History Awesome / CiaphasCain

** That's not even counting how Cain ends up destroying the [[spoiler:Necron army hidden underneath the refinery]]. He does it by flooding the tunnels with ''eight million liters'' of refined promethium and then blowing it all up, producing an explosion so powerful that it buffets the Valhallans' troopship....which is ''in orbit.''

** That's not even counting how Cain ends up destroying the [[spoiler:Necron army hidden underneath the refinery]]. he does it by flooding the tunnels with ''eight million liters'' of refined promethium and then blowing it all up, producing an explosion so powerful that it buffets the Valhallans' troopship....which is ''in orbit.''

* Just the premise of ''The Greater Good''. Cain's heroic reputation has reached the point where ''xenos'' want to ask for his help!

* Then there is the climax of The Last Ditch. [[spoiler:Cain and Jurgen are cut off from the line of retreat, deep underground, surrounded by 'nids, and the whole area is about to become a very active volcano. So they mount up on motorcycles, and make like an action movie through tyranid made and infested tunnels.]]

* In ''Cain's Last Stand'', Cain ends the entire Chaos invasion by [[spoiler:calling Warmaster Varan out to a [[ISurrenderSuckers surrendering ceremony]]... which puts Varan into range of Jurgen's blank ability, nullifying Varan's power to control his victims' minds. Cain then proceeds to take Varan on in a one-on-one duel to the death (that Cain naturally wins) which, due to Cain's skill at manipulating Varan's fragile ego, ended up being filmed and transmitted ''live'' to the entire planet. [[strike:Varan's army falls apart ''instantly'', and the entire remaining Perlian PDF finishes them off]] [[NoOntologicalInertia Unfortunately Varan's army just charges in a berserk fury]] and [[ItGotWorse Cain's forces are only saved by the last minute arrival of the Necrons.]].]]

* In ''The Traitor's Hand'', a hovercar filled with psychotic, drugged-up Slaaneshi cultists crashes into the top-floor meeting between Commissar Ciaphas Cain and various ultra-high-level officers and governors. Cain wipes the floor with ''all'' of the cultists, saving the officers almost single-handedly, and then [[spoiler:locates and defuses the bomb hidden in the hovercar]]. He follows this up with an act absolutely befitting his reputation as all bad when he casually walks over to the drink table for a spot of tea.

** I'm fairly cetain you got it reverse since [[spoiler:He retired at some point before Cain's Last Stand, and that footnote was in response to his first MIA/presumed KIA.]]

---->"Frak this, my soul's mine, and you can't have it."

[[AC:CiaphasCain, [[TheCape HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!]]]]

** The only other person to have that honor is the Emperor!
*** Is that bit about the GEOM true, or hyperbole to make Ciaphas even more sound awesome? Just curious.

**** Not technically. The God-Emperor was never actually buried, considering he's not actually dead. He got permanent And I Must Scream on the Golden Throne. Or he's everywhere at once due to his MASSIVE Warp presence.

**** Not technically. The God-Emperor was never actually buried, considering he's not technically dead. He got permanent And I Must Scream on the Golden Throne. Or he's everywhere at once due to his MASSIVE Warp presence.

So, no. The Emperor never actually died. Cain did.

-->"Commissar Donal sends his regards."

** ...until they met the Slaaneshi demon the cultists were summoning, which ripped them apart. Cain then kicked her butt so thoroughly that one of the Tallarn soldiers who witness the battle returns home to found a fringe sect of the Imperial Cult that ''venerates Cain as a prophet of the Emperor''. To quote The Book of Cain, Chapter IV, Verse XXI:

** ...until they met the Slaaneshi demon the cultists were summoning, which ripped them apart. Cain then kicked her so thoroughly that one of the Tallarn soldiers who witness the battle returns home to found a fringe sect of the Imperial Cult that ''venerates Cain as a prophet of the Emperor''. To quote The Book of Cain, Chapter IV, Verse XXI:

** Cain is consistently described in his novels as one of the best (if not ''THE'' best) swordsmen in the whole Galaxy. Which speaks volumes, given that it's 40K, and Cain is basically [[BadassNormal just a normal man]], if large and powerful.

* His true CMOA [[spoiler: is posthumous. Thanks to standing orders to ignore any directive regarding Cain being MIA or KIA, due to the number of times this has occurred and the amount of time it takes the bureaucracy to sort out, Cain is the only human in the galaxy still listed on the Active Roster despite being buried with full military honours.]]

* Jurgen gets one in Emperors Finest... Cain needs Jurgen to shoot out a giant promethium fuel tank a bunch of Orks are using while staying hidden in a space hulk... Jurgen takes three shots before he gets it, Cain is dissapointed that there is no visible damage to the tank... The reason why? Jurgen was aiming AND HIT the release Valve of the tank... at a distance where Cain didn't think it would be odd for Jurgen to take three shots to hit the main tank of fuel.

