Funny / Ciaphas Cain

Being a decidedly tongue-in-cheek approach to the absurdly "grimdark" Warhammer 40,000 universe, the Ciaphas Cain series is full of hilarious moments.

For the Emperor

• On discussing how to rig the results of a tribunal, while Cain remembers having to court-martial five riotous troopers:
  Cain: Bribery and threats are popular methods for getting what you want, but the Inquisition is better at both and tend to resent other people using them.
  Amberley's Footnote: Entirely untrue. The Inquisition is most definitely above such petty emotions as resentment.
• How Ciaphas Cain met Amberley Vail. It was most certainly not Love at First Sight, as he does not believe in such things, and can merely remember the exact moment he first saw her, with perfect clarity, even a century later. Cue his conversational attempts to not have a simple cabaret singer see through his every attempt at playing the "modest hero," Kasteen's silent mocking as they waltz, and a final attempt to impress the new lady friend... By voicing suspicions that the Obviously Evil Rogue Trader has to be an Inquisitor, which leaves poor Amberley visibly nervous and trembling—with what had to be a stubborn refusal not to burst out laughing.
• This little gem from a pre-chapter quote, popular among commissarial cadets:
  When in mortal danger,
  When beset by doubt,
  Run in little circles,
  Wave your arms and shout.
• Guardswoman Penlan, in the 597th's very first skirmish as a unified regiment, is the only one wounded. By ricochet. From a lasgun.
• In typical Cain fashion, hoping to avoid marching into the thick of things, he arranges to 'investigate' something going on somewhere else, assuring everyone that he'll be able to make it back in time to join the fun.
  "I'd put money on it." Kasteen smiled. "I've seen the way Jurgen drives."
• Cain describes how Amberley's displacer field teleported her out of the way of a bullet just as she was diving for a gun, but he heard a crash and "some unladylike language" from where she ended up, meaning she'd collided with a nearby table. Amberley goes into detail about how the displacer field preserves momentum (in other words, speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out) and concludes, "It was a stupid place to put a table anyway."
• One of the secondary sources that Amberley uses to give bigger picture information was a local ‘historian’, who was unaware of the true nature of the conflict’s origins. Instead, he tends to go off on tangents blaming Rogue Traders, much to her amusement, “Perhaps one owed him money.”

Caves of Ice

• Cain's ferrying to the planet is rudely interrupted by an Ork attack, which causes the shuttle carrying him and several platoons of the 597th Regiment to go down. The shuttle's pilot manages to crash-land the shuttle at the edge of the landing pad. Upon telling Cain, "Told you we'd make it," the pilot vomits on Cain's boots.
• After Cain disembarks from the shuttle with Sulla and a few of her subordinates, the Orks who shot down the shuttle attack with improvised bolters. As the Valhallan troops' uniforms blend in a bit too well with the snow once they go prone, Cain finds himself (in the very contrasting black great coat) the obvious target of the Orks, who can barely even hit the shuttle. Cain tells the troopers to hold their fire, then pretends to get shot by screaming and falling down in such a manner that even a preschooler would know he was just acting. The Orks are fooled and come forward just in time to attempt to shoot a Chimera fighting vehicle and then get shot by said vehicle and the troops hiding in the snow.
• Amberley's commentary of the very tasty Freezy Stick (popsicle) happens as Cain is trying to warm himself up just after killing the Orks. It certainly crosses lines, as Cain was more concerned about frostbite at the time...
• There is an excerpt from a children's book about promethium, with a footnote by Amberley saying she still finds the pictures of Pyrus the Flame immolating heretics to be amusing.
• Penlan's jinx status happens again. She falls through a recently frozen-over tunnel, and just as the rest of the squad is trying to save her, she gets pulled down by an ambull that made the tunnel and lands flat on her face. Cain, who fell down with her, snatches up her lasgun (which was slung across her back at the time) and fires at the creature. He notes that the rifle had been set to full-auto and that the safety was off, which meant if it hadn't been for the convenient ambull attack, Penlan's gun could have gone off and killed just about anyone within line of sight.
• The notes taken of a meeting, which, Amberley observes, the functionary obviously thought would never be read.
  Minutes of the meeting of the Committee for the Defence and Preservation of Simia Orichalcae From the Orkish Incursion (by the Grace of His Majesty), convened this day 648.932 M41 (just too early for a decent breakfast.)
  Those Present:
  Colonel Regina Kasteen of the 597th Valhallan, a fair and gallant warrior, acting military governor of the Simia Orichalcae system.
  Major Ruput Broklaw, her second in command, equally gallant but not remotely as fair.
  Artur Morel, professional hole-grubber.
  Magos Vinkel Ernulph, senior tech-priest, with too much metal where his brain should be.
  Codicier Marum Pryke, the Emperor's gift to the Administratum, at least in her own mind.
  Me.
  Assorted sycophants and hangers-on.
  Order of Business:
  Defence of the refinery (actually the only thing we discussed.)
  Proceedings:
  Colonel Kasteen called the meeting to order. Then she called it to order again. Major Broklaw fired his bolt pistol into the ceiling, and the meeting came to order...
  • Extra funny when Cain later saw the numerous holes in the ceiling and asked if the Orks had broken in. He's then surprised when all it takes for Broklaw to silence the others at the next meeting is clearing his throat.
  • His notes of the second meeting weren't at all helpful, since they were mostly concerned with how the light shone through Colonel Kasteen's hair.

