Nocturne System

The Nocturne System is the Salamanders’ home system in the Ultima Segmentum, comprising the volcanic death world Nocturne and its moon Prometheus. Nocturne holds the Chapter’s sanctuary cities, while its fortress-monastery stands on Prometheus.

Prometheus is unusually large for a moon, and its gravitational pull subjects Nocturne to a period known as the Time of Trial. The Chapter’s recruits are raised under this influence, and the Salamanders therefore live under the same conditions that shape their recruitment. Vulkan walked the planet’s volcanic plains, and the XVIII still recruits from the tribes that live between eruptions. Later millennia have not moved the Chapter to a milder fortress.

The Salamanders treat the two bodies as a single cultural setting and regard their conditions as home rather than as a problem to be engineered away. The Chapter has accordingly not relocated its base to a cooler world. Unofficial fan maps place the system in the Ultima Segmentum and treat Prometheus as a moon within it, not as a separate Chapter world.