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Ciaphas Cain: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''"If I had only known what was waiting for me, I would've [insert cowardly and/or self-deprecating action here]."''|'''[[Atop the Fourth Wall|Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.]]'''}}
'''[[Memetic Mutation|COMMISSAR CIAPHAS CAIN]], [[Fake Ultimate Hero|HERO OF THE]] [[Large Ham Title|IMPERIUM!!!]]''' is the protagonist of a series of novels by [[Sandy Mitchell]], set in the ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' universe. Where ''[[Gaunt's Ghosts]]'' is [[Sharpe]] [[X Meets Y|meets 40K]], Ciaphas Cain is something between ''[[Blackadder]]'' and ''[[Flashman]]'' in the gothic SF world of ''Warhammer 40K''. Taking a tongue-in-cheek approach to the normally ''absurdly'' [[World Half Empty|Grim]] [[Black and Gray Morality|
In short, he's the type of person guys in his profession are supposed to ''shoot''.
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* [[Big Beautiful Woman]]: Mira is described as having inherited a slight tendency toward weight from her father. She apparently carries that [[Buxom Is Better|weight]] [[Curves in All the Right Places|quite well]].
* [[Big Bulky Bomb]]: Multiple instances:
** In typical ''40K'' fashion, Cain improvises an over-the-top one of these using an entire refinery's worth of promethium to blow up {{spoiler|a Necron tomb}}. [[You Can See the Explosion from Orbit|The resulting explosion is felt ''from orbit''.]]
** He pulls another stunt like this on Nusquam Fundamentibus, where {{spoiler|he essentially triggers a volcanic eruption to kill a buried Tyranid bioship before it can summon more of its kind}}.
* [[Big Dam Plot]]: Cain destroys a dam to escape an Ork army in ''Death Or Glory''. He later rigs another one (its replacement) in ''Cain's Last Stand'', but it fails when {{spoiler|Necrons arrive to claim the Shadowlight and jam the detonation signal}}.
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* [[Children Are Innocent]]:
** Even Cain is horrified in ''Duty Calls'' by the realization that Killian abandoned children to a Tyranid attack.
*** Also in ''Duty Calls'', Cain visits a refugee camp and is disturbed to see "apathetic children too bored and hungry to do much more than sit and whine instead of enjoying their carefree years as they should have been..." Careful, Commissar; your compassion is showing.
** To a different degree of "innocent", given the setting: Amberley recalls a book from her childhood where she always liked the pictures of burning heretics, and children are taught songs like this:
{{quote|"The tracks on the Land Raider crush the heretics, crush the heretics, crush the heretics. The tracks on the Land Raider crush the heretics all day long..."}}
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* [[Closest Thing We Got]]: Ariott is pressed into service as the caravan's medic in ''Death or Glory.'' He's actually a vet.
* [[Cold Sniper]]: Sorel, in ''For The Emperor''.
* [[Commissar Cap]]: Standard gear, though Amberley does note that Cain would probably prefer a helmet. It's humorously [[Lampshaded]] near the beginning of ''Caves of Ice'':
{{quote|'''Captain Durant''': The one in the fancy hat wants to know if you've wired up his gadgets.}}
** Also:
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* [[Dying as Yourself]]: {{spoiler|Commissar Donal}}.
* [[Early Installment Weirdness]]: A minor example in ''For the Emperor'': Cain's narrative remarks that "Even after all this time I still find myself missing" Jurgen, which implies that Jurgen was '''long''' dead when Cain recorded this part. But Jurgen was still with him in ''Cain's Last Stand'', set in the last year of the 41st Millennium, and Amberley notes that the Cain Archive was probably composed only about two to five years later.
** A line in his narrative of ''Caves of Ice'', however, indicates '''that''' account was composed "more than a century" after the events ... which if literally true means a good 33 years after the start of the 42nd Millennium, giving plenty of time for Jurgen to have died long ago but still after ''Cain's Last Stand''. Yet another of Amberley's footnotes to ''Caves'', though, says that narrative dates from '''before''' the Black Crusade. Apparently she didn't notice the "more than a century" line.
* [[Earn Your Happy Ending]]: Although we recognize it also depends of his luck.
* [[Eating the Eye Candy]]: Actually '''saves Cain's life''' in ''Duty Calls''. See Good-Looking Privates below for details.
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* [[Snowball Fight]]: With an Ork WAAAGH! due in a day or so, the Valhallans decide to spend their down-time having one. You can't really blame them, since its been a long while since the ice-world soldiers have found themselves in natural snow.
* [[Sociopathic Hero]]: [[Cold Sniper|Maxim Sorel]], who ends up stabbing a man to death in a brawl simply "because he didn't see any reason not to". Following the court-martial for the above infraction he is sentenced to death by taking on a suicide mission alongside Cain. This does not stop Sorel saving Cain's life and makes him {{spoiler|one of two convicts out of the original five who do not go rogue or get subverted by the enemy}}.
* [[Soldiers
* [[So Proud of You]]
* [[Sour Supporter]]: Kolfax in ''Death or Glory''.
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{{quote|I'm sure most of the men in the galaxy are familiar with the sinking feeling that accompanies the words 'Do you think you could do me a little favour, darling?', but when the woman doing the asking is an inquisitor it's even less wise than usual to say, 'No.'}}
* [[Unfriendly Fire]]: Cain's main justification for treating the troopers well is avoiding this. He also suspects Colonel Mostrue, his first commander, of attempting [[The Uriah Gambit]] from time to time. In ''Duty Calls'', he comes to suspect that some of the PDF ''did'' try this. {{spoiler|He's right - and they had orders.}}
* [[Unresolved Sexual Tension]]: Subverted. While it's never said outright, statements peppered throughout the books, both in the text and in Vail's footnotes, all but confirm that the sexual tension between Cain and Vail is very much resolved. For one thing, she knows that he '''always''' arranges a Pillow Pistol where he sleeps, no matter how secure the area. For another, she mentions nightmares waking him on several occasions.
* [[Unwanted False Faith]]: Cain never found out, but one of the Tallarn witnesses to a battle where he beat down a Daemon Prince wrote a book about the experience and started a minor branch of the Imperial faith that worships him as a physical manifestation of the Emperor's will.
* [[Upper Class Twit]]: Cain's opinion of nobility in general and planetary governors in particular. It's played with throughout the series, but especially with Mira in ''The Emperor's Finest''; while she's certainly arrogant, pushy, dense, and condescending, she's also capable of handling herself in a firefight, among other things.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:
[[Category:Literature]]
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]
[[Category:Military Science Fiction]]
[[Category:Science Fiction Literature]]
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