The Traitor's Hand

• Even in the grim darkness of the far future, people stepping on rakes is good for a laugh.
  Medicae records for the district show no fatalities among the anchorites, although several were subsequently treated for minor injuries apparently related to treading on hastily-discarded gardening tools.
• Cain and his squad meet a witch, who uses her powers to appear as whoever they care about the most. He sees Amberley. Once he figures out it's a fake...
  Cain: Impersonating an inquisitor is a capital offense.
• When investigating a Slaaneshi cultist ritual site, Cain offhandly comments on a room full of cushions and pillows that "had no discernable function that [he] could see".
  Amberley's Footnote: For a man of the galaxy, as he undoubtedly was, I feel Cain was being a little disingenuous here.
• Amberley, in a footnote, defending her psyker retainer:
  'Rakel isn't the easiest of people to get along with, and her conversation, not to mention her thought processes, do require some getting used to, but she's not completely insane. Besides, her medication is generally very effective.'
• Cain's tailing-off rebuttal of Penlan's accident-prone nature, and her resultant nickname, "Jinxie":
  "She's not nearly as accident prone as she's supposed to be. I'll grant you she fell down an ambull tunnel once, and there was that incident with the frag grenade and the latrine trench, but things tend to work out for her. The Orks on Kastafore was as surprised as she was when the floor in the factory collapsed, and we'd have walked into right into that hrud ambush on Skweki if she hadn't triggered the mine by chucking an empty food tin away..."
  I trailed off, finally listening to what I was saying. "Well, you know how soldiers exaggerate these things."
• In an awesome battle with a Chaos worshiper, Cain says 'Frak this, my soul's my own and I'm keeping it!' A witness heard it as. 'Then the prophet spake: saying "Frak this, for my faith is a shield proof against your blandishments!".' Just the fact that a splinter cult worships Cain as the living embodiment of the God-Emperor's will at all...
  • Oh no, it gets better. At no point does Amberley state that these are heretics. This is an officially sanctioned splinter cult, authorized by the official church as one of the variant religions of the worship of the Emperor^note This actually does fit in with the philosophy of the church's Thorian sect; whether this makes it less funny or more is for you to decide.
  • Oh, but it gets better. See, since the guardsman who founded the church was the one who saw Cain beat the daemon, he would have had to have been checked over by the Inquisition and put on a watch list. Then, once he gets home, he founds the religion, which means that forms and bureaucracy take over again, which takes time. Then the Inquisition, the Munitorum, and the Ecclesiarchy would have to send people out to check again on the guy to make sure that everything is above board, and not only does he check out, all of this happens in the soldier's lifetime, which is shockingly quick for all of this stuff to get done in the Imperium. And no one in that whole chain of events objected or protested strongly enough for this to not happen.
• Jurgen and Cain are running late and stuck in traffic, so Jurgen whips the Salamander around, drives it up a line of nearby stairs, past a horde of shocked Administratum drones, across a food court, and through a subway tram terminal, before slamming it into place in the parking space at their destination with a few inches to spare. As far as Jurgen is concerned, the Commissar can never be late.
