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Ciaphas Cain: Difference between revisions
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* [[Old Retainer]]
* [[Our Zombies Are Different]]: {{spoiler|They can still talk and think and shoot lasguns, though they believe that loyalists are only following the False-Emperor rather than the "[[Plaguemaster|True-Emperor]]"...}}
* [[Outrunning the Fireball]]: In the final pages of ''The Last Ditch'', after blowing up the safety overrides on a geothermal power station to produce a volcanic eruption. {{spoiler|Cain and Jurgen are cut off from the escape route the rest of the Guard are taking. But they've got motor-bikes, and there are the tunnels left by tyranid burrowers.... They reach the exit and are out of [[Incredibly Lame Pun|the line of fire]]}} mere seconds before the "plume of ash, dust, and incandescent embers" gushes out, turning the snow around them to steam.
* [[Painting the Fourth Wall]]: The ''shadowlight'' from ''Duty Calls'' is so ominous, it's never referred to with a capital letter and always in italics. This changes in ''Cain's Last Stand'', where they actually use Caps as Shadowlight (might be ShadowLight)
* [[Percussive Maintenance]]: Apparently the most reliable way to fix the resolution on a hololith. If you're particularly good at it, it may mean you have a religious (i.e., [[Machine Worship|techpriest]]) vocation.
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* [[Shadow Archetype]]: Lady General Jenit Sulla, to a certain extent. In battle, she's everything Cain is: decisive, (presumably) a deft hand with weapons and charismatic enough to get people to follow her into certain death. Both of them achieve high position and a fair amount of fame. Personally, she's everything Cain is ''not'': selfless, dutiful and loyal. She does from selflessness what Cain does for manipulation. And the best part? ''[[Hoist by His Own Petard|He created her]].'' It's just after their first conversation in ''For The Emperor'' that she begins her climb towards glory, spurred on by his ([[Motivational Lie|fake]]) confidence in her. And she does it by imitating him.
{{quote|'''Sulla:''' "I just asked myself what the commissar would have done."
'''Cain:''' "And then did the opposite, I hope."
** And her
* [[Ship Tease]]: Some of the later interactions between Kasteen and Broklaw seem to indicate that they've taken a liking to each other. Cain [[Jossed|Josses]] any such implication between himself and Kasteen... assuming that he's telling the truth and [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|Cain was the one who actually wrote that bit]].
* [[Shout-Out]]: [[Ciaphas Cain/Shout Out|Enough that it has its own page]].
* [[Shrug of God]]: Sandy Mitchell says he doesn't know whether Cain is the [[Dirty Coward]] he claims to be, or is selling himself short.
* [[Single Biome Planet]]: The Valhallans are ice-worlders and have a habit of setting their air-conditioning to levels that makes the breath visible. Being assigned to Simia Orichalcae, the iceworld in ''Caves of Ice'', brings them evident joy.
** It's mentioned in ''Cain's Last Stand'', though, that Valhalla is a justified case; All of the inhabitants live near the equator, and "Gone North" (their equivalent of "Gone South" or, "Gone Ploin shaped") arises from the fact that the Northern part of the planet (and the southern part, Amberley is quick to point out) is a place you ''really'' do not want to go.
* [[Single-Issue Wonk]]: In ''For The Emperor'', Amberley adds a wider view of the situation on Gravalax with excepts from a writer whose main failing is to blame ''everything'' on a conspiracy of rogue traders.
{{quote|"Perhaps one owed him money..."}}
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* [[Stiff Upper Lip]]: Cain manages to successfully convince others he has this. (See also [[Pre-Mortem One-Liner]].)
* [[The Stoic]]: Jurgen. When Cain writes an emotive scene where they're stuck in a corner, about to torn apart by ravening hordes of tyranids, Jurgen will placidly comment "Bit of a mess", as if he's offering Cain a sandwich. This also makes Cain keep his cool, as the commissar can hardly appear less composed than his aide. Also, Malden the Psyker, from the third book.
* [[Stranded with Edison]]: In ''Death or Glory'', their makeshift convoy/militia (made up
* [[Strictly Formula]]: Said formula being old Victorian and early 20th-century juvenile adventures such as the [[Tom Swift]] series. [[Tropes Are Not Bad|Not that that's a bad thing]].
* [[Stylistic Suck]]: This pops up in multiple ways:
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* [[Tall, Dark and Handsome]] / [[Tall, Dark and Snarky]]: Cain passes himself off as the former in public but is at heart the latter, as his memoirs amply demonstrate.
* [[Talking in Your Dreams]]
* [[Tanks, But No Tanks]]: In ''Duty Calls'',
* [[Tarot Motifs]]
* [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill]]: At one point in ''The Traitor's Hand'', a World Eater Chaos Marine gets killed "with satisfying thoroughness" by two krak missiles and a lascannon blast, any individual one of which would be enough on its own.
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** ''The Traitor's Hand'', once as a quotation, once by Beije - see [[Malicious Slander]].
* [[Tomboyish Ponytail]]: Jenit.
* [[Too Kinky to Torture]]: Lampshaded in ''The Traitor's Hand'', where Cain observes (to himself) that "torturing a masochist is singularly unproductive." Beije attempts it anyway, [[Hilarity Ensues|with humorous results]]. Cain is [[Call Back|calling back]] to an earlier remark by Lord General Zyvan, about how some prisoners seemed to be enjoying the attempts at interrogating them.
* [[Trapped Behind Enemy Lines]]: The plot of ''Death Or Glory''.
* [[Tsundere]]: Sulla, in ''For The Emperor'', starts by showing oposition and dislike of Cain's decisions on the regiment -- in front of other officials -- but she eventually asks him privately, in a rather nervous and shy way, for a chance to show her value as a soldier. Cain of course takes the oportunity to act magnanimously, [[Manipulative Bastard|and get one more person disposed to cover his back]], which make Sulla all the happier.
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* [[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.
* [[Vader Breath]]: Valhallan Janni Drere,
* [[The Vamp]]: Emeli.
* [[Verbal Judo]]: In ''For the Emperor'', Cain defuses a riot just about to begin, when everyone's attention happens to focus on him so that he can't just sneak out, by confusing the participants by suddenly starting to give orders to clean up the mess.
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* [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?|Why Did It Have to Be Necrons?]]: Necrons are to Cain what snakes are to [[Indiana Jones]], and with good reason.
* [[Wire Dilemma]]: In ''The Traitor's Hand''.
{{quote|- They
* [[Woman Scorned]]: Taken to extremes in a manner only the ''40K'' universe could in the third novel.
* [[The Worf Effect]]: Whenever Cain ends up facing Tyranids or their Genestealer agents, he will ''always'' make a reference to the time he was on the space hulk ''Spawn of Damnation'' and saw Space Marines in Terminator armour get shredded by a bunch of purestrains, as a shorthand of reminding himself and the readers of how dangerous they are. <ref> This only applies to accounts set chronologically after aforementioned adventure in the space hulk, of course.</ref>
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