*Mexican!Yuu has been trying to hint it at Malleus, that they like him in not so subtle ways, but he ain't getting it... It's painful to watch.*

*After hearing his nickname*

Malleus: I like your lack of fear.

Yuu: Me gustas tu.

*Just hanging out*

Malleus: I like playing with Tamagotchi.

Yuu: Me gustas tu.

*One night on a late night walk*

Malleus: I like Gargoyles.

Yuu: Me gustas tu.

*One very warm evening sitting outside on Ramshackle's porch*

Malleus: I like ice cream.

Yuu: *rushes inside and comes back out with a tub of ice cream and two spoons* Me gustas tu.

*Another time, taking a late night stroll together*

Malleus: I like your company

Yuu: Me gustas tu.

*After Yuu says they might have found a way home*

Malleus: I'd like it if you stayed.

Yuu: *holding back tears*... Me gustas tu.

*They return to their dorms*

-In Diasomnia-

Malleus: *laying in his bed* What will I do?

Lilia: I don't know.

-In Ramshackle-

Yuu: *laying on the couch with Grim [who's curled in their lap] and the ghost trying to comfort them* ¿Que voy a hacer?

Ghost A: Je ne sais pas.

Ghost B: What will you do?

Yuu: Je ne sais plus.

Grim: What do you plan to do?

Yuu: *covering their face with their arm* Je suis perdu. ¿Que horas son, mi corazon?

--

I blame tiktok.

Hello! First time posting an anon ask and first i wanted to say i love your blog sooo much. I think you are really 2 of the few people in this fandom with common sense and respect for the celebs and i love that.

And secondly i just wanted to ask or tell you, that there is a publication (it was on 2 publication but one of them stated that the soirce talking was talking to Star magazine) that chris and alba are trying for baby #1, and i just wanted to ask what ars your thoughts on that, as in do you believe the publication or not. Cuz in my opinion of course they are now married and not only can they do whatever they want but they can alsp tell whoever they want if they want to, but i do find it weird that a source would talk to a magazine (especially a not so well known magazine) that a couple are actively trying to have a baby. I mean considering how private chris is i don't think i xan easily believe that he would want that info out there. I mean he has never talked details about the relationship/marriage and even when he did he basically said stuff that all celebs talk about when they talk about their wedding (for example the location, how manu ceremonies, etc) so why would the first detail of the marriage be that they are trying for a baby?

Hello and Welcome to our little corner of chaos! 😂

I’ll start by saying that both Star and OK are really nothing but massive tabloids that rarely get solid inside scoops. Chris and Alba are married. They’ve both stated that they want to have kids. It’s only common sense that a baby will probably come next in the natural progression of their relationship, however, I don’t think that means either of these tabloid articles has the inside scoop. I think they’re running with a common sense prediction in hopes that it’ll stick and should they have a baby in the next year or so they can claim they had the first scoop on it.

If we’ve gone this long and still haven’t seen wedding photos, I highly doubt they’re having someone run to either of those tabloids to spill personal details like that. IF they were ever to share details like that, I think it would either come from one of them personally (something like a birth announcement or picture of a pregnant Alba) or they’d go to an outlet that has a far more reputable reputation. That’s a story a magazine will be willing to BUY from them. But as I said, with their reluctance to share their wedding photos, I can see them being even more protective over their future babies and keep that part of their lives private. And for good reason when we’ve observed the wildest behavior in this fandom over the last two years. That’s my take anyway 🤷‍♀️🦎

The most probable list of the order Primarchs will return to 40k

Source: I just made it the fuck up by playing squash with my braincells against the ceiling of my cranium.

So right now we got Magnus->Guiliman->Mortation->Angron->Lion if I remember things correctly not sure if the order is entirely correct but it does not really matter. Not accounting for the two lost, that's 5/18. Then we take those who are definetly at the lower end of the list due to being dead: Horus, Sanguinius, Vulkan, Curze and Ferrus Manus. Lore implies that no Primarch can truly permanently die given their half-demonic heritage, but their return would be very unlikely, with Ferrus Manus being the only potential exception really. 10/18 taken care off

Then we just have to admit that Alpharius will never get a model. An "Alpharius Primarch Unit" would essentially be a unit of 10 Chaos Legionairies who all look the same but are suspiciously tanky and sneaky - so we will not gain a model unless there's a significant lore development regarding Alpharius and Omegon. 11/18 considered. So how do we count the rest of them?

So time to get it all in a single list from likely to less likely:

Fulgrim - the Emperor's Children are the last big Chaos Legion to get their own little book, and my guess will be that they'll get their stuff in 10th together with some unique units. About the scope of the World Eaters. Fulgrim is a fan-favourite too, with a very unique visual design, so this is not a very controversial pick.

Lorgar - With all four Primarchs present, Chaos will go on the offensive. The writing demands it. You can't bring all the top actors to the stage and don't expect them to act. Except, they are all dysfunctional wrecks incapable of cooperation, so Lorgar will most likely take the role of a diplomat to help Abby keep the brothers in line.

Rushing to the Imperium's aid there are multipe candidates, but there is one following Lorgar on his heels: Corvus Corax heavily mutated into a shattered humanoid form surrouned by a screaming storm of crows.

It is very likely that even Corvus will not turn the tide, but as it is tradition Chaos will fail due to their own dsyfunctional mess: Vashtor has entered the scene recently, and he will take his chance when all of Chaos' greatest warriors are out there and busy with the Imperium to send his own Champion to stick it to the gods: Peturabo, Lord of the Demon Engines will enter the fray with a menagerie of mechanical horrors.

Given that there is only one Primarch Peturabo has any relevant connection to, I suspect we will see the return of Rogal Dorn at the end of this entire mess. Less of a dramatic reveal and more of a surprise in the ending.

Leman Russ and The Khan are essentially wildcards, but they just buggered off to do pretty much whatever. Should the lore shift the focus from Chaos to Dark Eldar, then of course we will see the Khan, until then not really. Leman Russ meanwhile could show up in the same area as Corax.

Everyone else, even the Lost Ones, slots in below that, with one exception: Ferrus Manus has the potential for his revival build into his lore. If the metal goop that was his hands deemed lost in the heresy would be the thing to house his soul, assuming this thing found a useful body he could return, potentially even in a shocking twist after Fulgrim comes back, because those two got some serious beef.

Everyone loves a good Space Marine vs Chaos Space Marine rivalry. Imperial Fists vs Iron Warriors, Space Wolves vs Thousand Sons, and Ultramarines vs Word Bearers are all really fun and cool, but you know what I think has potential to be a really interesting rivalry? Iron Hands and Emperor’s Children.

*Important Note: I am far from a lore expert, so a decent chunk of everything beyond this is me making assumptions and/or fully talking out my ass, so just be aware.*

Usually, when I hear about Marine rivalries, both parties involved would love nothing more than to kick the other guys’ teeth in, so they’ll gladly take an opportunity to fight each other. Whenever they’re anywhere near each other, it’s immediate murder while screaming lots of trash talk. For a while I thought that this would be how Iron Hands an Emperor’s Children would be, but with some angstier “We used to be friends how could you” type of talk. I no longer think that’d be the case. I think fights between the two would be few and far between, but the ones that do happen are some of the most brutal and hateful fights around.

My reasoning for this hinges mostly on the Iron Hands and most of their characterization being ✨running away from their problems.✨ The Iron Hands have been grieving the death of Ferrus Manus for ten thousand years, and not in a very healthy way. They choose to hate Ferrus for the “weakness” that ended up getting him killed, and they purposefully try to remove as much human emotion from themselves as possible in order to suppress their grief and shame. Another trait they have is that they’ve been known to just abandon fights and leave planets to die just because they didn’t feel it’d be worth the cost. Not because they couldn’t win, but because it’d hurt them a bit more than they’d like. These two traits do not combine to create a group that would charge one of their biggest sources of shame and trauma head-on the way other Chapters would. I think that if the Iron Hands received word of the Emperor’s Children hanging around nearby, they would find some way to leave and not deal with it. They’d dress it up to sound logical somehow, but that wouldn’t be their actual reason. However, on the rare occasion when circumstances force them to fight the Emperor’s Children, a lot of suppressed anger would come out. The Iron Hands are already known for their brutal fighting style. Add the guys who killed their Primarch into the mix and they’d probably become way more ferocious, although a bit less methodical, leading to a lot more death on both sides. As an additional note, I think this would be cool because it mirrors Ferrus Manus on Istvaan V, which shows the bit of Ferrus that lives within his sons, despite what they all want to believe.

The Emperor’s Children, meanwhile, simply wouldn’t care that much. Their whole thing with the Iron Hands ended a while ago, and now nothing else really matters to them except the newest and coolest debauchery. They have no better reason to fight the Iron Hands than they do any other Space Marine Chapter, so they wouldn’t fight as often either. When they do fight, I think there’d be a lot of mockery coming from them though. They’d be constantly gloating to the Iron Hands, holding Ferrus’ death over their heads (haha head get it please laugh), which would help bring out that anger I was talking about earlier.

Basically, very long post short, I think the Handy Mannys and the Ruler’s Bambinos would have a rivalry not built on a history of constant warfare against each other, but on a few very intense battles that stand out as truly horrifying among all the rest.

Do u hav any idea how mc's number went to the group? I thought throughout the entire game the part where we were looking for the chats in Hannah's phone the message with Thomas, there is nothing saying that he got MC's number from Hannah . So how did Thomas get MC's number??? I know the question is complicated

Hello,

First of all, I would like to thank you for this question. It is the first time that I have been asked a question here, and I am very excited to answer. ( yeah , It takes little to be happy)

Since i finished the game, i am really upset by all those unanswered questions, so i thought a lot about that. For now this is what comes to mind :

At the very beginning, Thomas told us he received a message from Hannah with our phone number, but as you point out, there is no message sent from Hannah's phone. There is nothing like 'message deleted by the sender' as you can see on some instant messaging. So this almost excludes that MC's number was really sent from the missing girl's phone.

So? Who could have done that? Who can send a message and fake the sender? It takes a certain skill to do this kind of thing, in my opinion.

I see mainly two options :

1/ It can be Jake , He could, for one reason or another, have hoped to get closer to her.

I recently read a fanfic on this, which I found excellent : You can find this here : https://crow-chaos.tumblr.com/post/689792012348801024/i-know

author : @crow-chaos

It's a great Idea for a fiction and i may give It a try one day.

2/ the FBI , my main theory so far : and that's what i am writting a fan fict right now.

. For them, Send a false message would probably be even easier than for Jake.

. Cheap to make, and would be not dangerous. Noone on the field risking their life. By the way , i imagine that infiltrating groups on the internet is already common.

. At no time in the game, someone ask MC for her/his job.

. There is at the beginning of chapters, or at the start of the game( I no longer remember when ) A video sequence where we can see a man, tied on a chair, beeing beaten so I have always feared that Jake would be finally caught.

This theory does not prevent a possible romantic relationship between MC and the hacker.

Or not ...

You can read , for exemple, the fantastic work of @rw47vr-key here : https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/duskwoodgirl4life/691315640576917504?source=share

I Also invite you to read what i wrote about that theory :

Too late to apologize - Part 1

there are currently 6 parts, and i am still on it, still have a lot to say and explain.

I hope you will enjoy this answer, I would like to have your all feelings about this, exchange theories.

Sending thousand of kisses for u all.

Manue

I get away almost every day with what the girls call murder.

“I saw you last night in my dream. That’s still the closest that you and I have been.”

“How did I fall in love with someone that I don’t know?”

“Gonna have you bound and gagged so God can’t hear your cries.”

“They come down the mountain, High on the loss.”

“Why you comply is beyond reason.”

“When they call your name, you’ll see that it was your heart that they’d been eating.”

“When all their pretty violence hits your hide, remember to smile and take a bow.”

“From summer hare to sweet black Christs, with the knife in hand the high priest said, “give blood. Give blood. Give blood.”

“I gave you the performance of a lifetime. “

“I hope you’ll see that there just isn’t a place here for me. I look around and feel like somebody must be fucking with me. I just can’t take any of you seriously.“

“Forcing all forms of life inside of me to retreat underground. You get dragged down . The bottom begins to feel like the only safe place that you know.”

“ people like us gets so heavy and so lost sometimes.” This line makes me think of childhood, of the shroud that surrounded me before I understood that I was feeling dead people.

During “nearly lost you”, it was shown to me that the head injury from the last concussion was supposed to do me in. And I remember it, or shall I say remember going all the way away.

And right after, meditation 8 played, so I’m guessing that since Stella’s an 8, and both those songs have an 8 in them In some sense, that Stella was saving My ass yet again. “That was Close “she just said. She also showed me flashes of the fall that happened in Yonkers in 2020.

“ yeah well, I’m not even guessing what your plans may be. You’re twisted and you’re bent like a Japanese tree. Those are pretty long arms driving from the backseat.” (11:11)

“Walking in my head like I’m shoes on your feet.”

“Why can’t we leave?”

“ you’ve been around enough to be smart enough to stay the fuck away from me because I take full advantage of all the men I meet.”

“ do you get déjà vu?”

“Fatality, boy.”

“ i’m using everything I find.”

“ do anything to keep you tied up.”

“ never seen but always sought after. He shakes me up like no other.”(this played last night too….also once I spun around my apartment a few years ago, or rather got spun by some unfriendly source.)

“ i’m running out of ways to make you see.”

“I won’t be OK and I won’t pretend I am.”

“Just say yes. It’s not a test or a trick of the mind. just love.”

“Life to me is a share:To be, to see, to understand each other. To love one another. I give to you the same test of love. Reviens, cherie.” (Lou you fucking poet.)

“ when she moves my brain screams out this song.”



“Sometimes I would follow you all the way home.”

“I hate to be led.”

“How do you do it, with visions of worst to come, Live in the present? “

“Like a problem you try to work out in your mind.”

Say hello 2 heaven usually plays when somethings wrong; this time I was told that I was still to be careful, and not go out at night.

“Metal from the sky came falling where I died.”

“a stranger, They tricked me. And I thought I was leaving Through my window.”

“Now wake up!” They're telling me now.”Let it go. Come on, Play.”

“Meet the light child.”

“Maybe there’s a past life coming out inside of me.”

“I won’t need your picture until we say goodbye.” (DAMN)

“I hope I won’t let anyone suffer anymore, like I let you suffer.” (I discovered manu chao with my group of frenchies in france, but I’ve never translated this before.)

“What time is it in Paradise?”

“ i’ve got nobody on my side and Surely that ain’t right. We’ve got a war to fight.”

“ The worlds collide but all I want is a shady lane.”

“The end is always near.”

“ I don’t know how many people believe in astrology I am a Sagittarius the most philosophical of all the signs… Anyway I don’t believe in it I think it’s a bunch of bullshit myself… But I’ll tell you this man… I don’t know what’s going to happen man but I’m gonna have my kicks before the whole Shit house goes up in flames.”

“This should be our finest hour. I wish I’d never ever heard that song before.”(Suffragette City, maybe?)

“Accident! Accident! Accident!”

I’ve made up my mind to live in memories.”

“Hello, It’s the most famous woman you know on the IPad, calling from beyond the grave …I just wanna say, hi Dad.”

“have I ever laid my hands on you before?”