• Jurgen and Cain are raiding a cultist mansion when they come under missile fire. Cain orders him to get them under cover ASAP, so naturally Jurgen does so — by driving into the mansion, scattering the crew of one of the rocket launchers and running one of them over. Cain is literally at a loss for words.
  Cain: Jurgen, that was... (Beat)
  Jurgen: Resourceful?
• A techpriest guides Cain through disarming a car bomb.
  Techpriest: Simply cut the red wire.
  Cain: They're both purple!
  Techpriest: *breaks out swearing*
• There's a (relatively) minor Khornate invasion going on at the same time as the Guard is trying to ferret out a Slaaneshi cult. The Praetor of the local Arbites calls up Cain to deliver intelligence on the latter situation when he is very rudely interrupted by the former.
  "... Excuse me a minute."
  He was interrupted by a burst of incoherent screaming which sounded like the warcry of a Khornate fanatic ^note (typically "Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!") and which terminated abruptly in a thud of a power maul on full charge and a gurgle that sounded distinctly unhealthy. "Well, he's not getting mine ... Sorry commissar, where were we?"
• This little gem. While en route to their warzone, the Tallarn 229th, one of the regiments the 597th are travelling with, having a somewhat conservative attitude to regiments including women refuse to take part in an inter-regimental competition in unarmed combat as the 597th included women in their team. As Cain notes, this did not go down well with some of the female members of the 597th.
  Cain: Relations hadn't really turned frosty, however, until they'd refused to take part in the inter-regimental unarmed combat competition because the 597th had included some of our women in the team. This, Colonel Asmar curtly informed us, was 'unseemly'. To no-one's surprise except Asmar and probably Beije, their regimental champion was promptly and informally challenged to an impromptu bout the next time he wandered into the recreation deck. I have to report with a certain degree of satisfaction that he was subsequently pounded flat by Corporal Magot, a cheerfully sociopathic young woman who barely came up to his chin. (Which made little difference, as it only took her about a tenth of a second to bring it down to the level of her knee).
  • Also, later on when Beije wants to go over their reports on the matter, Cain notes that the normally rigid Beije hasn't had the Tallarn trooper in question shot, since according to the rulebook, he technically assaulted a superior officer by fighting back. Beije retorts there were extenuating circumstances, which Cain notes hilariously in both his spoken response and his internal monologue:
  Cain: [speaking] Knowing Magot, she probably threw the first punch.
  Cain: [thinking to himself] And knowing her, likely the next couple as well. Mari Magot was a woman for whom the word 'Overkill' was inherently meaningless.
  • Tying in to the above, in contrast to the Tallarn 229th, Cain notes that the 597th were also travelling to Adumbria with another Valhallan regiment, the Valhallan 425th Armoured Regiment, who were overjoyed to find not only were they travelling with a fellow regiment from their homeworld, but at least 50% of said regiment are women.
• Beije's stunned reaction when a Chaos cultist kisses him.
• Beije convenes a court martial board to investigate Cain's supposed cowardice, only for the judges to be more interested in trying Beije for incompetence.
• Cain and the squad find a room made by Slaaneshi cultists covered in murals that leave everybody (minus Jurgen) gawking at the depictions of "acts of sensuous depravity" that are not described for the reader.
  "I don't believe that's possible!" Penlan said with a trace of envy.
  "It's not," I assured her. "And even if it was it would be against regulations."

