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2024-12-19
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CIAPHAS CAIN, ROGUE TRADER OF THE IMPERIUM

Summary:

Having miraculously reached his desperately sought after retirement, Commissar Ciaphas Cain prepares to (finally) set off for his teaching post on Perlia. Unfortunately for him, it’s never that simple. His ship is intercepted en route by representatives of the Von Valancius dynasty of Rogue Traders. With no way to turn down their invitation (not without destroying his carefully constructed reputation for heroism and adventure seeking), he sets off across the galaxy, trading in the Damocles Gulf for the Koronus Expanse.

Basically, what if the protagonist in Owlcat’s Rogue Trader cRPG was none other than CIAPHAS CAIN, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM! (and also Jurgen)

Notes:

Editorial Note: Those of you who have followed the career of Ciaphas Cain may have noticed that there is a conspicuous blank space in the official timeline of his career. Between his official retirement from active duty in late 991.M41, and the Second Siege of Perlia in the dying months of 999.M41, Ciaphas Cain simply does not appear in the history books, the first time that this has ever occurred in the 80 years since he left the Schola Progenium.

While most assumed that he had simply chosen to fade into obscurity in his quiet teaching post on Perlia, the reality is far more complex. The following extracts from the Cain archives cover what actually happened in quite exhaustive detail. As usual, I have taken the liberty of separating his writing into chapters, and adding the occasional explanatory footnote, but the majority remains pure, unadulterated Cain.

Amberley Vail - Ordo Xenos

Chapter 1: Inauspicious Beginnings

Summary:

Cain meets a shifty bloke and deals with some malfunctioning equipment

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

"The Emperor points and we obey, through the warp and far away"

-Common Guardsman's Hymn-

 

In all honesty, I had never expected to retire. Once you put on the scarlet sash, the Commissariat has you for life, and the vast majority of my colleagues have gone down in the line of battle (some even at the hands of the enemy [1]). Although I would never have admitted it to anyone, in the back of my mind there was always the nagging doubt that one day my luck would run out.

So when I was offered an honourable retirement to a well paid teaching position on Perlia (far away from the approaching Hive Fleet), it was all I could do to avoid jumping with joy. I had feigned reluctance, pretended to spend time considering the offer, and then accepted, sure that I had finally put my days of life-threatening danger behind me.

Of course it hadn’t been that easy. If there is one thing I have learned in my century of life, it is that the Emperor has a well developed sense of irony. And so, literal moments before I could achieve my life’s dreams and retire, I had them snatched away from me, like a Tarot player with two Ecchelsiarchs who finds out only too late that his opponent has drawn the Emperor. 

I had ended up here, in the chapel of a starship out in the Koronus expanse, half a galaxy away from Perlia [2], with not a single idea of what had just happened.

“Beautiful, isn’t it,” a voice came from behind me, interrupting my reverie, “A true representation of the God-Emperor’s glory.”

I turned to face the speaker, a tall man with a calculating expression. The palms of my hands began to itch, never a good sign.

“It is rather grand.” I replied, “But I’m afraid I’m used to rather simpler affairs.”

The ‘I’m just a simple soldier’ routine had served me well for decades, and I fell back on it. The man looked at me, an indulgent smile on his face.

“Of course. I’m well aware of your career.”

“Then I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.” I said, putting on my best disarming smile and trying to keep my voice friendly, “because I haven’t got the faintest clue who you are.”

The man’s smile widened. It was not a nice smile. It reminded me rather too much of the jaws of a purestrain genestealer (which I am far more familiar with than I’d like).

“I am Kunrad Voigtvir,” he said, “and I am Master of Whispers on this ship.”

A spy then. That would explain the feeling of distrust working its way down my spine. I forced the feeling down and extended my hand to shake.

“Commissar Ciaphas Cain,” I said, “attached to the staff of Lord General Zyvan.”

“Not anymore.” Voigtvir said, “Not anymore.”

And with that, he walked off. I hastened to follow him.

“Would you mind explaining what’s going on?” I asked, “Because I still haven’t the faintest clue what I’m doing here.”

“Come with me.” he said, “The Lord Captain [3] will explain everything.”

We came to a blast door. Voigtvir waved a hand and a servitor pushed a series of buttons. The door slid open to reveal what looked like a museum. Various weapons were on display, everything from digital weapons all the way up to a Leman Russ.

“This is the Von Valancius trophy room.” Voigtvir explained, “You can have a look around later, after you meet Theodora, although I suppose most of this looks rather ordinary to a military man like yourself.”