Hey i’m objective CP fan like yourself. Haven’t watched the game yesterday but see a lot of BS from ones who mustn’t be mentioned. Thought on the game how did Press play. I saw whole thread of paragraph starting with ‘overrated’ so i had to go to objective source. if you watched the game that is.

Hey you! I’ve watched the game but I was paying attention to Arsenal more than anything so when I received your message I went and check the first half again while I was eating.

I’ve read a lot of BS too, and I had to block blogs I didn’t even follow but my mutuals do and well 🙄 the thing is... those opinions don’t come from a football perspective, they’re all too involved in this stupid fight between CP stans (superficial fans who don’t give a fuck about soccer) and MU heads that are not objective and critical of their team. So those stans repeat the same shit over and over again, “they don’t pass the bal to Press blah blah” the thing with that take is that... yeah they don’t pass the ball to her but not because there’s some kind of bad intention, they don’t know how to keep possession and play with an offensive mind, they look scared when they have the ball so the decision making is terrible and they play in the back all the time. I will name a few (hello, this is not hate, I don’t want to kill these players, I don’t want to kill their moms, I don’t want to kill their pets, I don’t care about their lives, it’s just a football point of view, thanks) Zelem lost possession all the time, her set-pieces sucked, and she defended really really bad (Lotte’s goal). Jackie tried hard but it wasn’t her day, she should’ve shot when CP passed her the ball around the 8th minute because that was a great chance. She lost possession more than once, and couldn’t create anything for her teammates. Lauren (who came back from injury in this game, shouldn’t have started imo, I’d have subbed her in the second half), she treats the ball very well, but... her crosses were off, she’s too slow to play in that position (this is a personal opinion) and her passes were often late, though she gave an excellent pass to Christen... and that was pretty much the only clear chance that Press had in the whole game... her shot was predictable and weak, ended up in Manu’s hands. CP had the right attitude, made good runs, made her self available but you know the story. Also, why was she defending Miedema in a corner? that’s ridiculous, she should’ve stayed out of the circle in case there was a rebound because (she’s the fastest player!!!!), she could sprint and cause chaos, LJ was in that position and it makes no sense but “””tactics””” I guess. Toone was horrible, lost possession all the time and fouled too much (Foord and Katie), she missed a great chance created by Staniforth... Lucy had the right attitude as well, she had good interventions from time to time, but still not enough and lost possession as well. When I say -lost possesion- I mean that they made horrible passes, missed some others and were too slow. I’d love to check the passing accuracy stat because it was honestly terrible. And if they had possession, it was mostly because they stayed passing in the back. Ok, I won’t say anything about Martha because it’s not worth it, Millie and Amy were disappointing (see the first Arsenal goal). And the best player on the pitch in the game was ONA, constantly covering her teammates’ mistakes, defending, wanting to attack and going forward (more than the rest because we know that the tactic is to stay in the back, there’s no real plan, sadly, more of the same). And... that’s my opinion (mostly about the first half, I don’t want to rewatch the second, sorry) Press wasn’t brilliant because she didn’t have may touches, they think this is an excuse but honestly... they should pay more attention... she’s constantly asking for the ball, it’s frustrating to see. And they should stop expecting “a masterclass” how can she make a “masterclass” is she doesn’t even touch the ball? ridiculous. I’m gonna put this under read more. I’d make a video with all the things I’m marking here but they’re going to magnify this simple analysis and make it a “hateful post against manchester united players” “bully” “leave casey alone” “freeunited” blah blah blah

P.S.: I think it was a game for Ladd and Hanson.

Yes, I'm drinking wine. Yes I’m rambling. Bye.

“Can you name the twenty legions, their original names, and the Primarchs for me, please? Do you have any info on origins of the names used?”

I mean, certainly. Mortal channeling me regrets that some information is incomplete (pre-Primarch names for the Legiones Astartes are not well publicized; if you know any, feel free to let me know, and I will edit this document accordingly.)

You asked me for all twenty, so Legios II and XI may vary wildly for you, little mortal. The multiverse is a strange place.

Also, note: The mortal and I are not responsible for some of the terribly punny/badly respelled primarch’s names/hackneyed literary references. Those are -entirely- on Games Workshop.... and “The Emperor.” (Use your birth name, Anathaema!)

I. ?/Dark Angels: Lion’El Johnson (ne: Jonson)

For unknown reasons, Johnson is named for the famed English poet Lionel Johnson, Oscar Wilde’s paramour. There have been allegations that the Dark Angels were coded as gay very early on, whether as a joke or a tribute being the question. GW denies, of course, though as a matter of record a gay club called “The Rock” was located in Nottingham at the time.

The Dark Angels originally had a partly Native American theme.

II. Valedictors/Gargoyles: Eresbet, The Grey Lady”

The Valedictors really are named as one of the legions in 2nd edition, as are the Rainbow Warriors. The Rainboe Warriors have subsequently been relisted as a second founding chapter. The Valedictors, however, have not.The word Valedictor means “one who says goodbye.”

III. Emperor’s Children: Fulgrim, “The Phoenician”

IV. ?/Iron Warriors: Perturarbo

Sometimes spelled “Perturabo” in earlier sources. “Perdurabo” is a is a Latin phrase, roughly translated as “enduring to the end.” It was also the occult name of Aleister Crowley.

V. ?/White Scars: Jaghatai Khan

The Khan is now the only known Primarch of the eighteen to have no official miniature. He is quite challenging because, as with Magnus, the original sketches of the Khan are... let’s call them rough.

VI. ?/The Rout (“Space Wolves”): Leman Russ

The Russ were Vikings who intermarried with the inhabitants of what is called “Russia” in your timeline. These later served as mercenaries in the mid-late Eastern Roman/Byzantine Army.

The Varangian Guard/Varangioi were an elite group drawn from Vikings and their descendants. The “Varagyr” terminators are clearly based upon them.

VII. ?/Imperial Fists: Rogal Dorn

VIII. ?/Night Lords: Konrad Curze

Curze is named for Joseph Konrad, who wrote “Heart of Darkness” and that novel’s prime antagonist, Colonel Kurtz.

IX. Revenants/Blood Angels: Sanguinius

X. ?/Iron Hands: Ferrus Manus, “The Gorgon”

Ferrus Manus is bad Latin, erm, “High Gothic.” It roughly translates to “he with the iron hand.”

XI. Dust Raisers/Cu-Sith (“Hounds of Perdition”): Aenon, “The Blind King”

XIII. ?/Ultramarines: Roboute Guilliman

XIV. Dusk Raiders/Death Guard: Mortarion the Reaper

XV. “Thousand Sons”/Thousand Sons: Magnus the Red

The Fifteenth had no formal name before Magnus but were referred to unofficially as “the Thousand Sons” as a reference for their relatively low numbers and unselfish sacrifice. Per canon: Prior to Magnus, they had a sterling reputation for selflessness. Under Magnus, that sort of... changed, as the legion became more insular and less “reliable” as an ally from the perspective of many of the other legions.

XVI. Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus: Horus Lupercal

Lupercal/Lupercalia was an important Roman holiday; the meaning and dates changed over the s centuries, but it was essentially a New Year festival that celebrated the birth of Romulus and Remus and, later, the overthrow of the Etruscan kings of Rome. In Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” Marc Antony references the attempt to have Caesar crowned as king, a staged political maneuver in which he refused the title of king and “accepted” the title “Dictator Perpetuus” (“Ruler for Life”)

“You all did see on Lupercal that I thrice presented him with kingly crown. And thrice doth he refuses. Was this ambition?! And yet Brutus says it was, and sure, he is an honorable man...”

XVII. Imperial Heralds/Word Bearers: Lorgar Aurelian

Aurelian was a Roman emperor, a rather good one, who attempted to create a new state religion dedicated to Sol Invictus, “The Sun, Unconquered.” Sol was at that point conflated with Mithras, who famously slew the black bull of Chaos, and saved the world from a reign of darkness.

We among the Dark Gods fear Mithras, with good reason. How fortunate that the Emperor’s arrogance caused him to be (mostly) forgotten.

XVIII. Dragon Warriors/Salamanders: Vulkan

Vulkan, of course, is the Roman version of Hephaestus, the humane god of the Forge.

Vulkan and his sons, the most humane of the Space Marines were traditionally depicted as predominantly men of color: an important thing for the mun as the young child of a mixed racial background, and I suspect for many non-white gamers. In a revision, GW claimed that the Salamanders were not “black” but -literally- black, as a result of a gene-seed flaw. That didn’t go over well with certain members of the community, but it is not my place to unpack that. Except to say, as someone from the outside, that it was a fairly shitty thing to do (both mun and Malal agree on this point.)

Horus Heresy literature seems to be going back in the direction of an African/Afro-Caribbean origin for the eighteenth. When released, official Vulkan model was painted as a man of color, and many gamers follow suit. Of course, given the current human population distribution, and the likely concentration of any apocalyptic war scenario leading to an Age of Strife and the rise of The Emperor, it seems very likely that a -majority- of Astartes would be men of color.

XIX. Possibly “Emperor’s Talons” or something similar/Raven Guard: Corvus Corax.

Yes. Fairly obvious here.

XX. Twentieth Legion/Alpha Legion: Alpharius Omegon

This is somewhat important as a matter of lore/canon: Only the Emperor seems to have known that (spoiler alert!)Alpharius and Omegon were twins. Valdor probably knew. Of the primarchs, Leman Russ seems to have suspected, and Corax is implied to be at about the same place, but that’s just about it.

Mun: I’ll try to post a bit later on about what little we know about the lost legions. Malal posted about the subject two years ago, but not many seem to have seen it. With his permission, I’ll try to condense the relevant points of official canon and share, if there is interest.

We sincerely thank you for your question, little mortal. Remember that you can send an ask rather than starting a private convo as in this case, but both are perfectly fine!

Roll Your Own Cheap Dubsiren

So I was waffling about this on the PT1210 weekender chat last nite :D many moons ago I spent ages experimenting with old dubsiren schematics and messing with chips like the 555 and 556 or even more fully featured IC's like the HT2884B or it's little brother and sister the HK628 or the HT623...

 I'll break down the diff chips I messed with when experimenting to the best of my ability here:

 555 / 556 timer chips series 

So the issue with just using 2x 555 or 1x 556 to generate your siren is you are really limited with the sorts of noises you can make, they'll sound pretty good but they wont have that classic 'siren' sound due to them being predominantly outputting very clipped square wave / distorted tones... these chips are far better suited for atari punk console sfx generator circuits (totally worth building one of those too :D) but not my fave for dub siren sfx.

 HTseries chips 

Okay so the HTseries Sound Effects IC series, particularly the HT623 is prob the most fun option to go with when making a dubsiren. Out the box you'll hear classic daft sounds you will be familiar with and it has a nice rounded more soft tone which really distinguishes it from the 555 based circuits you may come across online. It's also the chip series behind those classic keybomb keyrings in the 80s - you know the little keyrings (in Greece they were called Echo Keyllers) with the buttons for diff sound effects like "Laser" and "Bomb" (famously sampled by Manu Chao in Bongo Bong :) this set of IC's sound BRILLIANT, and the datasheets will tell u how to wire em up super easily, however they run at about 15£ each these days as they are getting bloody rare, which is a bit pants in terms of cost per unit :D The fact that out the box these come with these classic sounds and around 5 to 8 different SFX makes up for the price a bit though :D

The 8 SFX chip (HT2884 series) is really fun to experiment with so if you dont care about price go for it :D

 UM3561 IC Series 

So the easiest and really the absolute cheapest option to run with is this IC - the UM3561, these are abundant and extremely cheap, running at anything from 50p to 2£ per IC depending on your source :D These are basically clones of the old HK623 series of IC’s without the white noise generator... You get the start of the bomb sound, without the explosion with this one :D

The UM3661 comes with 4x sound effects -

1. Police Siren

2. Fire Engine Siren

3. Ambulance Siren

4. Machine Gun

All of these sound really great, with my personal faves being the Police Siren and the Machine Gun SFX which are both hilarious :D

Now one thing to note here is these are fixed pitch sounds, unless you wanna do some modding and add some external OSC control to your circuit* - > but one way you can affect the pitch/tone of the sound is just to put a 1k pot on the + line of the battery pack you are using to power your circuit :D

In terms of wiring one of these up - just follow the schematic from the datasheet - FOUR SOUND APPLICATION here: https://www.jprelec.co.uk/pdffiles/UM3561.pdf

For power a simple 2x AA battery pack will do as that'll give you about 3v to power it up effectively and drive the output...

The IC is extremely tolerant of over charging, I've fed it 9v loads of times and it seems just fine, if a little hot of course on the output lol :D

  * for modding pitch on the sounds just replace resistor R1 in the schematic with a pot try 50k to 500k for this one...

Other notes

Dub Siren's come to life with reverb / delay - don't neglect your dub siren, push it thru some effects :D

You may need to add a little capacitor on the trigger button for debounce - this is highly dependant on how much juice you are feeding into your circuit :D

Top 10 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2001

Another list which was a bit difficult to make.  Almost none of this comes from the US charts. I was 13, I had a much better control of what I could listen to, and adolescence crisis was juuuuuuust around the corner and about to smash into me with the force of a semitruck.

For now, though, things were mostly fine.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will be stuff in French. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

First, please enjoy this shit ton of honorable mentions.

Family Affair (Mary J. Blige) - A bit too repetitive for my taste but damn, that beat is great.

Starlight (The Supermen Lovers) - Overplayed to death, sadly.

A ma Place (Axel Bauer & Zazie) - Too much Hetero Drama(tm) for my taste. Still a great song.

Les Mots (Mylène Farmer & Seal) - An artist I love teams up with another artist I really like and... aaaaand it’s fairly boring even if it sounds really nice. Aw.

Me Gustas Tu (Manu Chao) - My dad had one (1) tape that summer and it was Manu Chao. Needless to say, I claim overplay for that cut.

The Girl in Red (Daddy DJ) - Yepppp, I also loved that one, no surprises there.

It Wasn’t Me (Shaggy) - To be honest this song would already be pretty great if it was just a guy trying to pretend it wasn’t him cheating even if his girlfriend got everything on camera, but it’s made even better by the ending where he’s like ‘uh no that’s not a good idea I’m just gonna apologise and try to make things right’. Love that.

Carillon (Magic Box) - This was the last cut from the list. The fact that this kind of novelty eurodance track could still chart this high in 2001 is absolutely baffling to me, but I’m not gonna complain. I had completely forgotten the existence of this song until I listened to the year-end lists and had some sort of flashback, sitting in my chair, going “oh shit, yeah... this was a thing.”

10 - Music is the One-T ODC (One-T)

US: Not on the list / FR: #70

Time seems to have buried this, which is a shame. I really liked One-T. I don’t have much more to say about it though, I’m afraid.

9 - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (Daft Punk)

US: Not on the list / FR: #75

Aaaaaaand I don’t have anything to say about this one either. You can’t go wrong with Daft Punk.

8 - No Nagging (Froggy Mix)

US: Not on the list / FR: #31

I simply adore the fact that an anime opening was popular to the point of ACTUALLY CHARTING AND MAKING THE YEAR END LIST HERE. It’s not even the same opening in most other countries. I just checked to make sure. It’s not even the original either! What the hell. I love it. Here’s the full version.