Death or Glory

• This book is set prior to Cain meeting Amberley. Cain talks about a woman techpriest who is his type and mentions that he discovers over the course of their association that her mechanical arm attaches to the base of her spine. The funny part is Amberley's footnote:
  Amberley: "How Cain discovered this we can only speculate; perhaps it came up in casual conversation."
  • It might actually have, given her equally funny habit of leaning back and using the mechadentrite as, basically, a portable barstool. Also, she's really upbeat and likes talking.
• The man responsible for writing a ridiculously detailed series of books about the Siege of Perlia only managed to write a few volumes (and by few we mean 37, which only covers the first 9 weeks of the 2-year campaign) ...because he was killed by his own falling stacks of library papers.
• The Running Gag about Cain asking anyone he meets if they have Tanna is worth a chuckle or two. But what makes it funny is the realization that the reason why Jurgen always has a thermos of Tanna on him is the fact that the last time Cain ran out, he attacked an entire Ork Warband to get to the only source of it on the planet.
• One of Amberley's footnotes explains that Cain has apparently been mistaken for dead, only to subsequently make a heroic return so many times that the Departmento Munitorum got sick of constantly having to update his file between "Active" and "Killed in the line of duty" and issued a special injunction that indicated that he should always be considered as an active soldier, regardless of any reports to the contrary. Note that this order continued to be in force for years after Cain retired, died of old age, and was buried with full military honours.
• "The Wheels on the Bus" isn't quite grimdark enough to teach to Imperial children:
  "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..."

Duty Calls

• Cain has to lay out the basics to a shocked civilian woman quickly and concisely:
  Ciaphas Cain, regimental commissar, Valhallan 597th. My aide, Jurgen. Terrorist attack.
• Cain and Jurgen are saved from genestealers by a mysterious figure in golden Power Armor, and Cain admits he was stupefied to discover it was Amberley.
  Cain: With all due modesty, I have to say I recovered remarkably fast under the circumstances.
  Amberley's Footnote: So he says. I recall a distinct resemblance to a stuffed fish for quite some time.
• When faced with a particularly dense blurb of Zemelda's street cant:
  Zemelda: Beats the hell out of flogging gristle pies or flyposting for slash gigs, I can tell you.
  Amberley's Footnote: No, I don't know either.
  • From context clues, it can be inferred that she's saying, "What we are doing is better than selling meat pies on the street or putting up posters for musical concerts."
  • It's even more hilarious given that Amberley, who, as an Inquistitor, probably speaks at least a dozen versions of Gothic, understands Eldar, and has at least passable fluency in the Tau language, doesn't understand the street cant of someone who served her for years. Or has even bothered to ask her what it meant!
• Vail confirming with varying degrees of subtlety that she and Cain have an intimate relationship.
  Cain: Well, at least it seems Zemelda's in good hands.
  Vail: I'm hoping she won't be the only one tonight.
• And later:
  Lazarus: I hope your interaction with the inquisitor has proven satisfactory?
  Vail: It has.
• Amberley's annotation to Cain's comments after seeing a group of Battle Sisters torn apart by Tyranid bio-weapons and wondering aloud that he has no idea why they don't bother actually wearing the bloody helmets that come with their power armour is quite funny.
  Amberley's Footnote: Apparently because most of them believe their faith in the Emperor is armour enough. A couple of extra centimetres of ceramite probably couldn't hurt, though.
• Anytime Jurgen gets behind the wheel. Duty Calls has some of the best moments, such as when Jurgen and Cain are idling outside of a landing shuttle, and Jurgen is ordered to "get aboard as fast as you can" and proceeds to drive the Salamander up the shuttle's ramp at full speed before stopping it on a dime. Keep in mind, the Salamander is a forty ton tracked scout tank.
• Cain describes one normal sign of an impending revolt as "the governor being burned in effigy." Amberley's footnote adds "or sometimes in person."
• Governor Pismire's speech (and his name, for that matter) contain nonstop hilarity. He goes off on a tangent about how his viewers are in different time zones. He's painfully honest about how ill-informed he is (his daughters had to tell him about the latest developments when they saw them on the news) and about how slow things are working. After demonstrating that he's painfully out of touch with current security events, he still claims "My staff are pretty good at keeping on top of the important stuff." Then it turns out that he thought he was giving a rehearsal speech and didn't realize it was being broadcast live.