I was just about to fire back a pithy remark when I was interrupted by the horrifying sound of screeching metal. I looked up to see a heavily armoured servitor dismember an unfortunate deck hand, its claw hand ripping the poor man limb from limb. My hand fell to my las pistol, and without conscious thought I drew and fired, putting three rounds into the thing. But it did nothing more than anger the blasted thing, which turned immediately to face me.

The servitor lumbered forwards with surprising speed, barely slowing to eviscerate a pair of deckhands too stunned to flee. I continued shooting, my augmetic fingers keeping my aim steady [4], and Voitgvir opened fire as well, drawing his own las pistol from somewhere inside his uniform. Neither of our guns seemed to do any good, so I transferred mine to my left hand and drew my chainsword, thumbing the selector to maximum speed as I brought it to a ready position.

Now, despite its armor, this was clearly a loading servitor, not one designed for combat, and it lacked any sort of ranged weapon. If it had been up for me, I would have quite happily run for the exit and waited for someone to turn up with some sort of heavy weapon that could dispatch it safely. Jurgen’s beloved Melta would have done quite nicely, but I’d left him behind in our quarters, thinking that he wouldn’t exactly help me make the best first impression on Lady Theodora. That was a decision I now deeply regretted, as it left me facing down a malfunctioning killing machine without an easy way out. Up and running (despite its appeal) was not exactly the sort of thing people expected from a Hero of the Imperium.

And so, as the servitor charged me with murderous intent, I had nothing but a lifetime of dueling reflexes [5] to fall back on. It swung a servo claw at me with immense force and I parried it to the side, knowing that I didn’t have the strength to block it straight. I raised the laspistol with my left hand and fired a quick burst into the thing’s skull, just below the armor plate that covered half its head.

Unfortunately, the servitor didn’t drop dead on the spot, but it did stagger for half a second, and that was more than enough for me. I swung my trusty chainsword with all the strength I could muster, neatly decapitating the thing. It collapsed, spraying dark ichor (as well as several other fluids) all over the place. I stepped back to avoid getting splashed, and I must have cut an appropriately heroic figure, because Voitgvir looked at me with what might have been approval in his eyes.

“Not bad. Not bad at all.” he said, in a manner which was clearly supposed to be complimentary, but instead made my skin crawl. I did not appreciate being examined like a beetle under a microscope. “Clearly your reputation is well deserved.”

“I’m sure most of what you’ve heard is exaggeration” I said, trying to steady my breathing. There’s no exertion like combat, and, despite the juvenat treatments Amberley had been providing me and Jurgen with, I was starting to feel the effects of my true age [6].

“You are far too modest.” Voitgvir said in response, with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He gestured at a door at the end of the room. “If you go through there you’ll end up on the bridge. I’m afraid I can’t accompany you, as this incident has left me with rather a lot of work to do.”

And so, with not a little trepidation, I headed off alone to meet the Rogue Trader, and hopefully learn what she had dragged me across half the galaxy for.

 

 

[1] Although the incidence of ‘fragging’ (the Imperial Guard term for intentional friendly fire) is not nearly as high as some would have you believe, it does happen, and Commissars do tend to be the target more often than average.

[2] Despite the shared name, the Koronus expanse is in fact nowhere near the system of Koronus. This is a fairly common occurrence, with Explorator fleets often lacking severely in imagination. For a particularly egregious example, see the almost a hundred planets named after Lord Solar Macharius, or the dozen or so named for any of the more popular Primarchs.

[3] The usual title for a Rogue Trader, in this case Theodora von Valancius

[4] As mentioned several times in my footnotes of the Cain Archives, a pair of augmetic fingers alone is not enough to explain his exceptionally steady hands under pressure. I suspect that Cain is, as usual, not giving himself enough credit.

[5] And his considerable skill with a chainsword. Cain is perhaps the single finest swordsman I have ever seen, which is really saying something.

[6] Cain was, at this stage, in excess of 90 years old, although the Juvenat treatments he and Jurgen had been provided with meant he had the physical ability of a man less than half of that age.

Notes:

So Cain was my introduction to the 40k universe, and I listened to several of the audiobooks before I moved on to my next bit of 40k media, the Rogue Trader CRPG. Now the game has a three way alignment system, split between Iconoclast (basically idealism), Dogmatic (following the 'standard' Imperial Creed) and Heretic (self explanatory), where big decisions tend to fall into one of the three.

Being me, who pretty much always plays a 'good' character in RPGs (still not done a renegade run of Mass Effect, or an evil BG3 playthrough: I just can't bear to be mean to people), Rogue Trader presents an interesting dilemma in that there often isn't an obvious good option. And so, being unfamiliar with 40k, but aware that sometimes doing the 'right' thing could lead to more problems down the line, I asked myself one question before every major decision: "What would Cain do?"