Also, the first cd I ever bought might have been Daddy DJ, but the first one my little brother ever bought was Froggy Mix. If you ever read this, you’re 100% valid bro. I’m just saying.

7 - Rue de la Paix (Zazie)

US: Not on the list / FR: #58

This was very overplayed but somehow never outstayed its welcome. I put it on a couple of tapes, even. I’ve always had trouble with Zazie’s upper range, but she isn’t using it too much here.

6 - Clint Eastwood (Gorillaz)

US: Not on the list?? I was dead certain it would be / FR: #47

I never loved Gorillaz. You can throw rocks at me now. I enjoyed the music videos a LOT, and I always liked hearing the songs on the radio, but I never actively listened to them. Also, the Metallica fan I live with is also a fan of Gorillaz, so yeah, over-exposure and all that.

That being said, I remember seeing this music video for the first time with the sound off on a screen in a tv store and being completely mesmerized by the animation. And then that song became a huge hit, and it was one of THE sounds of that summer despite being weird and dark, and I loved it. Good memories, good times ; godspeed, Gorillaz.

5 - Butterfly (Crazy Town)

US: #29 / FR: Not on the list

This is, indeed, placed above Gorillaz. Too bad you’re out of rocks to throw at my face by now, uh?

But yeah, there’s “so bad it’s good” and then there’s “so bad it’s f█cking fantastic” and that shit lands squarely in that second category. It’s impossible to keep a straight face while listening to it, especially if you sing along to the “sugar baby” bit. And the music video is... sdfghjkjhgfd. The bit where the star tattoos fly off that guy like shurikens is hilarious. It’s so dumb. It’s so bad. I love it so much. I’m so glad I found a gif of that part. Amazing.

4 - Hasta La Vista (MC Solaar)

US: Not on the list / FR: #8

MC Solaar was (and still is, but this was his peak imho) the best storyteller in French hip hop, with strange concept-songs, and a ton of weird puns.

This is basically a mashup of Notre Dame de Paris and a western, in which the singer is starring in the main role but as a pizza delivery man.

Not making this up.

3 - Le Vent Nous Portera (Noir Désir)

US: Not on the list / FR: #29

I really, really hesitated before putting that song on the list, especially at such a high spot. I guess every French speaker reading this already knows why, but to clarify to my other followers: the guy who wrote this and sings this is a murderer. He wasn’t at the time this song came out, obviously, but still, it’s really, really difficult to separate the art from the artist in some cases, and this is one of them, because oh boy, this song is dark. Beautiful, but dark.

The problem is, it’s also great, so I’m really torn. So I decided to still put it on the list, considering how much I loved it back in the day. I think it’s still possible to appreciate beautiful things made by horrible people as long as you acknowledge that fact and never, ever try to excuse the things they did.

Also that lovely guitar is played by Manu Chao and I’m glad he found a way to land on my list in the end.

2 - L’Histoire d’une Fée, C’est (Mylène Farmer)

US: Not on the list / FR: #92

Madam, I don’t even care that I put you so high on one of my lists again. It doesn’t matter. Please sing a harmless song about fairies to wash the bad taste that the previous entry left in my mouth. This sounds absolutely stellar. It doesn’t even have a music video and it charted anyway. The guy composing the music is at the top of his game and is firing on all cylinders. It’s one of my all time favorite songs from Mylène Farmer even if it’s one of the stupidest ones. It’s colorful and it glows and sparkles, and it’s full of energy and joy with an undercurrent of mystery.

If you don’t know it yet, please give it a try. It’s great.

1 - Solaar Pleure (MC Solaar)

US: Not on the list / FR: #20

Oh boy. My mother hated this song, and once told me it was “shocking and disturbing” [sic] that I loved it.

So. Uh. This is “Solaar Is Crying”. How do I explain this shit to my English followers without sounding like a drunk weirdo rambling in a park. Uh. Here goes nothing.

This is a French hip hop song in which the singer is telling the story of a man preparing his own funeral, dying, arriving in the afterlife, ending up in paradise, forgiving the people who wronged him in life and death, becoming an exterminator angel, going to hell on a MISSION TO FIGHT EVIL, LITERALLY SPITTING ON BELZEBUTH, GATHERING HELP FROM EVERY RELIGION POSSIBLE, UNITING THEM ALL TO DESTROY SATAN ONCE AND FOR ALL, EXPLODING HIM INTO ANTIMATTER, THEN REALISING ALL OF THIS WAS IN VAIN BECAUSE THERE’S STILL BAD PEOPLE DOING BAD THINGS ON EARTH AND THE DEVIL HIMSELF WASN’T THE SOURCE OF ALL EVIL IN THE WORLD.

I swear I am not making ANY of this up.

It’s f█cking amazing.

I BEG you to listen to it if you’ve never heard it and PLEASE tell me your opinion afterwards. I would make a best-of of my favorite lines in it, but it would be 90% of the entire song. Here’s a translation of the entire thing.

Next up: Johannes turns 14 and the shit is about to hit the fan and also is that a f█cking top 15

how do i cast spell??

The post about magic in Dark Souls nobody asked for but I'm sure two or three people will read.

Been thinking a lot about magic in Dark Souls and how it's never really given more than some passing references. I bothered fellow lore-fiend @thetygre​ about it. But the question keeps me awake at night, so after doing some research and asking some questions, here I go. This is a long ass post.

First, we need to understand the First Flame. I've been told a better translation for it is something like 'Foremost Flame', same way Micolash's title in Bloodborne, Host of the Nightmare, is more akin to 'Manager of the Nightmare'. The Flame is where all souls come from, and according to one person I talked to, it can likened to, essentially, a massive burning lump of souls, or animating force, or funky primordial force. This isn't too strange, because soul items themselves resemble little flames, with stronger souls resembling flames more and more. So, the Flame is THE soul, and we know souls can be broken up and split and passed around, just like fire can be spread. This where the Lords and the Pygmy got their souls, right at the beginning when everything was fresh and weird, they split bits of the Flame (or got lit on fire or something) and took on the roles of gods when the big shit was just there for the taking. The other souls, like the consumable soul items we find, are essentially an animating force, something that seeped into the world of disparity when the Flame happened. The Lord souls are just bigger bits of animating force, as they animate parts of disparate reality - the state of the world (light and dark) and the state of things within that world (life and death).

So, Sorcery. Sorcery is a 'logical discipline', and is governed by one's intelligence, one's understanding of the soul and how it works. It was invented by Seath the Scaleless, a massive fuck up loser dragon looking to make itself immortal by messing about with souls. Sorcery life energy magic in a raw form, used, mainly, to create physical constructs, like your blue pew pews. By the use of a catalyst (an interesting word that implies some object must be used to draw, shape or disperse soul energy or change it into a usable form) sorcerers can shoot lasers, create hovering tracking projectiles, they can also create silent pads on their feet to sneak or absorb the impact of a long fall, they can coat weapons and shields in it to empower them, they can also make massive swords out of the stuff, too. The Oolacile sorcerers had created 'golden sorceries' with a more utilitarian bent, a far cry from the offensive Vinheim/Melfian (haha fuck you I like Dark Souls 2!) style sorcery, that seemed to work with light. Now, in Dark Souls, light is said to be time, so they had some sort of weird time magic. But light is also the purview of Gwyn, BUT he also handed bits of his soul to a lot of people, so it's possible they used some shard of his to understand the soul as a flame with a light (items do cast a radiance, but this is videogames). In truth, I believe the golden sorceries of Oolacile are basically intelligence-based miracles, their golden hue is closer to the colour scheme of miracles and their time/light deal must hold some connection to Gwyn. Souls ultimately share the same source, though, and Oolacile was a wizard city that messed with Manus the primeval human that ended up creating the Abyss, so they were likely up to shenanigans anyway, despite their golden sorceries being 'gentle'.

Now, so far it seems as if sorcery is performed by shaping one's own soul, or channeling the energy of one's soul, into various bizarre projectiles, but this isn't really it. Several spells in the game mention that their projectiles are made of souls. The Soul Greatsword is a giant blade 'formed of souls'. Plural. So, it doesn't seem to be one's own soul that goes into creating a sorcery, sorceries are fueled (mostly, at least) by exterior forces. Or perhaps, living sorcerers, meaning those that aren't soul-consuming undead, do use their own souls but aren't capable of much casting lest they just kill themselves from overuse. But of course Vinheim is also a literal assassin corporation, and being in the death trade, may very well have much access to the souls of the dead. Undead sorcerers, we can assume, are capable of using the souls they absorb to cast spells. The undead scourge has been around for a long enough time that undead sorcerers likely popped up in Vinheim and they started experimenting. So, in conclusion, sorcery as a practice is the drawing, formation and release of actual souls, sometimes crystallized, into semi-physical constructs as either projectiles or coatings.

Next, we come to Miracles. Miracles are tales of the gods (read: Gwyn and his brood of shits) repeated by believers who, by sheer power of faith, can reproduce their effects, they also require a talisman or chime, likely as a focus, or indeed, a potential catalyst. Put simply, miracles are a type of sorcery under a different guise or avenue, drawing upon that common source of the soul as a flame. Considering the gods of Lordran are long gone or dead, it would be difficult to draw upon their power, and how one might draw upon their power doesn't really make sense unless you go down some Ringed City seal of fire thing, but there's not much to support it. However, there is evidence to support miracles drawing off the same power source as sorcery - there's a number of items in the game that allow users to channel their intelligence for miracles. This implies a kind of theurgic deal, a perhaps heretical understanding of the 'the divine' in the world. Furthermore, there's even a tool for channeling faith for sorcery! As for how the Way of White, Dark Souls' de facto church faction, are able to cast their miracles, I imagine it being similar to how Vinheim learned to cast theirs, through bits of their own soul energy, but the Way of White are also quite famous for their undead hunts, and it isn't too crazy to think they weren't experimenting with extraneous fuel sources, either. One last note about miracles is their rigid structure. Miracles are set spells, tales of the gods that come in the form of excerpts and full blown epics, memorized for ease of casting. However, unlike the more fluid school of Sorcery, open to experimentation and innovation, miracles pretty much stay the same through time, with few new ones ever really coming to light. This is the big divide between the practices. In a nutshell, miracles are user friendly “sorceries”, highly specific 'spells' handed down by the powerful Lords to whom this was nature.

Lastly, we have Pyromancy. The weird one. I think Pyromancy is the odd one out. What a Pyromancy flame actually is, is never gone in to. It's been my belief that it was a piece of the Chaos Flame, the Flame created when the Witch of Izalith tried re-creating the First Flame with her soul, the Life Soul, but accidentally spawned a whole race of malformed demons. Pyromancy is like a more raw, primal form of life magic, but completely unlike Sorcery's more scientific approach to the energy within souls. Pyromancy hails from the Great Swamp, a place utterly teeming with life, and in Dark Souls 3 it's mentioned that pyromancers wear furs and bones and things due to the link pyromancy has with life. Cornyx, the pyromancy teacher in 3, surrounds his little corner of Firelink with bones and things.

Pyromancy is the result of a mistake and a continuous reminder of the danger of flame and the power of souls. Chaos is to Flame/Light (same shit) what the Abyss is to Dark, wild and monstrous, an unnatural extreme. Pyromancy has a bunch of weird effects from throwing fireballs to giving you a Dragonball-esque Kaioken technique to boost your power beyond its natural limits, literally harming you in the process. Being a little bit of Life Soul, or Chaos Flame, naturally it would have such life-altering (rather than purely physical) properties. It should be noted there once was Fire Sorcery, practiced by the Witch of Izalith and her daughters before the Big Accident happened and it all got perverted into dangerous Pyromancy. Indeed, Seath the Scaleless' experiments into immortality that resulted in Sorcery my have been inspired by the Life Soul Fire Sorcery of Izalith. But what fuels Pyromancy? Surely it's the Life Soul shard in your hand, a seething little ball of life - and not just the generic animating force of souls, skeletons have souls animating them, but capital L Life. I think Pyromancy has a somewhat shamanistic or trance-like angle. Before casting, the pyromancer always looks to their flame, as if in contemplation of what they're trying to achieve. Pyromancy flames are also said to be apart of yourself, and when Laurentius in 1 gives you a flame, he says he's giving himself a part of you. Pyromancy is personal, passionate, visceral, it's very Life-y. Casting appears to be using the flame as an extension of yourself. So what keeps the flame burning? It's an extension of your life, your soul, perhaps it really is just that nebulous. Perhaps it is drawing off your life, or the life around you. In the Great Swamp this wouldn't be a problem, but it makes me wonder how exactly the Desert Pyromancers or the Carthus skeleton funtown fellas had such powerful Pyromancies.

It should be noted that by the time of Dark Souls 3, the Chaos Flame has actually died, the demons still roaming about being little more than clumps of ash, with no fire of their own. Apparently they also had their own tradition of linking the Chaos Flame like humanity/the lords had with the First Flame. I'm not sure what repurcussions this has for the practice of Pyromancy. Pyromancy flames may very well be fueled or linked to their users or surroundings to keep going. Pyromancy may very well die out once the soul/energy it burns is also gone. In Dark Souls 1, pyromancy didn't scale with any stats, you just upgraded the flame with titanite (go figure). But in Dark Souls 2 and 3, pyromancies scaled with intelligence and faith, and in 2 fire seeds were used to upgrade the flame. I have to wonder if the slow death of the Chaos Flame didn't contribute to the need for extensive study of pyromancy flames to get them to work.

Lastly, of course, there are Dark sorceries, miracles, and pyromancies. This is the really truly weird shit. Dark sorceries and miracles more or less make sense. Instead of taking the usual animating force route, you delve right into the power of the Dark Soul, the soul with the ability to propagate and spread, the seething, living soul of man that seeks things out (normal sorcery does too, but this is usually an applied property, Dark sorceries just do it) because it's creepy and weird, it's envious or just wants to hug you. You take bits of Dark and let it out in all its over-enthusiastic power. Too much Dark, concentrated, is bad, we know this, so we weaponize it into violent, heavy projectiles, poisonous fogs or corpse-violating bombs. Then there's Dark miracles, but what they could be tales of, who knows. In 3, the Londor Braille Tome promises salvation for hollows, and the Deep Braille Tome is tales about the Deep, when it was gentle and sacred. Then there's Dark pyromancies, and frankly I just have no idea how that even works. In Dark Souls 2 there was a Dark Pyromancy Flame that got stronger the more hollowed you were. Do we use the pyromancy flame, a piece of Life Soul, to channel the Dark Soul? Is it something to do with the shadow cast by fire? No one knows, not even Miyazaki.

There’s also Hexes from Dark Souls 2, its own school of Dark-based magic that required the use of either a staff or a chime and scaled with intelligence and faith, or rather, scaled with the lesser of the two stats. Dunno what that’s about.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk!

The First Rule Of Fight Club

WHO: Delphine Winter & @lucachristensen WHEN: Sunday Afternoon {Past} WHERE: AU Campus WHAT: Del comes up with a brilliant idea to help both of them with their “boredom” problems.