Cain's Last Stand

• Even in the grim darkness of the far future, students still don't pay attention during class.
  "Time to rendezvous with the troop transport?" I asked, turning in my seat to regard the double row of cadets, most of whom made a hurried attempt to look as though they'd been sitting upright and paying attention instead of playing regicide on their data-slates or swapping salacious holo-picts.
• Later on in the same book, Cain is giving a lecture to his cadets on how to spot Chaos cult infiltration in their assigned regiments...then pops a surprise question on the cadet who's clearly paying more attention to the Sororitas novitiates doing combat exercises outside the class window.
  Cain: Cadet Maklin. What do you know of the Ruinous Powers?
  (Beat)
  Maklin: ...They're really, really bad?
  • Probably the safest answer one can give. Unfortunately. (If someone claimed or admitted further knowledge, the authorities would wonder where they got that knowledge. So this hilarious response is, sadly, the best answer. And people wonder why the Imperium isn't doing so hot with the war.)
• There are few things on Perlia that Cain hates more than the hideous clock tower in Liberation Square built to commemorate his victory over the Orks during the First Siege. Its design? Every hour, a figure of Cain comes out and beheads an Ork, the number of Orks corresponding to the hour. So, presumably by the end he's beheading twelve Orks!
  • He is rather disappointed to learn that the tasteless monument didn't take a scratch when the forces of Chaos attacked the planet during the Second Siege.
• When the Governor has to step down, his niece inherits. Unfortunately she was away at a family lodge hunting and couldn't be found immediately, but the Guards sent a shuttle of men to secure her safety, and she quickly took over his role, even shooting at some Chaos soldiers with her hunting rifle. The footnotes mention that this event of the young woman taking command and shooting at Chaos soldiers was subsequently turned into many holodramas, books, and other fiction, all of which are Die Hard-esque stories of a lone woman fighting off home intruders and entirely omitting that a shuttle full of soldiers were present and secured her safety fairly easily.
• The leadership have very little time to eat while managing the defenses, and there's a Running Gag of Jurgen just picking up sandwiches that have gone uneaten and putting them on his person. Cain mentions he won't be asking him for something to eat if he can help it.
• Cain mentions that during the evacuation of the Imperial Guard's HQ on Perlia ahead of Varen's attack, his Commissar cadet put an end to an argument delaying the evacuation between two tech-priests over which bit of tech or other should be saved by asking which of them was staying behind to make room for it on the last shuttle.
• In a spot of black humor, Cain is present when an experiment is being performed with the top-secret Darklight, which he's been assured will make it even harder to detect and be very safe. What happens? It immediately becomes very easy to detect and a freaking Chaos Daemon spawns right in the room. Only Cain.
• There's a running thread where Cain suspects necrons may be involved in this book's adventure, starting from the very earliest chapters. It goes on so long that it begins to look like a Red Herring, alongside other story elements early on like the Tyranids. It goes on so long after that that it becomes a Running Gag where the joke is that there's no pay-off. And then in the last three chapters necrons do appear! While Cain of course isn't overtly happy, he can't help a touch of satisfaction about his (arguably simply paranoid) suspicions having been proven right at last.
• Warmaster Varan is invited down in the climax to "discuss terms of surrender." Cain then opens up his ambush of him by explaining that it was actually a meeting to discuss the terms of Varan's surrender. A funny intro to the final battle that successfully goads Varan into missing the play happening.
• By this book, Amberley's not even trying to hide her relationship.
  Cain: I've always been lucky.
  Vail: Not always, but maybe tonight.