And the answer is generally that Cain tries to do the best for the people under his command (no matter how much he tells himself it's for self interested purposes), but isn't afraid to make the ruthless decision when it's absolutely necessary. And it worked out fairly well for me in game.

So, I took it one step further. What if, instead of just acting like Cain, the Rogue Trader was Cain? And of course, once I'd decided to write that, I had to have Jurgen along as well. So, hope you enjoyed the first chapter, more will be up at some point (hopefully) soon.

Also, please do tell me if I've spelt any of the names wrong. I pretty much exclusively consume the Cain books via Audible, so I'm pretty much guessing for anything that doesn't have a Lexicanum page.

Chapter 2: I - Sudden Revelations

Summary:

Cain meets the Lord Captain, and learns something that changes his world

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“ Forget Macro Cannons and Lance Batteries, the only thing I fear is a bureaucrat with a grudge.”

-Apocryphal quote often attributed to Lord Admiral Horatio Bugler-

Throughout the course of my long and disreputable career, I’ve spent a fair amount of time on starship bridges. From the ordered discipline of Amberley’s Externus Exterminatus, to the ramshackle madness of the Fires of Faith [1], I’ve seen it all. The bridge of the Von Valancius flagship [2], was laid out more or less in the same way as its Imperial Navy counterparts. That made it rather less ostentatiously decorated than the other Rogue Trader ship I had been on, which somewhat improved my opinion of its captain. As much as I liked Orelius, his taste in interior design left much to be desired. There is such a thing as too much gold leaf [3].

At any rate, the ship’s bridge was nothing extraordinary. There was a large holotable, currently projecting the ship’s progress through the warp to wherever we were heading. To the side, there were several large cogitator banks being overseen by a team of red robed tech priests, and everywhere well trained crewmen ran about seeing to the myriad of tasks needed to keep an Imperial starship running.

I made my way through the throngs of rushing bridge crew. No-one challenged me, which meant that either I had been expected, or that the security could really use some more training [4]. By the holo table stood a woman who could only be the Lord Captain.

If you’d asked me then why I knew that she was the one in charge, I wouldn’t have been able to explain, at least not in concrete terms. She was ornately dressed, sure, but no more so than any other Imperial noble, and there were several others on the bridge wearing just as much finery. No, I guess what gave it away was her air of authority. Everyone on the bridge seemed to be aware of where she was, and what she was doing. Also she had a personal bodyguard, a behemoth of a man clad in carapace armor and carrying a melta large enough to make Jurgen positively green with envy.

The Rogue Trader was deep in conversation with a man dressed in purple robes. He made my skin crawl as I got closer, and I was willing to bet a year’s tarot winnings that he was a psyker. I was suddenly very glad that I had left Jurgen in our quarters [5]. Causing one of the Lord Captain’s guests to collapse into convulsions would not have been a good first impression, not to mention the fact that Amberly would have gotten quite snitty with me [6] if the secret of his nature had gotten out.

“It’s a perfectly simple question.” Theodora von Valancius said, her voice strident and authoritative, “and I would like an answer.”

Not wanting to interrupt, I had intended to hover in the vague vicinity of the Rogue Trader until the moment came to introduce myself, but she turned to face me almost as soon as I got within 5 metres of her.

“Ah, you must be Commissar Cain.” She said, offering her hand, “I wonder what your answer to the problem would be, since Edelthrad seems unable to make a decision.”

I took it and shook, taking care not to exert too much force with my augmetic fingers. 

“Well that rather depends on what the problem is.” I said with a disarming smile, inflecting it like it was a joke.

“Imagine you have arrived on a jungle world. The people are primitives, but they sit on rather large deposits of valuable minerals. You need to set up extractiums, but hear that the locals pray to and conduct rituals for some sort of jungle spirit. What is your plan of action?”

Well, my preferred plan of action would be to get in my starship and leave that world far behind. The natives’ sounded an awful lot like a nascent cult of chaos worshippers, and I wanted nothing to do with them. But that’s not the sort of answer people expect from the Hero of the Imperium, so I thought a second longer before I answered. Of course, I didn’t mean a word of what I said, but I had so much practice at dissembling by this stage that I doubted even a telepath would be able to tell.

“Well the first course of action is to establish what’s actually happening. It could be some harmless local superstition [7], but it could also be demons or even xenos. I would take down a few squads of troops to try and root out the truth. After all, it’s what you don’t know that can kill you.”

“That’s unnecessarily reckless,” said Edelthrad, which was a perfectly reasonable response, but something about his tone raised my hackles. I was about to fire back with a sally of my own when Theodora intervened.