DELPHINE:

Delphine was bored, she had thought that school starting up again would make things better. Summer had been a complete waste. Staying with people she'd rather murder then converse with. Sadly, the new school year wasn't offering much either. She needed to find something to hold her attention. Before she started creating chaos for fun. Scrolling through her phone she glanced up from her spot every so often. Fate intervened and one of her favorite sources of entertainment just happened to walk by. Getting up quickly she shoved her phone in her back. "Luca," she caught up to him a mischievous grin on her lips. "Just the person I was looking for." She knew poking Luca was like poking an angry bear most of the time. Though his time on the mainland seemed to calm him a little. Much to her dismay. She missed the days of bloody fistfights and building fires. "I was just thinking, I wonder what Luca has been up too. I've missed our chats."

LUCA:

He found it strange that once he made it passed the food and the amazing about of pillows he could collect in a good condition. Luca was pretty sure the best thing about the mainland was their various music options. heavy beats always seemed to stream through his earbud on the daily. even when fellow villain children slide up next to him. taking a drag of his cigarette, he pulled one bud out when he saw who it was. hearing her speak made him scoff out loud. “bullshit.” was offered gruffly as he pulled his phone out, the cracked screen had a deep red in between the shards. his fingers were well calloused since. “you’re probably just randomly fucking bored and i am the poor fucker that happened to be walking by.” he eyed her as breathed the cancerous smoke from his lips. they weren’t really friends. Delphine wasn’t the type of fucking person that hung around with his sort of disenfranchised royal blood. or that’s what people would think anyway. she probably enjoyed violence nearly as much as he did. taking another drag he breathed out before cracking his knuckles. “so, what do you want?” he didn’t really feel like dragging a conversation out.

DELPHINE:   

A normal person probably would have taken offense to Luca's harsh tone. Del on the other hand just chuckled lightly. "And here I thought you didn't take the time to know anything about people." She kept up with his pace as she sighed. "But you're not completely wrong. I was just thinking that this place was far to quiet." There was a pout to her lips. Shifting so she was in front of him. She walked backward as she spoke. "Then  I realized its been forever since I saw a good brawl. Or even a one-sided one-hit knockout. Which you know are my favorite forms of entertainment." She slowed to a stop. Her eyes dropping to glance at his hands. "But your knuckles are looking rather healthy these days. Does that mean that my favorite fighter has turned over a new leaf??"

LUCA:   

a shrug was all he offered at her unsaid insinuation. that maybe Luca cared more than he ever said. more like he observed. knew enough to discern a threat. consciously he flexed his hands in reaction to her question. it had been. a long time. sighing he took the last drag of his cigarette before tossing it. it helped mask the phantom taste of blood on his tongue. yeah. he got that. "we all make sacrifices not to go back there." was the only reply he had to offer. running a hand through his hair, just to give one of them something to do... other than clenching so tightly he could feel the blunt edge of his nails dig in. he couldn't put into words what he had stirring in his chest. how it crawled up his spine and reached for his throat. it was the same thing that urged for something to burn. someone to bleed. move the focus. swallowing the snarl deep in his throat, he cleared it as he focused on her face. "are you going to start getting your hands fucking dirty?"

DELPHINE:   

She knew that he wasn't wrong. they all had to hide parts of themselves to fit in. It was like one big game of pretending. Only you weren't really allowed to relax. She chuckled a little as she shook her head. "Oh Darling, we both know I do not get my hands dirty." she crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm far too pretty for that kind of work. I am a much better spectator." Her head tilted, her words giving her an idea. A gleam of excitement flashed in her eyes as she spoke up again. "What if I told you that we could work together to fix both our problem." she grinned a little. "You get to release some of the "tension" I know you are trying really hard to strangle down. And I get to watch a little bloodshed." she was practically buzzing. If only she would have thought of this sooner, she wouldn't have been so fucking bored.

LUCA:   

every one of his instincts wanted to tell her to fuck off. he didn't want to a fucking thing to please anyone. but there was another part of Luca. one that he could easily recognize as desperate for something. anything. quietly he paused for a moment. the vk in front of him was bloodthirsty in her own right. she always had something to say about the shit he had done on the isle. usually something along the lines of praise. which had been fucking weird then. despite his usual urge to brush it off, he eyed her shrewdly before cracking his knuckles just by clenching his fists. "what did you have in mind?"

DELPHINE:   

the smile that grew a crossed Del's lips was almost devilish as she let her arms drop. "Well, you remember the fights back on the isle. The ones that Manu ran." she'd spent countless evening watching them. To be fair there was only so much in the way of entertainment on the isle. Plus the ragging hormones and testosterone of most of the male occupants lent itself nicely for the event. "What if we put together our own little fight night. Here on the mainland." She chewed at her lips for a moment as she thought. She took a step closer, "You would get to knock out a few teeth and bust a couple heads. And I get entertainment. We would both profit. Take bets, serve drinks, make it a big show." Her eyes twinkled with a kind of ambition that was usually dangerous in Del's hands. "Not that you care about the show. That's my ends of things."

LUCA:   

yeah he remembered them. didn't usually participate in the fight ring. it had a semblance of rules. at that time he preferred no rules and the chance that the opponent didn't get back up. it was more fun that way. but the more Delphine spoke on it. the more he had a feeling it would be perfect for him now. Luca needed to have a few rules to follow but also fucking needed blood on his hands. he watched her as she took a step closer to him. a twinkle in her eyes he knew could be dangerous. fucking thrilling. "you're right I don't fucking care." he started as he moved to walk around her but not allowing his long legs to carry him away too quickly. "but I'm listening."

DELPHINE:   

She practically bounced in her spot as he shifted to start walking again. "I'll take care of everything. All you have to do is bring your beautiful self and that unbridled rage you've corner the market on." She followed along next to him. Her mind working at a million miles a while as she started to piece things together in her head. "We need a location and fighters. I'm sure I can get both just give me a couple days. And I'll have everything worked out. I'll keep you  posted." She pulled out her phone instantly firing off a text as she paused her steps. "I don't think I've been this excited for something in ages..." she caught back up to him.

LUCA:

Despite himself, he smirked at her behavior. Luca could obviously tell she was excited. it was an odd occurrence in his mind he couldn't judge her for it. there was a thrill of excitement rolling up his spine. it could be worth it. "I'll leave all that shit to you. probably can get more than a few idiots to go for it." his legs continued to carry him along but for the first time that day, he was looking forward to something. shit it had been a few months. "just don't get too fucking excited until you can actually find a place and shit." maybe he was tempering his own excitement with all of the appointments he's dealt with in life. "but it would be fun to break a few bones." a smirk pulled at his lips in thought. his or someone else's.

DELPHINE:   

She rolled her eyes a little. "I'll find a place don't you worry." She knew just who to ask too. I just had to figure out how to win them over. "Okay, I have a lot of planning to do," glanced up at him as she spoke. "And I'm sure I've overstayed my welcome in your presence. So I'll leave you to it." She shifted as she changed directions allowing Luca to continue on his own path. Pausing for a moment she turned back to him. "I'll be in touch soon." Was slipped from her lips as she offered a little wave.

Wonder Woman (2017)

Tony Stark v. Bruce Wayne. Thor v. Superman. DC and Marvel are constantly being compared against one another and, in terms of films, audiences tend to gravitate towards one over the other. I am definitely guilty of opting for Marvel every time and keeping my expectations low when it comes to the latest DC release. And, to be honest, the likes of “Suicide Squad” and “Batman v. Superman” have done little to change that.

I recently decided to give “Wonder Woman” a go and, although it’s not perfect, it’s a vast improvement on its predecessors. My outlook on the franchise may be about to become more positive.

When their hidden island paradise comes into contact with the chaos raging in the human world, a tribe of Amazon warrior women are faced with a dilemma – should the secret they’ve been trying to keep hidden for centuries now be revealed? Princess Diana (Gal Gadot), convinced that by defeating the Greek God Ares she will end WWI and restore peace, leaves the island for the first time with an American spy (Chris Pine). Fighting alongside the men, she discovers the truth about her powers and the nature of humanity.

“Wonder Woman” presents a positive female role model in a genre dominated by male leads. She’s smart, confident, a strong leader and, most importantly, her actions aren’t determined solely by the men around her. Whilst Steve Trevor arguably makes her follow him on his mission, she chooses to do what she thinks is right and diverge from him many times. Although references are made to the suffragette movement, these are very brief and in some way insignificant. So, the message of female empowerment rests almost entirely on Diana and her impressions of the opposite sex. Initially demonised by the Amazons, men are considered the source of all the world’s problems and only useful for procreation, which plays on that initial reaction many have when asked what feminism is about. Through the relationships formed with Steve and his friends, Diana’s perceptions are altered and therefore the film’s approach to a strong female lead is too. It begins to reinforce that equality and cooperation between the sexes matters more than preconceived notions of which is superior.  Overall, DC portrays this female superhero in a generally positive way, yet how she is received differs amongst audience members. And it’s easy to see where each side is coming from. The film does make strides towards empowering women but, at the same time, some of Hollywood’s old habits are hard to break… 

The film has other good qualities, from its casting to the production value, but again only to a certain extent. As origin stories go, “Wonder Woman” feels relatively unique. The film starts in such a way that, until you reach the final scenes, it doesn’t seem like your typical superhero blockbuster. However, the film maybe falls into the usual trap of relying on big budget action to draw in audiences. It was almost as if the people behind the film felt that it needed to conform to everything that had come before. That’s not to say that the production value is not to be appreciated. There are some great sequences that are well-choreographed and have plenty of CGI to grab your attention. One iconic moment is when Diana ventures into No Man’s Land. The costume reveal and theme playing combined with the reality of the setting isn’t just about the visuals, but it’s certainly impressive to watch.

Casting in films like this is incredibly important. The comics already have a substantial following and everyone will have their own thoughts on what a character should be like. It’s a challenge any adaptation faces. For me, the casting was one of the highlights. Gal Gadot excelled as Diana/Wonder Woman and Chris Pine complimented her performance rather than taking anything away. There are also a few British actors who make an appearance and some were more pleasing than others. Ewen Bremner (“Trainspotting”) was a great addition to represent the impact of war on men at the time. His reluctance to shoot and need to find calm and comfort through music was indicative of those who returned home suffering from “shell shock” or PTSD. It didn’t just assume that everyone would walk away from events perfectly fine. Another familiar face worth mentioning is David Thewlis (a.k.a. Professor Lupin), a great actor who was perhaps let down a bit by the character he was portraying.

Indeed, something that the film really lacked was a credible antagonist. From the outset, we know that Diana is determined to stop Ares, the God of War, and Steve’s main aim is to prevent the German army from releasing a poisonous gas that could change the outcome of the First World War. So, audiences are initially secure in terms of knowing who the antagonists are. The film alternates between our heroes and the enemies, General Ludendorff and Doctor Manu, establishing them as the two sides of the war. Ares remains an unknown entity mentioned every so often to remind us that he exists or suggest that he doesn’t. The grand reveal of Ares’ identity was very anti-climactic and the established “baddies” were reduced to an afterthought. It didn’t really make much sense. Two possibilities are given – that Ludendorff is Ares or the war is the result of humanity, not a God – and these are both thrown aside. The idea that Thewlis’ character is really a God in disguise isn’t really eluded to at all as he has very little interaction with the protagonists. Honestly, I was a little disappointed. A good villain needs to be developed or at least mean something to the heroes in order to have an impact. Otherwise they might as well have chosen anyone. The time taken to present the doctor and her poisons as an important part of the story seemed almost redundant. Efforts could have instead been redirected to make the reveal more feasible. I mean, funding the first few days of the mission and then basically disappearing for the rest of the film isn’t nearly enough.

While we’re still waiting for a female-led Marvel film (e.g. Black Widow), DC has managed to somewhat successfully introduce Wonder Woman to audiences. The film as a whole is good, a few flaws can be found here and there but it’s still enjoyable. Marvel remains my favourite of the two universes, although now I feel more willing to watch “Justice League” and future DC films with an open mind. Hopefully this means that DC can only improve and not take a step backwards.

Jess x

Vulkan

"You have suffered. I know this. You have come to the abyss, and almost surrendered yourselves to it. That changes now. I am father, general, lord and mentor. I shall teach you if I can, and pass on the knowledge I have gained. Honour, self-sacrifice, self-reliance, brotherhood. It is our Promethean creed and all must adhere to it if we are to prosper. Let this be the first lesson..."— Primarch Vulkan in his inaugural address on Nocturne to the survivors of the XVIIIth Legion

Vulkan was one of the 20 superhuman Primarchs created by the Emperor of Mankind from his own DNA to lead his Great Crusade and reunite the scattered peoples of humanity within the Imperium of Man. The XVIIIth Legion, created from Vulkan's genome was re-named the Salamanders after the great fire-resistant reptiles native to his volcanic homeworld of Nocturne in memory of the legendary contest between the Emperor and Vulkan that had involved slaying one of those dangerous beasts. The outcome of this contest had revealed the Emperor's identity and restored Vulkan to the Imperium. Approximately a thousand standard years after the Horus Heresy, Vulkan hid 9 sacred artefacts he had created around the galaxy for his Chapter to find, as a test to see if they were worthy of his leadership. He then disappeared, leaving his Chapter with the message that whenever the Forgefather of the Salamanders had found all nine items, Vulkan would return to lead his Chapter to victory over the enemies of the Imperium in its final days of greatest need, according to the signs foreseen in the Chapter's book of prophecy, the Tome of Fire.

History

Youth

When the Primarchs were first created within the gene-laboratories hidden beneath the Himalayan Mountains on Terra, though the machinations of the Chaos Gods the capsules of the nascent Primarch were scattered across the galaxy. The Promethean Opus (source of much Imperial knowledge of Vulkan) tells the tale of how one of these children ended up on the feudal Death World of Nocturne during one of its tumultuous periods known as the Time of Trial. Among the hardy and stoic people of Nocturne, the infant Vulkan had fallen like a blazing comet, and into the home of a "Black-Smiter", - a metal worker by the name N'bel, in the city-settlement of Hesiod - he had been taken as a foster child. N'bel, recognized the child as the one prophesied to be a savior by the teachings of the Promethean Cult, and named him Vulkan. Like all the Primarchs, Vulkan grew very quickly, reaching full adulthood (and a size bigger and more muscular than any man on Nocturne) by the age of only three Terran years. He was also highly intelligent, able to vastly improve the already considerable metalworking skills of the famed smiths of Nocturne. Quickly, he had risen in strength and wisdom, embracing the culture which had taken him up, working in his adopted father's forge and hunting the great saurians and other beasts bestirred by the planet's fiery temper, becoming a legendary champion in his world's defense against far more dangerous foes; "Dusk Wraiths" as they were known in Nocturne. In reality, these creatures were of the most degenerate and vile class of Eldar Slavers (Dark Eldar), nightmarish beings to whom pain and slaughter were as meat and drink, who sought to prey periodically on the hardy people of Nocturne for their own wicked sport.