The Emperor's Finest

• After his near-death experience on Interitus Prime:
  To my drug addled-mind, the voice sounded like that of the Emperor Himself, and I found myself wondering if I should have spent a bit more time in the temple and a bit less in bars, gambling dens and bordellos, but it seemed a little late to be worrying about that now. If I had indeed arrived at the Golden Throne, I'd just have to hope its occupant was in a good mood, and try to steer the conversation on to safer ground at the earliest opportunity.
  Amberley's Footnote: He is, of course, joking here - or so I sincerely hope.
• There are references to Magos Yaffel's much unread book Soylens Viridians For The Machine-Spirit. To be more specific, Yaffel keeps referencing this book that he wrote as if anyone else would recognize the quotes or care. Also, his book had a lot more metaphors relating to walking than you'd think for a man without feet (he replaced his legs with a wheel).
• Some things are twisted a little, like the above example of "Tracks on the Land Raiders Crush the Heretics". The Mystery Play is similar to the Pantomime, Mummers, and Commedia dell'Arte, in that they use stock characters, trap doors, ham acting, and Toilet Humor, but the plots are now the lives of the Saints or the Emperor. Just imagine the likes of Saint Celestine, the God-Emperor of Mankind, or even the frakking Primarchs in this kind of play. Better yet, while this sounds like a heresy cream pie, the Ecclesiarchy tolerates it, because their congregation actually pays attention for once. These are actually a real thing in Christianity (for example), but they fell out of favor in the 16th century.
• Mira, Cain's Girl of the Week, is a Planetary Governor's daughter who wants to marry Cain because his heroic reputation would make her a shoo-in for next Planetary Governor (over her siblings). Cain entirely fails to notice until he accidentally agrees to her proposal. Mira's not even subtle about it; he's just that oblivious. This is a woman he's regularly having sex with.
  • When Cain is woken up by an urgent message, Mira urges him to Come Back to Bed, Honey, but Cain can't refuse an order ^note  technically he can but abusing the privilege would cost him his reputation. Mira says that one day, he'll be powerful enough to refuse, to which Cain appreciates the interest she has in his career advancement.
  • Mira outright tells him that she boarded the Revenant to bag a consort. After eliminating the servants, Techpriests, and Jurgen, Cain concludes that she's looking for a Space Marine. What makes this better is that Space Marines are sterile.
  • His rejection is full of Exact Words. He tells her that he can't marry her because of his duty to the Imperium, but if he could, he would stay. What he means is that he'd be happy to retire to a life where nobody's shooting at him, but the Commissariat would shoot him if he tried.
• Cain hears an explanation of automated scout devices called CATs being used to explore a space hulk. It seems fairly straightforward... up until they describe how the CATs maneuver around obstacles (hit obstacle, turn ten degrees to the left, repeat until clear path is found) and the reader realizes that in the grim darkness of the future Space Marines use recon roombas.
  • Amberley adds in a footnote that techpriests often build these simple devices as a form of meditation, and it's nearly impossible to visit some shrines without tripping over free roaming CATs. Also, the Techpriests insist they definitely don't use them as mechanical pets.
  • In short: In the Grim Darkness, Techpriests are crazy cat people but with roombas.

The Last Ditch

• In Sulla's first section, she goes on at great length about how Cain was plain and to the point in his briefing.
• Cain introduces himself to a civilian as, of course, Commissar Ciaphas Cain. The civilian assumes he's lying, because what would Ciaphas Cain be doing on his ship?
  Crewman: "'Course you are. Nice one. Bet the fems fall for that all the time, eh?"
  Cain: "They have been known to," I admitted, truthfully enough, although my days of carefree dalliance were pretty much behind me by that point.
  Amberley's Footnote: So I would hope.
• While Cain and Jurgen watch a horde of orks thundering towards them in the distance, Jurgen makes small talk about the weather. Cain tries to remember the last time he saw his aide look at all bothered by overwhelmingly poor odds and comes up blank.
• Part of the reason that they manage to defeat the ork horde is because Penlan whacked a gun with the butt of her laspistol, which went off, killing the pilot of an ork bomber, dropping his payload onto the ice. One can only assume that the combined insane luck of Cain and Jinxie standing next to each other just flat-out warped reality.
  Penlan: ...I could have sworn I had the safety on.
• The planet's governor is very flirty with Cain (even using his first name), and several people seem to assume there's something there. Including Amberley, whose footnotes turn icy. It should be noted that this story takes place after Cain started his relationship with Amberley; he denies anything with the governor both aloud and in narration.
• A quick line:
  Cain: [I was] reluctant to let go of either of the weapons I held until I was convinced we were safe... [I was] immediately obliged to grab hold of the nearest stanchion to prevent myself from being pitched straight out of the closing hatch.
  Amberley's Footnote: Evidently dropping one of the weapons, then...
• Sulla finds out that the shuttles that were supposed to retrieve her unit from the freighter that crashed into the planet were written off as destroyed, even though they didn't even get the chance to take off. As the bureaucrats of the Administratum are too bull-headed to correct their records, Sulla simply requisitions the shuttles for evacuating the civilian population of the planetary capital by using military emergency protocol.
  • If this hadn't worked her backup plan was to claim that the shuttles had been salvaged and repaired.