“Cain gave an answer to a straightforward question, which was more than you did.”

The psyker bowed his head in acknowledgement, although he was clearly irritated.

“Don’t you have duties to get to?” Theodora asked, “Or do I pay you to idle about on my ship?”

“To hear is to obey.” Edelthrad said. He saluted and left the bridge. The Lord Captain turned to face me.

“I suppose you have some questions,” she said, “and we have a few minutes, so ask away.”

I did indeed have an awful lot of questions, but I sensed that we would only have time for a few, so I marshalled my thoughts and asked the most important one first.

“Why have you summoned me? It can’t have been easy getting the Commissariat to release me, and that’s not even considering the cost of sending an entire ship to transport me across half of the Imperium.”

With that, Theodora gave a wry smile, “There is little beyond the power of a Rogue Trader, and simple costs are something that concerns us little. When the Deparmento Munitorium or the Navis Imperialis has someone that I wish to recruit, a few favours exchanged is enough to obtain them. My seneschal Abelard was a Navy Commodore before he came to me for example.”

I stared at her. The power to break contracts like that was one that I had assumed belonged only to the Inquisition [8]. And the cost of chartering a warp capable ship to travel such an immense distance, with a navigator and a whole crew, would have been expensive even to most planetary governors. Clearly the von Valancius operated on a whole different level.

“As to why, the answer to that is rather simple. I need an heir, and lacking any children of my own, I have been forced to track down some rather distant relatives [9].”

If the previous revelation had surprised me, this one hit me like a rampaging ambull. I had only very hazy memories of my parents, but I was pretty sure that they had been underhive gangers. To hear that at least one of them was apparently the descendant of a Rogue Trader house was almost beyond belief [10]. Although I usually have a reputation for cool calm reactions, I rather suspected that I resembled nothing so much as an open mouthed fish in that moment. I tried to ask a follow up question (probably something gormless like ‘are you sure’), but was interrupted when the bridge doors slammed open.

[1] The ship that carried Cain and the Valhallan 597th to Nusquam Fundimentibus. A total lack of maintenance by her credit-pinching Captain led to the manifestation of a demon on the ship’s bridge. The resulting battle caused the ship to crash into the planet, melting a large swath of ice and freeing a Tyrannid army that had been hibernating there.

[2] The Sword Class frigate Arrow of the Emperor. A surprisingly small ship for the head of a ancient powerful Rogue Trader dynasty, although the large amounts of archeotech hidden under its armor plate made it more than a match for far larger vessels.

[3] Actually, Orelius’ Lucre Foedus doesn’t have any gold leaf at all, although a lot of the decorations are actually solid gold…

[4] Naturally, Cain discounts a third option here, that the crew recognised him, and had decided that impeding a bonafide Hero of the Imperium was not in their best interests. As usual, Cain seems unaware of the awe with which ordinary citizens held him.

[5] Jurgen was, as my readers are probably aware if they’ve reached this stage of the archives, a blank, one of the vanishingly few humans born with the ability to nullify the powers of the warp.

[6] I have not at any point, nor will I ever be ‘snitty’, as Cain puts it, but I would have been quite irritated. Jurgen’s powers as a blank made him extraordinarily valuable for those facing psykers or demons, and I’m certain that he would be snatched up in an instant by any passing Ordo Malleus Inquisitor if they became known. (Don’t pretend that you wouldn’t)

[7] Note that while worship of the Emperor is, of course, mandated across the entire Imperium, the form that worship takes is not. To the natives of some primitive worlds, the Emperor takes the form of their sun, or as a great stallion, or countless other forms. As long as the Ordo Hereticus deems their religion acceptable they are usually left to their own devices.

[8] Technically, this is the case, but in practice any sufficiently powerful being could do the same. I very much doubt that the Imperial Guard would protest if say an Astartes Chapter Master wanted one of their officers.

[9] Interestingly, Cain is not actually the closest of the living von Valancius relatives to the Rogue Trader. However, his fame as a Hero of the Imperium probably served to jump him a few places up the order of succession. Many a planetary governor’s heir has found themselves leapfrogged by a younger sibling’s heroic deeds.

[10] Given that the resources of the Inquisition have, to date, been unable to even determine which planet Cain was born on, tracking him down is a supremely impressive feat from the agents of the Von Valancius dynasty and perhaps an indication that bribery is sometimes a more effective method of information gathering to threats.

Notes:

And here's the second chapter. Hopefully I can get the prologue done in another two. The story is not going to follow the game exactly, largely because I haven't played through it in a while and can't be bothered to redownload it and go through the whole thing again.