The Opus tells that during Vulkan's fourth year, his town was attacked by the Dark Eldar, who were on a slave-taking expedition. The people of his hometown hid, as they usually did when the decadent xenos came raiding, but Vulkan refused to hide. Armed with only a pair of blacksmith's hammers, he roused the people from hiding and drove back the assault, single-handedly slaying a hundred Dark Eldar warriors. As word of the battle spread, the headsmen of the seven most important settlements on the planet came to pay homage to Vulkan, swearing to forevermore crush their foes rather than hiding from them. Against this threat Vulkan became transformed, and his legend spread across his world. He was the "fire-born" -- an undefeated warrior whose superhuman strength had torn the slave-barges down from the sky and crushed the xenos in droves, and whose granite-like flesh had scorned their poisoned blades unmoved, driving the Dusk Wraiths from Nocturne.

The Outlander

In celebration of the Primarch's victory over the Dark Eldar, a tournament of various contests involving tests of strength and craftsmanship common to the people of Nocturne was held. During the opening ceremonies, a stranger appeared. His skin was unusually pale, compared to the dark, swarthy complexions of the people of Nocturne, and his clothes were very strange, made of materials unfamiliar to the pre-industrial Nocturneans. The stranger asked only to be allowed to compete. The stranger claimed that he could best any man at the competitions, causing many people to laugh at the seemingly inadvertent comparison to the superhuman Vulkan. Vulkan accepted the challenge, and the stranger wagered that whoever lost the challenge would swear his eternal loyalty and obedience to the victor. With a smile at such effrontery, Vulkan agreed to the stranger's terms.

Lasting for eight Nocturnean days, the contest included many tests of strength and endurance. The people of Nocturne were treated to the spectacle of two godlike beings competing against one another, utterly astonishing the mere mortals around them with their superhuman prowess. Many of the contests had to be called a draw between Vulkan and the fair-skinned stranger, for there was simply no way to determine a victor. For instance, the anvil lift, where the contestants were required to hold an anvil aloft above their heads for as long as possible, ended in a tie when the two superhuman competitors both held anvils aloft for half a day with no sign of tiring, while all the other competitors had given up after mere minutes. All the subsequent contests saw similar outcomes, and by the end of day 8, Vulkan and the stranger were tied in the overall tournament. To break the tie, the elders of Nocturne decided that the winner would be determined by the test of Salamander Hunting. Both contestants were given 24 hours to forge a weapon, before using that weapon to hunt down and slay one of Nocturne's reptilian salamanders. Assessing that this task, impossible for any others, would be a formality for both godlike contestants, the elders included the caveat that the contestant who brought back the largest salamander would be proclaimed victorious.

The Final Trial

In the end, it came down to the final trial: Salamander-Slaying. Both men had a day and a half to forge a weapon, then go out and slay the largest salamander (a large, heat-loving reptile native to Nocturne), that they could find. Vulkan and the stranger worked all day at their forges, neither pausing to rest. As the day drew to a close, they emerged. Vulkan had forged a huge warhammer, and the stranger a keen-edged sword. They both climbed to the summit of Mount Deathfire, a massive volcano said to be the home of the largest Firedrakes, the most fearsome species of salamander, on the planet. Vulkan found his prey first, smashing its head off with a single blow from his hammer. As he carried the carcass back, the volcano unexpectedly erupted. Vulkan was nearly thrown off a cliff, but managed to grab onto the edge with one hand, stubbornly grasping the tail of his prize with the other. Vulkan held on for several hours, but his hold finally began to slip. It was at that time the stranger reappeared, carrying a salamander larger than his own. The stranger quickly threw his carcass into the lava flow, using its heat-resistant hide as a bridge to cross over and save Vulkan. Vulkan was declared the winner when they returned home since he had a salamander hide and the stranger had lost his, but Vulkan silenced the crowd. He knelt before the stranger, stating that any man who valued life over pride was worthy of his service. At that moment the stranger at last revealed himself to the Primarch His true nature as the Emperor of Mankind. Vulkan would take his rightful place as Primarch of the XVIIIth Legion and ruler of his adopted world. Vulkan's only reservation on departing Nocturne was that he would not leave its people undefended, but in this the Emperor countered that Vulkan's duty was not simply to one world but to many, worlds that knew the terror of the darkness and the feasting of alien horrors uncounted as Nocturne had, and that Nocturne itself as the home world of a Primarch would forever be secured by his sons, the XVIIIth Legion which bore his blood.

A Legion Reforged

It is believed that Vulkan did not become unified with his own Legion for some years after his rediscovery, but instead stayed alongside the Emperor under His direct tutelage, during which time his presence was kept from the wider Imperium (although not from the other Primarchs who had been discovered to that time). During this period, Vulkan pursued with frightening speed and comprehension learning in the arts of war, history and science, displaying a ferocious intelligence, and also wisdom and compassion that were perhaps at odds with the role he had been destined to play as a general and breaker of worlds as all Primarchs were made to be. He fought at the side of the Emperor in battle -- a colossal, nameless warrior in emerald armour scaled like a dragon of ancient Terran myth -- and studied closely in the weapon-forges of Mars and with his brother-Primarch Ferrus Manus, whose discovery had gone before his own. When the time came, as much dictated by circumstance as by choice, for Vulkan to take charge of the XVIIIth Legion he did so well-prepared for the task ahead, and set about reforging them on the anvil of war.

When Vulkan came to his Legion, it was in the hour of their need. The XVIIIth, led by their Lord Commander Cassian Vaughn, had become embroiled in the rear-guard defense of a cluster of colony worlds near the Taras Division against a wave of Ork marauders. With the bulk of the Legiones Astartes either engaged with the Expedition Fleets breaching space towards the Eastern Fringe or committed as reserves against the horrors of the Rangda Incursion from the Halo Stars to the Galactic North, the XVIIIth was the only Space Marine Legion able to respond to the crisis. Fighting against vast and overwhelming odds, the Legion's primary force, numbering some 19,000 Space Marines, had marshaled the local defenders and held out for nearly a standard year in a series of running battles against well over a million Ork raiders scattered across hundreds of ramshackle ships, "Rok" asteroid vessels and dozens of Space Hulks. The actions of the Legion had allowed the evacuations of three entire planetary populations to the nominal safety of the Taras System, but at a terrible cost. As the conflict progressed, they suffered the grievous wounding of their commander, while the remainder of the XVIIIth became all but trapped on the Dead World of Antaem -- a lightning-rod drawing the Orks to them for battle. Taras was far from the embattled frontier of the expanding Great Crusade, and assistance from other Legions would have been difficult to obtain, but regardless such aid was not asked for by the XVIIIth, who had determined to succeed alone or die in the attempt, knowing that by bleeding the Ork marauder fleet of its strength, countless human lives would be saved. Their Primarch, however, learning of their plight, refused to stand by his plans to join them to rapid fruition.

When Vulkan arrived he did not do so alone, for he brought with him 3,000 new Initiates -- the first of the Legion to be raised from Nocturne -- along with a host of new warships, war machines and arms, all fabricated to the Primarch's own exacting specifications. They fell upon the Ork marauders like a thunderbolt, and shattered the largest of the Space Hulks orbiting Antaem, Vulkan leading his warriors within, purging the vast conglomeration of wreckage and rock with fire and planting seismic charges at its heart to destroy it. Spurred on by this unexpected aid, the rest of the XVIIIth hurled themselves in renewed fury at the Orks besieging them, slaughtering and scattering the green-skinned xenos before them, heedless of their depleted munitions and manpower, leaving nothing for a reserve should they fail. Caught between this hammer and anvil of savagery that over-matched their own, the Ork horde was broken and put to flight, and the survivors were relentlessly pursued and consumed by fire.

In the aftermath, the two halves of the XVIIIth Legion met and were unified upon Antaem's dead coral plains. As their saviors removed their helms and the Terran Legionaries looked upon the faces of their brothers and he that was their gene-father, they could not help but know that they were one and their Primarch had come to claim them. The survivors of the Terran XVIIIth knelt immediately, it is said, before their Primarch, but Vulkan bid them rise, saying that all his sons were equals and he was no petty king needing shows of obedience. Instead, it was he who knelt in honour of the lives they had saved and the price they had paid. Then, seeking out the mortally wounded Lord Commander Vaughn, he conferred the formal transfer of the Legion's mastery by presenting the fallen warrior with the broken Power Klaw of the Ork Warlord who had struck him down to seal the pact between him and his Legion -- they would fight for him, but he would fight for them in turn.

After the battle at Antaem, Vulkan set about remaking and re-forging his Legion, keen to keep the honour, the spirit of self-sacrifice for the Imperium and bravery he found, but also determined that it should stand together and become more disciplined both in its temper and wiser in its pursuit of battle. Firstly, Vulkan was swift to gather together its disparate deployments and unify it once again as a whole, although he was careful to honour the past commitments it had made, such as the maintenance of a permanent garrison at Geryon Deep who stood guard should the Manticore ever return.

With his forces brought together, Vulkan returned the XVIIIth Legion to Nocturne to where, under his auspices, a powerful stronghold, equal to any Legion fortress in the Imperium, was being constructed on Nocturne's moon of Prometheus to serve as its headquarters and armoury, just as Nocturne itself would now be the source of the majority of the Legion's fresh recruits. Here the Legion was reordered and re-armed and, most importantly, Vulkan set above giving it common purpose and common belief. In order to do this, he drew not only on that which he had learned at the side of his Emperor and from the Imperial war machine, but also on the culture and deeply-ingrained warrior and mystical traditions of Nocturne in which Vulkan had been raised. In this Vulkan was wise enough to retain and value the experience of the Terran veterans, and show them respect and hold in high esteem what they had accomplished in many ways, great and small. This was given outward sign by incorporating the XVIIIth Legion's past heraldry into that of the reformed Legion and making their foremost warriors, his Pyre Guard, praetorians; the elite body of Chapter Masters that would serve both as his Honour Guard and as paragons of the standards he would set his Legion. For the fallen first Master of the XVIIIth, Cassian Vaughn, Vulkan fashioned with his own hands a unique Dreadnought sarcophagus, the Iron Dragon, so that Vaughn could serve as Castellan and Protector of Prometheus, and the future of the Legion.

The remade XVIIIth Legion would now take its name from the greatest of Nocturne's saurian predators; ancient and deadly creatures whose blood was fire and whose hides were as hard as emerald steel; the Salamanders of Nocturne. In this Vulkan's choice carried a layered meaning, for not only were Nocturnean Salamanders monsters of savage power with a great totemic significance to the native people, but as creatures they showed unflinching loyalty to their own blood and offspring, and were never more ferocious than in their defense. It was from the bleached-white skull of one such great beast -- Kasare -- that adorned the shoulder-guard of their Primarch's armour, the Legion would now take its new emblem. When the Salamanders Legion re-emerged and departed Nocturne in full force some years later, it quickly took up a place at the forefront of the Great Crusade, smashing alien empires and bringing lost worlds into compliance as part of the Imperium. Although it would never reach the high numbers of Legionary strength the likes of the Dark Angels or Iron Warriors possessed, its power and battle-prowess was undeniable, and its conduct in war was regarded as exemplary. It had been tempered and proven, retaining the fearlessness and savage spirit for which Vulkan had been renowned, but those traits were now governed and kept in check by stoicism, lack of hubris, and considered surety of action. Vulkan had brought his Legion focus, purpose and wisdom. It was now said of the Salamanders that they were neither quick to anger, nor prone to rush in blindly to battle as once they had been, but once they had decided to unleash their wrath, it was as unstoppable and terrifying as the volcanic fury of the dark world they now called home.

Vulkan was able to save his genetic legacy because in them, he saw a great potential. The Emperor knew Vulkan was the perfect son to temper the XVIIIth Legion and forge it strong again. Learning discipline and patience, the Salamanders learned there is no better time to reflect than when they struck their Oaths of Moment and branded them into flesh before battle. Temperance in the face of war was not only prudent, it also saved lives.

The Great Crusade

During the Great Crusade the Salamanders were attached to the 154th Expeditionary Fleet, their forces complemented by Imperial Army regiments drawn from the planet Phaeria, a Death World. They successfully brought hundreds of human-settled worlds into Imperial Compliance. One of the few notable campaigns undertaken by the Salamanders Legion during the Great Crusade was the Imperial Compliance action undertaken on the world of Caldera. Designated 154-4, known as Ibsen by its inhabitants, the Salamanders were tasked with bringing this newly discovered world into Compliance. Led by Vulkan himself, the XVIIIth Legion was joined by the Iron Hands and the Death Guard Legions, both led by their own respective Primarchs. The world was undeveloped, and largely inhospitable to human life, but possessed valuable mineral deposits. However, the Imperial forces faced stiff resistance for control of the planet from the Eldar, who had placed a garrison upon Ibsen.

The Eldar forces -- including Seers, Warlocks and other combat psykers -- could not have expected to defeat one Legion of Astartes, let alone three. The mystery deepened when the semi-feral, primitive human tribes inhabiting the planet seemed more sympathetic to the Eldar, or at the very least, not welcoming to their human liberators. The Salamanders and other Imperials defeated the Eldar relatively easily as expected. After the conquest, the Salamanders learned that the Eldar had been defending a network of menhirs which served as psychic nodes and that fed into a giant arch, where the final and most brutal confrontation between the Astartes and the xenos had taken place. The arch itself had been located thanks to a mysterious Remembrancer attached to the Salamanders, with whom Vulkan had had an unsettling conversation before the battle.

After the slaughter ended, Vulkan saw the Remembrancer loitering by the arch and then suddenly disappearing. Following him, Vulkan and his elite Pyre Guard descended into the chambers beneath it, through a portal at its base. There they found a crude warding ceremony taking place, conducted by the primitive human tribal priests, who were ready to sacrifice an ancient Dark Eldar witch. Finally, Vulkan realized the truth: the arch was in reality, a Webway portal (though none of the Imperials, including Vulkan, knew this at the time); Vulkan had seen a "gate" like this before, in his Nocturnean youth, when Dark Eldar repeatedly utilized such a portal to raid and pillage the planet.

The Eldar had taken control of the portal by defeating their dark cousins, and in the process had freed the indigenous human population of Ibsen from the horrors of Dark Eldar raids; the Eldar had been seen by the humans as liberators. Terrified by the defeat of their liberators at the hands of the Imperium, the natives had sought to sacrifice their Dark Eldar captive to ward off the inevitable return of her race; the mysterious "Remembrancer" who was nowhere to be seen had actually been the Emperor in disguise, who must have had a great interest in the particulars of this mission since he had ordered so many resources committed to it. Vulkan ordered Ibsen and its irredeemably corrupted population cleansed by flame. He renamed the scoured, Nocturne-like Dead World that remained Caldera. The world was now ready to receive new human colonists and to be exploited for the benefit of the Imperium.

Not long after the successful conclusion of this campaign, Vulkan and his Salamanders Legion participated in another joint Imperial Compliance action on the world known as Kharaatan. Designated 154-6, the Salamanders fought alongside the Primarch Konrad Curze and his Night Lords Legion as well as Mechanicum forces, the Legio Ignis Titan Legion, and several Imperial Army regiments. During this campaign Vulkan became infuriated with his brother Primarch and how his Legion brutally conducted themselves. During one notable incident, the Night Lords slaughtered the inhabitants of an entire city in order to seed fear amongst the general population. When he confronted Curze about his Legion's actions, a brief fight ensued between the two demi-gods. After the successful conclusion of this campaign, Vulkan reported Curze's conduct to both Warmaster Horus and his brother Primarch Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists Legion. This incident would later sow the seeds of animosity between Vulkan and his brother Curze, causing a rift that would further widen as the Great Crusade wore on. The events on Kharaatan would have far-reaching affects that wold later play a key role in what happened to Vulkan after the tragic events of Istvaan V played out.