The Greater Good

• One of the few times Cain tries to genuinely puff himself up, Amberley isn't having it.
  Cain: I'm not easily spooked(...)
  Amberley's Footnote: Ha!
• Cain gives contradictory facts about Lord General Zyvan's flagship. First, he identifies it as a battleship, and Amberley, using the records, concludes it's the Retribution-class battleship Throne Eternal, then Cain describes Furies and Starhawks in the hanger (which a Retribution-class wouldn't carry, leading Amberley to conclude it's a cruiser). Finally, a line by Cain indicates that there are no dedicated fighter hangers, and Amberley assumes that it is the Throne Eternal and stops there.
  Amberley's Footnote: I give up.
• At one point, Cain says he's trying to get all his swearing out of the way right before he dies so that when he arrives before the Emperor for his final judgment, hopefully he won't immediately start swearing, leaving him one less thing to apologize for.
• Cain mentions that Jurgen's snoring out in the desert has caused several sand avalanches. Amberley notes that this is probably an exaggeration—but considering she's been woken up before by his snoring through multiple thick walls, she can't be sure.
• When defending the tech-priests, Cain is conscious that any of them could be recording. Amberley's footnote says that they were, and the battle went mostly as Cain describes... but with quite a bit more swearing on his part.

Choose Your Enemies

• One of Amberley's funniest comments was made in response to a comment by Cain about how she would get dangerously cross with him if he was late for a dinner engagement.
  Amberley's Footnote: Exaggeration for humorous effect. I'm fully aware that neither of us were entirely able to set our own schedules as a consequence of our respective vocations, and that our social interaction was inevitably disrupted from time to time as a result. That said, he really could have made more of an effort.
• She throws two more gems out in a following meeting with Cain, the 597th's command staff, and relevant local authorities, in which she ends up in the hot seat (as much as an Inquisitor facing non-inquisitors can be in such a position, that is), having to admit she led the Eldar to another opening they could exploit.
  Ciaphas (With Amberley's footnotes in numbered notes): Amberley positively squirmed ¹I most certainly did not. although only I would have known her well enough to see through the facade of unconcern she continued to project. ²A pointed remark about pots and kettles springs to mind here.
• Cain, Amberly, and the new inquisitor realize that the Chaos cult is summoning the daemon in the center of the governor's hedge maze, where the governor hosts his private parties, where people are rumored to go missing, and where he specifically sent the dangerous and valuable magical artifacts that they've been tracking. Cain wonders aloud if the governor is aware of the cult. The inquisitors just look at him like he's an idiot.

