Vulkan He’stan

Vulkan He’stan is the Forgefather of the Salamanders, the Chapter office charged with recovering the nine Artefacts of Vulkan, relics that the Primarch Vulkan left scattered across the galaxy before his disappearance. Nocturne is his home world. Salamanders tradition, drawn from the Tome of Fire, holds that when all nine have been recovered and returned to Nocturne, Vulkan will return to lead his sons. Five had been recovered by the end of M41, and He’stan carries three of them: the Spear of Vulkan, a halberd whose blade can set ceramite alight and which he often throws; the Gauntlet of the Forge, an armoured gauntlet with a built-in heavy flamer; and Kesare’s Mantle, a drakescale cloak. The remaining four, the Engine of Woes, the Obsidian Chariot, the Unbound Flame and the Song of Entropy, are known only by name.

As a Scout he was the only member of his recruiting class to take a mottled tri-horn, a breed of Nocturne’s reptiles that even teams of veteran drake-hunters find difficult to kill, for his mantle, and his work as a smith drew the notice of the Chapter’s master artificers. He served in the battle companies and then in the Firedrakes, the 1st Company, and rose to captain after his defence of Nocturne’s population during the Ork raids and seismic upheavals of the period called the Fire Year. He commanded the 4th Company for nearly a century before the Chapter’s Pantheon Council called him to become Forgefather. In accordance with Chapter custom he gave up his former name and took that of the Primarch. He keeps a seat on the Pantheon Council, though his travels make him an irregular attendant.

As Forgefather he travels from system to system guided by clues in the Tome of Fire, and may call on any Salamanders he needs rather than only the 4th Company. In 722.M41 or 772.M41, accounts differing, he defeated the warhost of the Aeldari corsair prince Iath Bloodweaver and recovered the Gauntlet of the Forge. In 878.M41 he defeated Trazyn the Infinite in personal combat when the Necron Overlord tried to take the Spear of Vulkan, and in 943.M41, during the Tochran Crusade, he survived a trap that Trazyn had set on Tochran with a false claim to have found the Song of Entropy, and defeated him again. In the Ultima Segmentum he ran afoul of the Arch-Arsonist of Charadon, beginning the Flame Wars, in which two companies of Salamanders broke an Ork Waaagh! raised to hunt him. He led half of the 3rd Company aboard the Nurgle-infested space hulk Grim Scythe in search of the lost mining ship Chthonic Hammer, and during the Gevion Cluster War on Geviox he led Firedrakes under Veteran Sergeant Herculon Praetor to recover Chaplain Elysius and Vulkan’s Sigil from the Drukhari, following them through the webway into the Volgorragh Rift.

After the opening of the Great Rift many judged his quest impossible; He’stan regards it as a further test set by Vulkan to temper his sons before the Primarch rejoins them. In M42 he went into the Imperium Nihilus and, with battle-brothers of the Hammers of Nocturne and the Covenant of Fire, came to the world of Zero in search of a clue to the Unbound Flame. His forces defeated the Alpha Legion, which had infiltrated the Hammers of Nocturne and swayed much of the world, but found no trace of the clue, and he has since followed the Traitors deeper into the Imperium Nihilus. He remains active in the Era Indomitus.