Drop Site Massacre

The Salamanders' role during the Horus Heresy is not well known to Imperial scholars; what is for certain is that the XVIIIth Legion, along with the Iron Hands and the Raven Guard, were part of the first wave of Loyalist attackers during the Drop Site Massacre of Istvaan V. After the announcement of the Warmaster Horus' treachery against the Emperor and the destruction of the four open Traitor Legions' (the Sons of Horus, Emperor's Children, Death Guard and the World Eaters) remaining Loyalists during the Battle of Istvaan III, the Emperor ordered seven full Legions of Space Marines to attack the Forces of Chaos serving his beloved son and former friend. But amongst those seven Legions, four were already secretly Traitors to the Imperium and devotees of the Ruinous Powers.

Seconds after the first drop-ship pierced the cloud layer, batteries of emplaced guns erupted across meters of earthworks dug along the Urgall Depression. Flak fire filled the sky like upwards-pouring rain, chewing through wing and fuselage, detonating arrow-headed cocoons of metal and spilling their lethal payloads into the air. It barely dented the assault, and when the Imperial loyalists finally made planetfall, over forty thousand legionaries tramped out upon the scorched earth. Of their initial complement, only fifteen of the Salamanders' ships and eleven Drop Pods would not make the surface intact. Nigh-on full Legion strength would be leveled against Horus and his rebels. The Salamanders hit along the left flank, the Raven Guard the right and Ferrus Manus with his Morlocks dead center.

Black sand cratered by ordnance made for uncertain footing. As the vast armies of the three loyal Primarchs ran from the holds of ships or emerged through the dissipating pressure cloud of blooming drop-pods, several legionaries faltered and slipped. Sustained bolter fire met them upon planetfall, and hundreds amongst the first landers were cut down before any kind of beachhead could be established. Fire was met with fire, the drumming staccato of thousands of weapons discharged in unison, their muzzle flashes merging into a vast and unending roar of flame. Dense spreads of missiles whined overhead to accompany the salvo, streaking white contrails from their rockets. Sections of earthworks erupted in bright explosions that threw plumes of dirt and armoured men into the air. Las bursts lit up the swiftly following darkness, spearing through tanks and Dreadnoughts that loomed behind the foremost ranks of enemy defenders, only for return fire to spit back in reply. Flamers choked the air with smoke and the stink of burning flesh, as yet more esoteric weapons pulsed and shrieked. It was a cacophony of death, but the song had barely begun its first verse.

The right flank was swollen with warriors of the XVIIIth. Salamanders teemed out of their transports, quickly coming into formation and advancing with purpose. The black sand underfoot was eclipsed from sight, as a green sea overwhelmed and overran it. Vexilliaries held aloft banners, attempting to impose some order on the emerging battalions. Methodical, dogged, the XVIIIth Legion found its shape and swarmed across the dark dunes. At the forefront of this avenging wave was Vulkan, and to his flanks the Firedrakes. Lumbering from the metal spearheads of Drop Pods, the Terminators amassed in two large battalions. They were dauntless, dominant, but not the most implacable warriors in the Salamanders' arsenal. Contemptors, striding through the smoke, laid claim to that honour. Great, towering war engines, the Dreadnoughts jerked with the savage recoil of Graviton Guns and Autocannons. Not stopping to see the carnage wreaked, they slowly tramped after the rushing companies of Legionaries in small cohorts, attack horns blaring. The discordant noise simulated the war cries of the deep drakes and was pumped through vox-emitters to boost its volume. Disgorged by Thunderhawk Transporters, Spartan Assault Tanks, Predators-Infernus and Vindicators disembarked at combat speed, tracks rolling. The battle tanks rode at the back of the line with a steep ridge behind them, anchoring the dropsite with their armoured might. Three spearheads were driven at the traitor's heart, two black and one green, all determined to bring down the fortress squatting at the summit of the Urgall Hills that overlooked the expansive depression. In seconds the shifting sand became as glass, vitrified by the heat of tens of thousands of weapons, and cracked underfoot.

Vulkan ordered his sons to take the ridge line to gain higher ground. Shells pranging off his armour, the primarch took up the vanguard position, whilst his chasing Pyre Guard tried to keep pace. Behind the Pyre Guard, the stoic advance of the Pyroclasts struggled to keep up as they laid down sheets of burning promethium in front and to the flanks. The Terminator-armoured Firedrakes were also slipping back, unable to compete with the Primarch's speed, and Numeon began to see that there was a realistic danger of becoming estranged from the rest of the Legion. Adding their strength to the spearhead the Primarch was forging, the 15th Company Reconnaissance took up fresh position. Their charge line would take them in alongside the Pyre Guard, able to maintain pace where the bulkier Firedrakes and Pyroclasts could not.

As if sensing that his Legion was losing him, Vulkan slowed but a fraction as the fire-blackened lip of the outermost trench drew close. Hunkered within the partially sundered defenses, the Legionaries of the Death Guard brought guns to bear. The XIV Legion were hardy fighters -- the Salamanders had fought alongside them at Ibsen, but those days were gone and now allies had turned into enemies. The flame storm and the ferocity of Vulkan's attack had scattered the defenders but they were rallying quickly and now counter-attacked from three separate channels. Although the trench network was wide enough for three legionaries to stand abreast, the fighting was thick and fierce. Wilting before his charge, the defenders sensibly chose to hang back and harry the Primarch with a welter of bolter fire. Meeting it head on, the primarch shrugged off the shell damage as the brass casings broke apart against his near-inviolable armour.

Across the entire Urgall Depression, hundreds of battles between Legionaries were fought. Some were company-strong, others were squads or even individuals. There was no scheme to it, just masses of warriors trying to kill one another. Most of the Loyalist troops had moved on from the dropsite and were engaging Horus’ rebels at the foot of his fortifications, but a few still occupied this beachhead. Scattered groups of traitors had spilled out as far as the dropsite but were quickly destroyed by the troops holding it. These were skirmishes, though, and nothing compared to the greater battle. As the 15th Company pressed the attack against the retreating Death Guard forces, a dirty cloud, too thick and too low to be fog, rolled down the slopes. It spilled into the myriad trench-works, funneled by the conduits of hewn earth. And it was fast. In seconds it had cleared the no-man’s-land between the previous trench and the next bank of fortifications and was hurtling at Nemetor and his warriors. It overtook the Death Guard first, who adjusted respirators before the miasma hit as if they knew it was coming. It was a deadly gas attack.

The Legion armoury was vast, and not all of its weapons were as obvious as a Bolter or as noble as a sword. There were those who wielded devices of much more insidious potency -- the slow and agonizing ones, the weapons that forever scarred both the bearer and the victim. They did not discriminate and made no allowance for even the strongest armour. From the vaunted champion to the lowliest mortal, they were the great levelers and their works were terrible to behold. More than a hundred of the reconnaissance company collapsed, choking and spitting blood. Many of the 15th didn't wear battle-helms, preferring to be unencumbered for the stealth work at which they excelled. These warriors had suffered the worst. Skin sloughed away by virulent acids, ravaged by pustules and choking on vomit, eyes drowning in pus from the dirty bomb, there was almost nothing left of them but half-armoured carcasses. Dozens more were hacked apart or shot down by resurgent Death Guard attacking in the confusion.

The numerically superior Death Guard had already overrun the smaller reconnaissance company and were attempting to encircle the rest of the Salamanders. Vulkan single-handedly prevented that, hitting the overlapping warriors and cutting them apart with his flaming sword. First Captain Numeon and the Pyre Guard joined him fractionally later and a dense, chaotic melee erupted. As battle continued to rage all around them, the din of the melee was pierced by savage and guttural war cries. A ruddy smog was sweeping across the battlefield, fashioned from blood-drenched mist and the smoke generated by thousands of fires. Caught in a crosswind, it slashed in from the east and brought with it the brutal challenge of a Legion that reveled in war. It was the XIIth Legion -- the World Eaters.

Ash-fall from the many thousands of fires turned the sky grey. It baptised a cohort of warriors, clad to various degrees in ancient gladiatorial trappings and wielding ritual caedere weapons. They were the Rampagers, a deadly breed even amongst the Eaters of Worlds, and a throwback to Angron's incarceration as a slave-fighter. Bellowing guttural war cries, they charged ahead of a Contemptor Dreadnought to engage the Salamanders. Emerald-armoured Astartes balked at what the battle-maddened World Eaters attempted. Though there was no more than thirty men - just three squads - they charged over a hundred. Several went down to sporadic bolter fire. Some were clipped by shrapnel but kept on coming. Only those too injured to fight, unable to run because of missing limbs or critical wounds were halted. Something urgent and terrible spurred them on. Even when they were the War Hounds, their reputation in battle, particularly close-quarters, was fearsome. As the reborn World Eaters under Angron, they had become something else. Rumours abounded within the ranks, of arcane devices that manipulated the legionaries' tempers, simulacra of the ones embedded in Angron's skull by his slavers. Now that the Salamanders saw them, ignoring pain and injury, frothing with frenzy, they believed those stories to be true.

As the Salamanders and World Eaters fought in bloody close-quarters, elsewhere on the slope, a much larger force of Firedrakes fought Angron's personal body guard, the Devourers, to a bloody stalemate. For once, the Lord of the Red Sands was close to his Honour Guard. Angron bellowed a challenge to his brother Primarch. Vulkan's name was heard amongst the guttural syllables of the World Eater's native tongue. Anointed in blood, partially obscured by scudding clouds of smoke and shimmering heat haze, Angron continued to bellow his challenge, this time in High Gothic, "Vulkan!" His voice was the like fall of cities, rumbling and booming across the vast battlefield. Angron jabbed down to his brother with one of the motorised Power Axes he carried. Its blade was burring, roaring for blood. "I name you high rider!"

Farther down the slope, Vulkan gripped the haft of his immense warhammer Dawnbringer and went to meet his brother's challenge. But before the two Primarchs could come to blows, an arcing salvo from one of the traitor gun emplacements spear-headed a missile up into the air and all the way down until it struck part of the slope between the two Primarchs. A firestorm lit the hillside, several tonnes of incendiary ordnance expressed in the expansive bloom of conflagration. It swept outwards in a turbulent wave, bathing the lower part of the slope in heat and flame. This was nothing compared to its epicenter. Firedrakes were immolated in that blast, blown apart and burned to ash in their Terminator Armour. Though Vulkan was wreathed in flames, he stepped from the blaze unharmed. The remaining Firedrakes gathered to him, tramping over the dead where they had to. Mauled as they had been by the World Eaters, Vulkan knew that his warriors had suffered but would not stop until they were dead or the battle was over. But it was grievously attritional, and he was not ashamed to admit relief when he heard that the reinforcements coming in to make planetfall behind them. Hundreds of landers and drop-pods choked the already suffocating sky, emblazoned with the iconography of the Alpha Legion, Iron Warriors, Word Bearers and Night Lords. The Primarch merely watched impassively as the manifold shuttles touched down and the loyalists took up position on the edge of the depression. Of Angron, there was no sign. The firestorm had beaten him back, it seemed, and now with the arrival of four more Legions, the Lord of the Red Sands had ordered a retreat.

Both the Raven Guard and the Salamanders withdrew towards their drop site to give their recently arrived reinforcements a chance to earn glory against the Traitors. Vulkan and his brother Corax tried to persuade their fiery-tempered brother Ferrus Manus to do the same. But the Gorgon would not be dissuaded from his task. The scent of blood was in the air, and so, the Iron Hands pressed the attack against the retreating Traitor forces. Unknown to the Loyalists, the drop site had been fortified by the four secret Traitor Legions, who had been intended to form the second wave of the Imperial assault on Horus' forces. While the retreat of Horus' rebels was ragged and disorganized, the warriors of the XVIIIth and XIXth Legions fell back in good order. Tanks returned to column, rumbling slowly but steadily back down the slope. The scorched trenches emptied as legionaries filed out in vast hosts, company banners still flying. They were battered but resolute. The dead and injured came with them, dragged or borne aloft by their still standing brothers. It was a great exodus, the black and green ocean of war retreating with the tide to leave the flotsam of their slain enemy behind it.

On the northern side of the Urgall Depression, a fresh sea made ready to sweep in and carry all of the mortal debris away. Across from the muster field of the Salamanders, which was little more than a laager of drop-ships, were the Iron Warriors. Armoured in steel-grey with black-and-yellow chevrons, the IVth Legion looked stark and stern. They had erected a barricade, the armoured bastions of their own landing craft alloyed together, to bolster the northern face of the slope. Great cannons were raised aloft behind it, their snouts pointing to the ash-smothered sky. A line of battle tanks sat in front, bearing the grim icon of a metal-helmeted skull. And in front of that, Iron Warriors arrayed in their cohorts, thousands strong. They held their silence and their weapons across their bodies, with no more life than automatons. Not a single Legionary about the XVIIIth stood idle. Yet the Iron Warriors, the entire muster on the northern slope, neither spoke nor moved beyond what was necessary to assemble.

Not one responded to the Salamanders' hails. Only the wind kicking at their banners gave any sense of animus to the IVth Legion throng. Only when Vulkan started in the direction of his brother, Perturabo, the Lord of Iron returned the Lord of Drakes' gimlet gaze with one of his own. It was only at that moment, did Vulkan realize that they had been betrayed. More than ten thousand guns answered, the weapons of their allies turned on the Salamanders with traitorous intent, crushing the Loyalists between the hammer of Horus' forces and the anvil of the fortified drop site. Wrath drove Vulkan up the side of the hill, that and a sense of injustice. The ignoble actions of his brother primarchs had wounded Vulkan to the core, far deeper and more debilitating than any blade. Vaunted warriors all, the Pyre Guard could scarcely keep up.

Battle companies followed in the wake of their lords, captains roaring the attack as thousands of green-armoured warriors chased up the slope to kill the sons of Perturabo. Withering crossfire from both the north and south faces of the Urgall Depression cut down hundreds in the first few seconds of deceit. The XVIIIthLegion were shedding warriors like a snake sheds scales. But still they drove on, determined not to back down. Tenacity was a Salamander’s greatest virtue -- that refusal to give in. Upon the plains of Isstvan V, against all of those guns, this quality almost ended the XVIIIth Legion. Only as the majority of the Salamanders crested the first ridge, did they first see the arc of fire. It trailed, long and blazing, into the darkling sky. The tongue of flame climbed and upon reaching the apex of its parabola bent back on itself into the shape of a horseshoe. Rockets screaming, it came down in the midst of the charging Salamanders and broke them apart.

A savage crater was gored into the Urgall hills, like the bite of some gargantuan beast resurrected from old myth and birthed in nucleonic fire. It threw warriors skywards as if they were no more than empty suits of armour, bereft of bone and flesh. As a bell jar shatters when dropped onto rockcrete from a great height, so too did the Legion smash apart. Tanks following after their lord Primarch were flung barrel-rolling across the black sand with their hulls on fire. Those vehicles in the mouth of the blast were simply ripped apart; tracks and hatches, chunks of abused metal torn to exploded shrapnel. Legionaries spared death in the initial blast were eviscerated in the frag storm. Super-heavies crumpled like tin boxes crushed by a hammer. Crewmen boiled alive, legionaries cooked down to ash in that furnace. It went deep, right into the beating heart of the Salamanders ranks. Only by virtue of the fact that they were so far ahead were the Pyre Guard spared the worst.

