hh2节译：普罗米修斯教派

The Promethean Cult

Set down first as the teachings of the Primarch Vulkan in written form and as ritual practice, the Promethean Cult formed a body of doctrine that codified and promoted the spirit and culture the Primarch desired for his Legion. A work of both clear vision and deep allegory, it drew both upon ancient Terran philosophical and martial thought, and the rich culture and mythic history of Nocturne on which Vulkan had been raised. Core to its tenets was the conviction that the Legiones Astartes had been created to fulfil a single and irrevocable purpose: the protection and liberation of all of humanity, and that they were each and every one a savage weapon given physical and spiritual form to this single end. As living weapons they were shaped and honed on the anvil of destruction and by the hammer of war, just as a blade is shaped in the fires of the forge to its perfect edge. The teachings of the cult emphasised self-reliance, loyalty, duty, patience, awareness, selfsacrifice and, above all, self-discipline and endurance, and drawing from Nocturne's culture of craft and trial, fire as a dual symbol of creation and destruction was the cult's symbol and sign, as were the emblems of the anvil and the hammer.

普罗米修斯教派最初是作为原体伏尔甘书面形式的教导和仪式实践的团体，他们形成了一套信条，这些信条编纂并推广原体伏尔甘期望军团所拥有的精神和文化。信条中既有明确的构想，也有深刻的寓言，它借鉴了古代泰拉哲学与战争思想，而且也借鉴了养育伏尔甘的夜曲星世界的丰富文化与虚构历史。信条原则的核心是一条信念:帝皇创造阿斯塔特军团是为了实现一个独立且不可更改的目的，那就是保卫和解放全人类，每名阿斯塔特都是一件为了这一目的而被赋予生理与精神形式的野蛮武器。作为活生生的武器，他们要在毁灭的铁砧上经受战争重锤的塑造和磨砺，就像一柄利刃要在锻炉的火焰中塑造出自己完美的锋口。教派的教义强调自力更生、责任、耐心、认知观察、自我牺牲以及最重要的：自律与忍耐。教义也从夜曲星的工艺和磨练文化中进行了吸取，作为创造和毁灭双重象征的火焰也成为了教派的标志与象征，就像火焰是铁砧和重锤的象征。

Implacable determination and the ability to endure any hardship is of equal importance within the teachings of the Promethean Cult, and trials of endurance and strength, often marked by ritual scarring or branding became commonplace in their training and on-going spiritual discipline. These practices, alongside overtly mystical elements of the Salamanders belief systems, became commented on as barbaric by their few detractors, some of whom saw the growing strength of the Promethean Cult within the Legion as superstition and falsehood contrary to the Imperial Truth. That the cult promoted the worship of no gods and set as its fundamental tenet the primacy of humanity in the cosmos was enough to deflect such criticisms in most cases however, and it is worthy of note that some have since theorised that the strength of this mythos within the Legion served in part to 'inoculate’ it, so to speak  ,from the perfidious machinations of the Word Bearers whose emissaries never received more than polite indifference in their reception by the Legion or its master, and no Warrior Lodge to spread the Warmaster's poison was founded in its ranks, nor would such a thing likely have been possible.

在普罗米修斯教派的教义中，不可动摇的决心与忍耐一切艰难的能力同等重要，在他们的训练和持续性的精神克制锻炼中，耐力和力量的试炼是常见情况，这些试炼通常以仪式性的疤痕或烙印为特征。这些行为与火蜥蜴们信仰体系中明显都神秘主义要素被他们的少数贬损者诋毁为野蛮，当中的某些人将军团中普罗米修斯教派不断增长的实力视为与帝国真理背道而驰的迷信与谎言。但是，普罗米修斯教派宣扬的是：不可崇拜神明，并将基本信条设定为人类在宇宙中的首要地位，这在大多数情况下足以转移这些批判。不过，值得记录的是，某些人曾经提出过一种理论，认为可以说是军团中这些神话的力量使其部分地“接种了”针对怀言者军团背信弃义阴谋的“疫苗”——后者的密使在火蜥蜴军团及其主宰者处只得到了礼貌而冷漠的接待，我们也未发现有战士结社在军团中传播战帅的荼毒，这种事情也不可能实现。