Vainglorious

• The Lord Commissar offers Cain a new mission that "might be a new challenge" and that he "knows you'll refuse." Cain is building a case to dodge the mission when he realizes that he's being offered retirement. He struggles to keep a straight face and not immediately scream that he'll take it.
• Cain's shuttle is redirected to crash into Zyvan's state room on the flagship; after Cain saves himself, he is mildly miffed that he was merely collateral damage for an assassination attempt on Zyvan. Later, when evidence piles up that they were after Cain, he notes that this is only slightly better.
• Cain repeatedly mentions he doesn't like being on trips alone with Jurgen for long, both because of Jurgen's airsickness and his lack of conversation. We see evidence of the former in nearly every book, but finally get an example of the latter:
  "They're breaking down the minerals to release the gases we need to breathe."
  "Blimey." My aide contemplated this for a moment. "They must have some really small chisels."
• The highest-ranking tech-priest on the planet has a CAT (tiny robot on wheels) he calls "Rolo." Jurgen bursts out laughing when he sees it labeled R010.
• Cain jokingly suggests that maybe the traitorous tech-priests are selling to the orks. The tech-priest he's talking to takes this seriously, and goes on at length about how unlikely that is. In the footnote, Amberley points out that the tendency for ork technology to run on Clap Your Hands If You Believe drives tech-priests crazy.
• For an inhuman killing machine that shed its very soul some 60,000,000 years ago, there's something chuckle worthy about a Necron taking a laz-bolt to the chest with nothing but a "Really?"
  • Just the Necron Lord in general, honestly (when it's not being terrifying). None of the humans have ever known the Necron as anything but faceless killing machines; Cain is the one with by far the most experience, and he's never heard of one that can talk. He seems a little bewildered when he talks to this ancient, incomprehensible creature and realizes "oh, you're just another asshole."

Short Stories

• Dead In The Water:
  "Who's been drinking all my bloody amasec... Cain's been here."
• In A Mug of Recaff we get this glorious sentence that sums up all of the books (and is written from Jurgen's perspective):
  As usual Commissar Cain had outwitted the heretics they were hunting with ease, leading the squad of Guardsmen assigned to escort him straight to the heart of the coven, while the bulk of the raiding force provided a diversion by attacking the heavily fortified stronghold of the renegades.
  • The entire short story is a crowning moment of funny really.
  • Jurgen finds a Chaos Psyker who summons a demon... and then thanks to his warp-nullifying powers he muses that things like this are always made out to be tougher than they are.
• The short story "A Mug of Recaff" has a demonic invocation from a Chaotic psyker written as "Heyla, heyla sheyla, heyla sheyla, heyla hoh!"
• Cain picking up a squad of Guardsmen from custody after a rowdy night:
  Cain: Hochen, Nordstrom, Milsen, Jarvik, and the inevitable Gunner Erhlsen. Tell me Erhlsen, are you planning to make latrine orderly a full-time career?
  Erhlsen: We serve the Emperor as our talents direct.

Unsorted

• Amberley's footnotes. Most of the time, they're strictly informative, providing perspective, illuminating context, or explaining terms. When they're not...
  Cain: "I've only got room for one lethally dangerous woman in my life."
  Amberley: "Which I choose to take as a compliment..."
  • Cain mentions being impressed at how much Amberley was eating; Amberley responds that she had been fighting genestealers all day, and was both hungry and tired. And besides, she only ate two of the snacks. And for that matter, they weren't very big snacks...
  • In another book, Amberley pokes fun at Cain for how much food he's piling onto his plate, which, as Cain notes in his memoirs, would be more stinging if Amberley's own plate wasn't equally overloaded. Amberley vehemently denies this.
  • Equal parts amusing and heartwarming: a couple of Amberley's notes indicate that she sits around and watches movies and vox-dramas with her Inquisitorial retinue, and has a thing for cheesy action films.
• The endings of Cave of Ice and The Last Ditch are hilarious. Both involve Amberley. The former being that Cain puts the moves on Amberley and that the night probably led to sex. She cut out the end of it for being a personal matter. The latter ends with Amberley giving Cain a new mission and she cuts out the swears that that draws from him.
  Amberley (footnote from Caves of Ice): Cain's narrative continues for several more paragraphs, but since it only covers personal matters of no interest to anyone else, I've chosen to end this extract from the archive right here.
  Amberley (footnote from The Last Ditch): At which point the narrative abruptly concludes, with a few unflattering remarks I see no reason to repeat.
• Vail goes to her fellow inquisitors for help in explaining Warp travel... or rather, "I consulted some of the less deranged members of the Ordo Malleus among my colleagues in the Concilium Ravus".
  • And then has to resort to a commercial guide for travelers because the stuff she got from the 'saner' parts of the Ordo Malleus was still too dangerous to proliferate.

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