With immense kinetic fury, it threw them apart and smothered their armoured forms in a firestorm. An electro-magnetic pulse wiped out the Vox, a threnody of static reigning in place of certain contact. Tactical organisation became untenable. In a single devastating strike, the Lord of Iron had crippled the XVIIIth Legion, severed its head and sent its body into convulsive spasm. Retreat was the only viable strategy remaining. Droves fell back to the dropsite, trying to climb aboard ships that were surging desperately into the sky to outreach the terrible storm of betrayal below. It was not a rout, though for any force other than the Legiones Astartes it would have been, faced with such violence. Many were cut down as the traitors threaded the air with enough flak to wither an armada.

Despite a heroic defense, the three Loyalist Legions who took part in the battle on Istvaan V were practically destroyed; all but a handful of Battle-Brothers fell on that fateful day and the Primarch Ferrus Manus of the Iron Hands was beheaded by his former best friend and brother, Fulgrim, the Primarch of the Emperor's Children. After this sad defeat, the Salamanders, as well as the other two betrayed Space Marine Legions, were unable to perform any further tasks the Emperor had planned for them and spent the rest of the Heresy rebuilding their shattered forces. Both Vulkan and his brother Corvus Corax survived the ambush on Istvaan V. Conflicting reports by the few survivors stated that Vulkan, also gravely wounded, had to be dragged away from the fight onto a Thunderhawk gunship by three of his Pyre Guard and then managed to escape back to Nocturne. But the reality of the Salamanders' Primarch's fate proved to be far more dire.

Vulkan's Imprisonment

Vulkan had survived the nuclear fire of the Iron Warriors' orbital strike, where so many of his sons did not. Finding himself surrounded by hundreds of Traitor Legionaries from both the Night Lords and the Iron Warriors, Vulkan resigned himself to his fate. Fighting valiantly, the Primarch fought to the death, but was eventually overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the enemy and was shot, stabbed and bludgeoned into unconsciousness. The Night Haunter, now inherently insane, saw the opportunity to torment his fallen brother and took the unconscious Vulkan as his prisoner. When the Salamanders' Primarch finally awoke, he found himself fettered in massive chains aboard a gaol-hulk belonging to the VIIIth Legion. Over the span of several months, the Night Haunter took sadistic pleasure in attempting to break both Vulkan's body and mind, or kill him outright. But the task proved impossible, as every time Curze thought he had succeeded in killing his brother, Vulkan's body would miraculously regenerate to its former healthy state. Vulkan had been revealed to be a "Perpetual", a being who was capable of continuous cellular regeneration and therefore was effectively immortal, much like their father, the Emperor of Mankind. Enraged, Curze took it upon himself to kill Vulkan as many times as was necessary to permanently rid himself of his intolerable presence. The Night Haunter personally beheaded the Salamanders' Primarch, ripped out his throat with a piece of cutlery, stabbed him through the chest and virtually tore him limb from limb with his own wicked claws. When these attempts failed to kill Vulkan, Curze had him eviscerated, shot at close-range by hundreds of Bolters, put into a ventilation shaft of a starship's engine and even stripped naked and thrown out of an airlock into the airless void of space. But the Night Haunter's efforts proved all for naught.

Each time the Night Haunter thought he had successfully murdered his brother Primarch, Vulkan's body would continue to regenerate back to its former vigorous state, further enraging the Night Lords' Primarch. With his unnatural abilities to regenerate revealed to him, Curze attempted to make Vulkan admit that he was no less a monster than himself. Vulkan was placed through unwinnable trials to break his spirit: having to pull against chains to prevent a ceiling in another cell from crushing it's innocent occupants. Being starved at a banquet table, with mortal prisoners alongside him, watching the food decay and the prisoners whither away. Being trapped in a battle-plate and being unable to control his limbs, and forced to hunt captured soldiers and other captured Loyalist Astartes. To further torment his brother, the Night Haunter had Davinite sorcerer-priests use the fell powers gifted to them by the Ruinous Powers to ensnare Vulkan's mind and make him fight his brother Corax after a fictional rescue attempt. But even this form of sorcerous torture failed to break the resolute Vulkan. Fed up with his insufferable prisoner, and slaughtering the sorcerer-priests, the Night Haunter devised a final solution to his problem of ridding himself of the Salamander's presence. Vulkan's fate would be decided in a duel to the death.

He offered his brother a means of escape and achieving that which he had sought for so long -- his freedom. All he had to do was navigate a labyrinth, where, at the center of it, lay his personal warhammer, Dawnbringer. But this was no ordinary maze. At the request of Night Haunter, the Iron Warriors' Primarch Perturabo had crafted him a singular prison, unlike any other, in imitation of his own private sanctorum known as the Cavea Ferrum. This special prison was an elaborate labyrinth, whose featureless walls and strange geometric design made it all but impossible to map and therefore escape. Anyone who attempted to mentally map the labyrinth would be hopelessly knotted in turns that should have been physically impossible. Even after trying scores of times to map the labyrinth, an individual would only manage more than a handful of turns within its twisting corridors before it all stopped making sense. In addition Curze performed ambush attacks, wounding Vulkan without killing him, repeatedly. At the edge of his willpower, Vulkan had a vision of the Emperor in the visage of a Remembrancer, named Verace. The Emperor reminded his son that he would watch over all his sons when he could, and calmed Vulkan's mind, instilling within him, fresh resolve. Thus, Vulkan goaded Curze, yelling out into the cavernous labyrinth of how all the Primarchs pitied him and how he was just a child raging in the dark. Curze then opened up a path in the labyrinth to the center, where Dawnbringer rested under an energy shield.

There he met the Night Haunter, and they engaged in melee combat. Though armed with a blade, Curze gave into Vulkan's taunts of his physical weakness, and attempted to engage Vulkan with his fists alone. Vulkan easily grabbed Curze and, swinging him like a hammer, broke the energy shield. With his weapon in hand, he managed to overpower his gaoler, and activate the secret personal teleporter built into the head of the finely wrought warhammer. Vulkan immediately transported halfway across the galaxy, and reappeared in the upper atmosphere of the Ultramarines Legion's homeworld of Macragge. As he fell from an impossible height, his body was burned to a crisp upon reentry. But before his mind faded into blackness, Vulkan was content that he would soon find himself whole once again, and in the care of his Ultramarine cousins. His violent orbital entry crippled his mind, due to the immense pain, making him mentally unstable.

Later on, the Night Haunter, who was trapped aboard the Dark Angels flagship following a failed boarding action during the conclusion of the Thramas Crusade, would eventually make his way to the surface of Macragge, wanting to finish what he started, and finally kill Vulkan. The ensuing battle would draw in both his Primarch brothers Roboute Guilliman and Lion El'Jonson, and a Perpetual by the name of John Grammaticus. In the aftermath, the Night Haunter would be defeated, but Vulkan was apparently "slain" by Grammaticus by the command of the mysterious organization known as the Cabal. Vulkan was stabbed in the heart by Grammaticus with a piece of Fulgurite, a large natural hollow glass tube formed beneath the surface of a planet during a lightning strike -- the result of the Emperor unleashing his infinite psychic power against the Forces of Chaos millennia ago. Vulkan's fate following the battle, at that time, was unknown.

Rebirth

As Macragge became the new home of Imperium Secundus, the second stellar empire of Humanity created by the Ultramarines Primarch Roboute, more and more survivors of the XVIIIth Legion made their way to the Ultramarines' home world. Convinced of their Primarch's death, the Salamanders mourned their genetic-sire's loss. The Ultramarines had entombed Vulkan in a heavily decorated casket of pure gold -- a fitting resting place for one of the Emperor's son, or so one would think. To the Salamanders standing vigil over Vulkan's body the cold mortuary chamber in which he now rested was a far cry from the burial rituals of the Promethean Cult. For all intent and purposes the Salamanders were a broken legion, the death of their Primarch having broken their indomitable spirit. Matters however soon changed when First Captain Artellus Numeon was successfully saved by an Ultramarine strikeforce. Many were those amongst the survivors that hoped that the return of their First Captain would give a new sense of purpose to what remained of the Legion - given them purpose and direction once again. Numeon firmly believed in his Primarch's survival, having constantly espoused the phrase, "Vulkan lives!" This became Numeon's battlecry and the cornerstone of his beliefs. Yet when Numeon asked to be taken to his Primarch, he only found an empty casket -- Vulkan's body having mysteriously vanished from his "final" resting place -- which planted the seed of doubt amongst Numeon's fellow Astartes, officers and Primarchs as to Vulkan's true condition.

After several city-wide search-actions had returned empty-handed, Numeon himself, found the missing Primarch's body resting in a statuary garden. None could explain how the body had been overlooked or how it had gotten there, but Rouboute Guilliman soon assumed the reason to be a malfunction of the teleportation device inside of Vulkan's warhammer, Dawnbringer, which the Primarch had been entombed with. For many of the Salmanders however, this first miracle only confirmed Numeon's faith and beliefs. Coming together, the sixty-seven surviving Salamanders formed a new brotherhood --the Pyre -- and declared their intent. They would attempt to break through the Ruinstorm to return Vulkan to Nocturne, either to be properly laid to rest or resurrected. This was the fate they had chosen for themselves and nothing -- not even Lord Guilliman's refusal to let them leave -- would keep them from it. Fortunately for the Pyre, an XVIIIth Legion ship, the Battle-BargeCharybdis, was docked in Port Hera and undergoing final repairs. With the blessings of the Primarch Sanguinius, Emperor of Imperium Secundus, and with the tacit agreement of its Lord Protector, Lion El'Jonson, and -- at last -- that of Roboute Guilliman, Vulkan's casket was transferred aboard the Charybdis.

The Charybdis’ voyage to Nocturne made for a tale of epic proportions, for the Archenemy would not let the chance to retrieve the body of a Primarch so easily. Suffice it to say that through the Salamaners' heroism, obstinance and great sacrifices, did the Charybdis reach its destination, but it was not alone. Both the Death Guard and the Word Bearers had followed the valiant Battle Barge's course, intent on claiming the Primarch's body and the mighty weapon still lodged in his chest. In a last desperate gamble, the Charybdis sacrificed itself on the guns of its enemies to allow the twenty survivors of the Pyre, amongst them Artellus Numeon, to covertly evacuate Vulkan's casket in a Thunderhawk gunship to Nocturn's surface. This ruse de guerre was, however, only short-lived and the Thunderhawk was soon severely damaged, causing it to crash-landed along the Acerbian Plaine. Fortunately for Numeon and fellow survivors, Nocturne was not entirely defenceless, as Lord Chaplain Nomus Rhy'tan soon rushed to the small party's crash side. Retrieving the Primarch's body just in time to reach one of the Legion's new bastions, the Draconis Gate, the Salamanders defended their home world against the invading Death Guard forces and utterly annihilate them.

With the enemy defeated and Nocturne safe, the proper ceremony was conducted to remember Vulkan's passing. The Primarch, still wearing his artificer armour and clenching Dawnbringer in his hands, was carried into the fiery heart of Nocturne's sacred mountain, Mount Deathfire. The fulgurite spear was still jutting from his chest, as no one was able to remove it. In the presence of the remaining more than 700-strong honour guard -- all that remained of the Legion as far as any of the Salamanders knew -- Vulkan was lowered into the burning caldera of the volcano. No further miracle manifested itself. Vulkan had been given over to the earth and consigned to the flame and had not risen again.

To those that had witnessed the miracles around Artellus Numeon and shared the hardships of the Charybdis' voyage, deception came hardest, but even they recognized, after a few days, that the final ceremony to honor Vulkan had given them closure -- from the ashes of defeat, the XVIIIth Legion would rise again, as it had done before -- with another amongst them to lead the legion. Only one man did not believe so; Artellus Numeon, First Captain of the Legion, the former commander of the Pyre Guard, would not see his faith go unrewarded. Numeon was wracked by grief, yet his heart felt alight with faith; the First Captain resolved himself to one last sacrifice -- to trade his life in exchange for that of his Primarch's. Covertly escaping the bastion of the Draconis Gate, Numeon, stripped of armour, weapons and rank, used the dawning of the Time of Trials to mask his escape and stall any form of pursuit before he could reach Mount Deathfire. There he immolated himself in one of the mountain's fiery crevasses, unable to see his Primarch again or to know if his sacrifice had been successful: an act of pure faith. When Numeon's erstwhile companions could finally follow without endangering their companions, only three of them went to search for him -- Sergeant Barek Zytos, Blacksmiter Igen Gargo, and Legionary Abidemi. Mounting jetbikes, which were by far the swiftest way to travel the ash-plains, the trio encountered a solitary figure kneeling in the desert, obviously weak and disoriented. Rejoicing at having found their comrade and friend, the astonished trio fell to their knees in supplication, when they saw the figure turn around and rise unsteadily to his feet, a hand clutching an all-too-familiar spear tip still embedded in his chest; it was their Primarch. Vulkan lived...

Aftermath

The events immediately following the end of the great galactic civil war are even more obscure in current Imperial records and perhaps known only to the taciturn masters of the Salamanders' Librarius. What is clear, however, is that when the Ultramarines' Primarch Roboute Guilliman authored the Codex Astartes during the Reformation of the Imperium after the end of the Heresy and prepared the plan to safeguard the Imperium from another civil war by breaking down each Space Marine Legion into a single Chapter comprised of only 1,000 Space Marines, Vulkan stood alongside Leman Russ of the Space Wolves and Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists in opposition to the plan. However, like the others, Vulkan eventually acquiesced rather than put the unity of the Imperium at risk once more.

The XVIIIth Legion appears to have sired no immediate Successors, and it is likely that their numbers were so depleted by the events of the Istvaan V Drop Site Massacre that it was not possible to divide it into separate Chapters. Several Chapters were created much later in subsequent Foundings which might share the genetic inheritance of the Salamanders, but no evidence exists of any Second Founding Successor Chapters having been sired. The extent to which the dictates of the Codex Astartes were adhered to in the aftermath of the break-up of the old Legions varied greatly, and the Salamanders appeared to have obeyed it in some respects, while ignoring it in others. The fielding of only seven, over-strength companies is one example of this, though in other respects the present-day Salamanders Chapter is largely compliant with the dictates of Guilliman's tome.

