Editing Salamanders (Chapter) (section)

==Peculiarities==
[[File:Salalmander cover.jpg|300px|left|thumb|A fetish for fire]]
The Salamanders themselves are perhaps the most bro-tier of all Space Marine chapters, the [[Lamenters]], [[Space Wolves]], [[Ultramarines]], and [[Celestial Lions]] coming in behind them in that order. Unlike most other chapters, Salamanders maintain close ties with their original families, giving them a very human connection with the non-augmented people they are charged with protecting. Strong ties as in often living with their families like normal, real life Marines would when off-duty. They regularly act in thankless rearguard or civilian defense actions, as seen on [[Armageddon]], and rather than spend their free time in their super-awesome orbital fortress monastery, they hang out on the planet's surface chilling with the locals, many actually living 'normal' lives among the people as chieftains, teachers, guardians (basically following in the footsteps of their Primarch), or simply wandering the planet as hermits when not on active combat duty.

In terms of tactics, the Salamanders are one of the simpler chapters: "Wait for it...", "Burn that shit", and "Never say die" are about the sum of their tactics. The number of heat-based weapons they can field is truly alarming, as is a [[Vulkan He'stan|certain special character]] of theirs who can make them ''all'' twin-linked, and another that makes all Melta tagged guns mastercrafted. The fact that each man repairs and maintains his own armor ensures that their chapter Artificers can be free to make truly awesome stuff. They field almost exclusively treaded vehicles, as the gravitic antics of Nocturne's moon Prometheus (really more of a planet) tend to cause anti-grav plating to freak the fuck out.

Of course, if you ask a [[fa/tg/uy]] what comes to mind first when they hear the word "Salamanders," there's a good chance you'll get a quip involving African-Americans in some way, ranging from the shenanigans recorded below to quotes from folks like Samuel L. Jackson or Shaft. This is because, due to their Melanchromic Organ becoming hyperactive in response to the ludicrous amounts of background radiation on Nocturne, all Salamanders are black. We're not talking coal black or African-descent black (though before receiving their geneseed the warriors of Nocturne are dark-skinned), we're talking blackhole pitch black, hexadecimal code #000000, the missing word in the phrase "...as the void of space." That kind of black, with glowing red eyes. There were some issues due to miscommunication (like the painter for the Eye of Terror campaign making them a nice chocolatey brown when GW asked for "black" Salamanders) but by the 5th Edition Space Marine codex things had pretty much settled down, many pictures of Salamanders are now with Caucasian facial features with just the skin being black, and eyes fiery red just like it was supposed to be. People still make the blaxploitation jokes because, well, it's an easy joke to make and the Salamanders don't really have a cultural motif of their own that it could clash with. And let's face it, the idea of Samuel L. Jackson as a Space Marine burninating shit or unloading a bolter sideways is just too cool to pass up. Contrast with the [[Celestial Lions]], who ''are'' a chapter of black people in space but don't get the same treatment because they have an established cultural motif, namely being cool space Africans and having a fiddly paint scheme. This does beg the question though: if the Salamanders aren't supposed to be space Africans, why does GW have African-sounding voices for the Salamanders in audiobooks and official videos? The answer is laziness.

The 8th Edition supplement also brings up that those red eyes have their own perk: Limited heat sensing! Being the bunch of pyromaniacs, the chapter then decided to decorate their gear so that it emits heat in such ways that their eyes can pick it up, but not be visible to the unaugmented eye. What this doesn't account for is something like, say, a xenos predator with a honed ability to sense heat.

In addition to those mutations, their geneseed also gives them an abnormally hardy constitution, even for a space marine. The Salamanders are much more resistant to radiation and cellular damage than other space marine chapters. This is likely a perk of having a [[perpetual]] Primarch, though it may just be one of the quirks coded into their gene-seed by the Emperor.

And if that wasn't enough, the ally matrix in Forge World's Horus Heresy spin-off demonstrates that the Salamanders were the most liked of all the legions. Seriously, the only factions rivaling them for good ties are the Imperial army and the Mechanicum (who everyone kisses up to anyway). Hilariously, one of the 3 chapters they dislike (though not enough to put them on red terms with anyone) are the [[Ultramarines]]. They weren't fans of the [[Word Bearers]] either, even before the whole [[Horus Heresy|Heresy]] and ritual murder-torture thing.