Ciaphas Cain

The Memoirs

The Ciaphas Cain archive exists in an unusual form: the Cain Archive itself, a multi-volume secret manuscript discovered in the Inquisitorial vaults after the man's notional death, in which Cain confesses, in detail and with footnotes, to having cultivated an entirely fraudulent reputation for heroism over the course of two centuries of accidentally-survived warfare.

The Inquisition's editor of the archive, Amberley Vail, treats Cain's self-deprecation as the lying-by-omission of a man too modest to credit his own actual courage. Other readers find this charitable. Cain himself, the manuscript repeats, was simply trying to survive.

The Method

Cain's standard procedure when faced with a dangerous situation was to identify the path of least personal exposure, take it, and arrange for the credit. The path of least personal exposure, frequently, turned out to be the path that won the battle — because his cowardice was tactically literate and his instinct for self-preservation read battlefields better than most generals' instinct for glory.

His aide Ferik Jurgen, a Pariah whose psychic null aura was unpleasant to be near, served as Cain's permanent companion. The combination of an officer who instinctively retreated and an aide whose presence cut psyker-summoned daemons off from the warp produced an unaccountable number of impossible Imperial victories.

I made for the cover. I always made for the cover. The Imperium made it sound very heroic afterwards.

— Cain Archive, fragment

Notable Campaigns

The Caves of Ice (a tyranid infestation beneath an ice world); the Damocles Gulf negotiations (a near-disastrous diplomatic mission to a Tau outpost); the Defence of Perlia (a multi-year guerrilla campaign against an ork incursion that ended with Cain accidentally killed by a frag round he had set up to kill someone else); the Last Stand at Tegrelle (which he survived, against his own confident prediction).

Each campaign appears in the Imperial record as a heroic triumph. Each appears in the Cain Archive as a near-fatal accident.

Retirement & Legacy

Cain finally retired into a teaching post at the Schola Progenium late in his life. He died there, by his own account peacefully, of old age — a more remarkable death than any of his battlefield engagements.

The Cain novels by Sandy Mitchell are the funniest entry in the Imperial archive and, by quiet consensus, the most accurate portrayal of how the Imperium actually wins many of its wars: by accident, in defiance of doctrine, through the efforts of people who would much rather not be there.