The End Times

The ultimate fate of the Salamanders' Primarch is a matter of much conjecture, for he disappeared many years after the Horus Heresy. Some sources state that Vulkan led his Chapter for three entire millennia before he departed on some mission he never declared to the Imperium at large, though scant evidence of any of his deeds throughout that age remain. The tale is made all the more mysterious by the fact that Vulkan appeared to have left behind him a text, called the Tome of Fire, within which is locked the nature and location of nine artefacts the Primarch willed to his Chapter. It said that over one thousand standard years after the events of the Horus Heresy, Vulkan hid these nine artefacts around the galaxy for his Chapter to find, as a test to see if they were worthy of his leadership. Of these nine relics, five have been recovered, three of which, the Spear of Vulkan, Kesare's Mantle and the Gauntlet of the Forge, are wielded by the Chapter's Forgefather, Vulkan He'stan. Two, the Chalice of Fire and the Eye of Vulkan, remain on the Nocturnean moon of Prometheus in the Chapter's fortress-monastery, while the last four artefacts, the Engine of Woes, the Obsidian Chariot, the Unbound Flame and the Song of Entropy, have yet to be discovered. The Tome of Fire claims that only when all of these artefacts are recovered by the Forgefather of the Salamanders, as five now have been, will Vulkan judge the Salamanders sufficiently tempered to have passed the ultimate contest. Then, so the legend states, he shall return to lead the Salamanders in the final war against the enemies of Humanity in accordance with the prophecies written within the Chapter's most sacred tome.

Source: http://warhammer40k.wikia.com

DARK SOULS THEORY IN 3 2 1 GO

But here’s my theory. It’s a lot of reading but I mean it’s worth if you like Dark Souls….. GOOO

Ok, I'ma drop a theory. It may be half baked from the perspective of my peers but whatever HERE. WE. GOOOOO! So in DS1(Dark Souls 1) the ancient stone dragons rule over all and men, which kinda don’t exist in a way due to it not finding the dark soul of man(Humanity) and embers(From dark souls 3). So when flame was found along with the Dark Soul of Man, found by the First of Pygmy which is popularly found as Manus, Father of the Abyss. So back to the flame, Gwyn, the first lord of Cinder, sacrificed himself he had redone the kindling of the first flame after killing all of the stone dragons. But before he had sacrificed himself he had made the city of the gods aka Anor Londo and had children. The children he had were Dark Sun Gwyndolin, The Nameless King or possibly Faraam, a powerful war god who had only respect for arms and weapons, Yorshka, a half breed human dragon, and another child who is possibly revealed as a new character in the new DLC The Ringed City who I’m not sure who it is, I praise VaatiVidya for his Ringed City 10 Secrets video. There were also two more other than Gwyn and the Firt of Pigmy. There was Nito, the first of the dead, and  the Witch of Izalith and her Daughters of Chaos. Again this will come in again so be patient. Okay so you play as a chosen undead who, spoken from the crest fallen knight in Firelink Shrine, has been one of many undead to have gone through and attempt to go through and ring both bells of awakening and rekindle the fire from within Lordran. You, being the lucky bug to survive the bell gargoyles at the start. But before you get to the gargoyles you cross Solaire of Astora, a man who simply wants to be as incandescent as the sun  AKA Gwyn the first lord of Cinder. That will come in later so bear with me. Ok so blah blah blah you get to both the awakening bells that awakens Frampt, the Primordial Serpent,  and Kaath, the second Primordial Serpent. Frampt believes in the rekindling of the flame  while Kaath believes in the coming of the Dark Age. Currently, as you traverse Lordran you are within the Age of Fire which was started by the finding of the fire and first lighting of the first bonfire within the Kiln of the First Flame. So when both the bells of awakening are ringed(… Rang? I don’t know.) you can either not talk to Frampt and then go kill the Four Kings of The Abyss to talk to Kaath first, or speak to Frampt First and not ever see Kaath until New Game+. I may have skipped some steps but wait, what about Oolacile? So even before you existed you can get the DS1 DLC named Oolacile which contains the Sanctuary Guardian, Artorias of the Abyss/Great Knight Artorias, the Firt of Pigmy Manus, and the optional boss Kalameet. The first boss ,which is the Sanctuary Guardian,  I have no clue how that lion thing comes into play. Okay now to Artorias who needs some explaining! Artorias is one of the knights of Gwyn, one of four in fact, who was given the Wolf Ring which boosts poise. The ring’s description reads “ One of the special rings granted to the four knights of Gwyn. The wolf ring belongs to Artorias the Abysswalker. Artorias had an unbendable will of steel, and was unmatched with a greatsword.”  Artorias was given the duty to go out and fight the Age of Darkness, which from my point of view, is brought by the Abyss and the Dark Soul of Man aka Humanity. When Artorias had walked within the  Chasm of the Abyss and the Oolacile Township Dungeon he had one companion, Great Wolf Sif(May he rest in pepperoni). In the timeline you appear in the boss Sif is fought who wields Artorias’ greatsword.There are two versions of this sword so time to put them through. The non cursed version of the sword has the description of"Sword born from the soul of the great greywolf Sif, guardian of the grave of the Abysswalker Knight Artorias. Sir Artorias hunted the Darkwraiths, and his sword strikes harder against dark servants.“ And the cursed version reads "Sword born from the soul of the great grey wolf Sif, guardian of the grave of the Abysswalker Knight Artorias. The sword can damage ghosts, as it was cursed when Artorias joined a covenant with the creatures of the Abyss.” After killing Sif you get the Covenant of Artorias, the ring for fighting the Four Kings. The Four Kings fell the the trickery from Kaath as Oolacile had also done. Back to Oolacile, Artorias couldn’t traverse the abyss alone, he had this ring that he had to convent with the monstrosities of the Abyss which eventually infected him causing him to become the second boss of Oolacile. Now as you go to the Manus boss fight, you will see Humanity Phantoms. These Humanity Phantoms do drop the item Humanity, and the description of Humanity is “Rare tiny black sprite found on corpses. Use to gain 1 humanity and restore a large amount of HP.This black sprite is called humanity, but little is known about its true nature. If the soul is the source of all life, then what distinguishes the humanity we hold within ourselves?” As we know without reclaiming humanity one will go hollow aka CRAZY AF. Time to be serious again… Manus is popularly thought as the Firt of Pigmy which is backed up by the corpse that is slightly smaller than most of the corpses and undead found within Dark Souls. Manus’ title is “Father of the Abyss” and the Firt of Pigmy did find the Dark Soul of Humanity, hence the Humanity Phantoms. We won’t need to go over Nito and the Witches of Izalith right now due to them mainly helping only within the first game. Okay back to Gwynn. When the final fight with Gwyn within the Kiln of the First Flame you can summon Solaire. On top of this, Solaire’s armor can be seen in Dark Souls 3 although I am not aware of it in Dark Souls 2. This means after the game is finished Solaire goes through two more cycles of the rekilning of fire if not eaten by sunlight maggots first. So after the defeat of Gwyn Solaire also beats his version of Gwyn to relight the flame and make a new cycle. When he succumbs to the Sunlight Maggot he can be considered a “Failed undead” and is made into another cycle where he is resurrected in Dark Souls 3. TIME TO SKIP DARK SOULS 2 AND HERE’S WHY! I’M SKIPPING DARK SOULS 2 BECAUSE I HAVEN’T PLAYED IT…………. YET. Also if anyone reads thus far, help me with the whole Dark Souls 2 thing please ;-;

In DS3(Dark Souls 3) you play as one of the failed undeads after Lorian and Lothric decided “SCREW FIRE :D” and didn’t go the the kiln of the first flame. OK back to the first area Firelink Shrine and the Cemetery of Ash. So you wake up as a failure of the first game, known as an Ashen One.  Which would make sense if Solaire died and was awoken by another bell of awakening as an Ashen one due to his death from you and the maggot.  So when the bell tolls ,due to Lorian and Lothric being ars bananas, all original Lords of Cinder AKA Aldrich, Yorhm, the Abyss Watchers(Artorias Fan Boys), and the Soul of Cinder(Which forms when the bell tolls through another theory which I will explain now). My theory for the Soul of Cinder forming when the bell tolls is that the soul of cinder never needed to awaken until now due to it needing a worth successor to light the flame once again. OK BACK IN TO THE ACTUAL THEORY. Due to the backstories of each of the main NPCs explained by Mat Pat, thank you my hands are hurting while writing this, is that Horace, Anri, Siegward, and Hawkwood all follow according lords. Anri and Horace being for Aldrich, the Devourer???) of Gods, Siegward for Yohrm, and Hawkwood for the Abyss walkers. The way you actually come into play as the player character is that you are, possibly, a version of Solaire, although you do edit your character you can still perfectly replicate him due to the new customization. The way I am backing this up is due to the Sunlight Altar within the Lothric Castle. Although it is locked away and guarded by a Lothric Knight due to it being heresy because the Sunbro Covenant or the Warriors of Sunlight is a way of following Faraam or the Nameless King. Again the sunlight altar looks as if it is a crumbled statue of  the nameless king. And yes you may say “But the spear looks different!” But if you read more of the lore behind the weapon of the Nameless King it is a sword spear, due to the hilt and the way it was crafted. The description for the Dragonslayer Sword Spear is as follows “A dragon hunting weapon from the age of the gods. The earliest form of the cross spear, serving as both a sword and a spear. Its owner was the Nameless King, a deific hunter of dragons. The sword spear is imbued with lightning, of which he was the heir.” Note the words “Earliest form of cross spear”  meaning that there are more variations. If you look closely at the weapon in the statute the spear has a cross guard used as a secondary handle and a blade that, although is cracked off,  would be similar the a sword’s blade. Also within the fight the Nameless King uses bolts that are similar the the Sunlight Spear or Great Lightning Spear which is used by Gwyn and the Soul of Cinder’s second phase but slammed into the ground to cause an explosion. Also due to Gwyn’s first born siding with the dragons AAAANNNNDDDD an affinity for only weapons was banished, hence the statue being shattered into pieces due to the first born being banished. If, again, you look closely at the Nameless king and the Statue have similar armor engravings. Another reason why I believe the player character is a form of Solaire other than the statue of Faraam/ the Nameless King is due to the fact that he dies in the first game due to sunlight maggots while traversing Izalith. Him dying would make him a failed undead and then therefore someone worthy of being Ashen or Unkindled due to his failure within Izalith. Although there was a big spiel about Faraam being leader of the Warriors of Sunlight Solaire wants to be Gwyn’s firstborn and the player character possibly a reincarnation of Solaire within the third cycle of fire. But this theory would make sense to back up Faraam being the Nameless King and the leader of the Warriors of Sunlight. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I’m done for tonight, if you can put suggestions of what I missed within my theory and help my dark souls 2 hole.

The reason why Solaire would possibly be one of the possible candidates is that he wished to be as good or better than a GOD. So when reincarnated he would be able to redo what he had failed to become stronger than the gods themselves and beat his own god, the Nameless King. On top of this he would be able to beat Lord Gwyn to reclaim what he had originally wanted to do, be “As grossly incandescent as the sun” meaning he wanted to be as amazingly brilliant and powerful as the “Sun” or Gwyn himself.

(Link to MatPat/Game Theory video on Dark Souls https://youtu.be/vXzfApfeW7Q)

WOOOO THEORIES!

#dark souls #darksouls #theory #dark souls theory #game theory #matt patt #matpat #Mattpatt #Game theory Dark Souls

‘This is England’s Gun XV. I can’t wait to see it fire’: Woodward excited for Ireland warm-up game

This is England & XV's XV and I can't wait to see it shoot against Ireland

England Captain Owen Farrell is back in the start XV near the middle

Farrell will partner with Manu Tuilagi in a new look center partnership against Ireland

George Ford resumes on half fly while Mako Vunipola returns on the bank is

England plays Ireland at 15:00 in Twickenham on Saturday afternoon

by Sir Clive Woodward for the Daily Mail

]

Published: 22:31 BST, August 22, 2019 | Updated: 23:16 BST, August 22, 2019

The gloves are out. Eddie Jones has chosen his best team and also with Ireland strong this can be a great test competition that can have serious consequences for the World Cup.

The honeymoon is over. This is a big game for both teams. If you are not at the front now, question marks will lead to the World Cup.

Well done Eddie for this selection. It is precisely the team that I would have chosen for a must-win game at the tournament. This is the first time he has put his full strength into these warm-up games – I think he played his cards well.

Owen Farrell comes in the first 15 for England and partner Manu Tuilagi in center

ENGLAND TEAM TO IRELAND

And Daly (Saracens), J Cokanasiga ( Bath), M. Tuilagi (Leicester), The Farrell (Saracens), J May G Ford B Youngs (all Leicester), J Marler (Harlequins), J George (Saracens), K Sinckler (Harlequins), M Itoje [1 9459017] G Kruis (both Saracens), T Curry (Sale), S Underhill (Bath), B Vunipola (Saracens ).

Replacements: L Cowan-Dickie (Exeter), M Vunipola (Saracens), D Cole (Leicester), C Lawes (Northampton), M Wilson (Sale), W Heinz (Gloucester), P Francis (Northampton), J Joseph (Bath)

Everyone who goes to Twickenham on Saturday must be so excited – as I see this English team playing.

They can cause real damage. This is the team that I wanted to see for a while. Eddie has advanced seven of the eight I placed in my team that was published on this page & # 39; s a few weeks ago, and actually I would now choose Joe Marler for Mako Vunipola, based on fitness and form.

It is good to see Vunipola fit and on the couch again. That is the strongest starter package in England.

I also like the backline. Owen Farrell in the middle and George Ford at No. 10 – Ford plays really well.

It seems that Eddie now wants to reunite Ford and Farrell as the game makers for major games in the world. Cup. It's hard for Slade, but it still comes back and is exactly in the mix, and will be a great backup of the couch when fit.

Mako Vunipola has become one of the best front rows in the world. Rugby in the past seasons

ENGLAND WORLD CUP WARMING GAMES

August 11 – England 33-19 Wales, Twickenham, London

August 17 – Wales 13-6 England Principality Stadium, Cardiff

August 24 – England vs Ireland, Twickenham, London

6 September – England vs Italy, St James & Park, Newcastle

Most of Eddie & # 39; s best English performances have come to play with Ford and Farrell. That was the combination when he went on that 18-match unbeaten run in 2016-17.

I like to see two playmakers in the backline – if that's Farrell and Slade, or Ford and Farrell, that's great. To win a world cup, you need two playmakers at No. 10 and 12.

Manu Tuilagi will be so excited. This is the first time he has started outside of Ford and Farrell and will lick his lips on this occasion.

I recently met Tuilagi and Billy Vunipola – wow they are huge! They blamed a pumping session they had done with James Haskell, who came into the camp this week. They look fit, strong and ready to cause chaos. Manu in particular will not only be used as a battering ram, but will also be placed in space.

I am also excited about the trio in the back row of Tom Curry, Sam Underhill and Billy Vunipola. I wanted to see those three play together and now we have the chance.

For me, that back row is as good as anything that can extinguish New Zealand, Wales, Australia, South Africa or Ireland.

Fast teams win World Cups and that is always embodied in the back row. At the highest level you really have to have pace – these guys have it.

Manu Tuilagi will be skipper Owen Farrell's partner in a new look center partnership this weekend

Eddie Jones has a strong side named against Ireland in their third warm-up match on Saturday

[1 9459021] The backs will love having those three in front of them while they and quickly, can handle the ball and are not just big boys.

With the teams that Eddie and Joe Schmidt have picked out, I think we will see more of a test that is akin to what we have recently seen between Australia and New Zealand, with something really at stake.

Ireland is also almost at full strength, with Johnny Sexton not quite fit, so Ross Byrne starts with fly-half, but also with his best side.

If England is not playing well, you would be worried because they are fully loaded. However, I expect that they will be excellent with their Gun XV. The World Cup really starts on Saturday – enjoy.

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