Firedrakes

The Firedrakes stood as the pinnacle of the XVIII Legion's martial order, veterans clad in master-crafted Terminator plate who had proven themselves not merely in slaughter but in the disciplines of the forge and the trials of Nocturne. Only a legionary who had slain a great salamander of his homeworld and borne its heart-scale might be considered, and fewer still endured the ordeals that followed. In battle they were the Legion's unyielding core, wading through firestorms that would immolate lesser warriors and answering with wrist-mounted flame and thunder-hammer. Vulkan trusted them above all others, and they in turn guarded his person and his relics as sacred charges. At Isstvan V the Firedrakes fought as a wall of green ceramite around their primarch, and when he was lost to the massacre it was they who bled most grievously to hold the traitors back, dying to the last where they could not prevail.