painting guide expressly wants to mention.

TL;DR I'm 99% sure the entire Salamanders (and Vulkan) being black skinned is because some dude painted black Salamander one time and one example became the rule.