* The Imperial fleet managed to get one later in the same book. Specifically, a lone cruiser, the flagship ''Indestructible'' (commanded by Captain Igor Yates) as well as the thousand-strong merchant fleet it was defending, facing down a ''Chaos Battleship'', and ''winning'', even though none of them had any firepower that could hoped to penetrate the battleship's defenses without being obliterated in return. The cruiser, despite being out-gunned, out-ranged and out-classed, defiantly faces down the battleship and exchanges fire with it using its few long-range weapons. The cruiser is apparently crippled by the return volley, and reverses its engines, apparently retreating. The Chaos Battleship, thinking his enemy too badly hurt to fight back, as well as [[spoiler:sensing that a Slaaneshi Daemonette had been summoned at the planet, and]] wishing to end things quickly, moves into short-range to finish the crippled cruiser off. As it looms over the damaged cruiser, the cruiser, the ''Invincible'' quits playing dead and fires a barrage of torpedoes, and with one volley, ''cripples'' the battleship, blowing off most of its primary armament. The ponderous battleship attempts to maneuver for broadside, but fails to notice that in doing so it has lumbered into the center of the merchant fleet, and even if none individually had the strength to hurt it, [[DeathOfAThousandCuts a thousand tends to add up.]] When the ''Indestructible'' took out its engines, the battleship's fate had been sealed.

* Jurgen gets on in Emperors Finest... Cain needs Jurgen to shoot out a giant promethium fuel tank a bunch of ORks are using while staying hidden in a space hulk... Jurgen takes three shots before he gets it, Cain is dissapointed that there is no visible damage to the tank... The reason why? Jurgen was aiming AND HIT the release Valve of the tank... at a distance where Cain didn't think it would be odd for Jurgen to take three shots to hit the main tank of fuel.

* CiaphasCain seems to get at least one of these per book, despite being... well, [[FakeUltimateHero himself]]. The fact that [[DirtyCoward he's bluffing]] most of the time generally only serves to polish the crown, so to speak.
** In the first novel, ''For The Emperor'', he manages to stop a riot involving Guardsmen (and women) from two different factions of an amalgamated regiment by declaring his outrage over the mess they've made and ordering a nearby trooper to go get mops
*** He gets a minor one in the same novel; after fighting a [[DangerousDeserter renegade guardsman]] in single combat, Amberly shows up with her informal retinue. The guardsman immediately points his hellgun at Cain, threatening to kill him if he makes a move. Cain's response? [[spoiler:"Jurgen, kill him."]]
** In ''The Caves of Ice'', the local [[ObstructiveBureaucrat Adeptus Mechanicus and Administratum senior officials]] are horrified to learn that their facility is coming under martial law and attempt to bully Colonel Kasteen, the regiment's commander, into repealing the directive. When one of them makes the mistake of saying that she would "prefer the alternative," Cain dramatically drops his laspistol on the table and reveals in no uncertain terms that said alternative is execution for obstruction of the defense of the Imperium. This ends the debate fairly quickly.
*** Major Broklaw gets one a little bit later on, during another meeting where Ciaphas isn't present.

*** That's not even counting how Cain ends up destroying the [[spoiler:Necron army hidden underneath the refinery]]. he does it by flooding the tunnels with ''eight million liters'' of refined promethium and then blowing it all up, producing an explosion so powerful that it buffets the Valhallans' troopship....which is ''in orbit.''
*** The Ork gargant that's been stomping around through the whole novel also gets a moment when it fights off more than two dozen [[spoiler:Necron monoliths]] ''singlehandedly.'' Keep in mind, the gargant is a gigantic, cobbled-together, barely functional walker, taking on a horde of [[spoiler:millions-of-years old war machines built by the single most technologically advanced species to have ever existed]], and it ''wins.''
** In ''The Traitor's Hand'', a hovercar filled with psychotic, drugged-up Slaaneshi cultists crashes into the top-floor meeting between Commissar Ciaphas Cain and various ultra-high-level officers and governors. Cain wipes the floor with ''all'' of the cultists, saving the officers almost single-handedly, and then [[spoiler:locates and defuses the bomb hidden in the hovercar]]. He follows this up with an act absolutely befitting his reputation as all bad when he casually walks over to the drink table for a spot of tea.
** The Imperial fleet managed to get one later in the same book. Specifically, a lone cruiser, the flagship ''Indestructible'' (commanded by Captain Igor Yates) as well as the thousand-strong merchant fleet it was defending, facing down a ''Chaos Battleship'', and ''winning'', even though none of them had any firepower that could hoped to penetrate the battleship's defenses without being obliterated in return. The cruiser, despite being out-gunned, out-ranged and out-classed, defiantly faces down the battleship and exchanges fire with it using its few long-range weapons. The cruiser is apparently crippled by the return volley, and reverses its engines, apparently retreating. The Chaos Battleship, thinking his enemy too badly hurt to fight back, as well as [[spoiler:sensing that a Slaaneshi Daemonette had been summoned at the planet, and]] wishing to end things quickly, moves into short-range to finish the crippled cruiser off. As it looms over the damaged cruiser, the cruiser, the ''Invincible'' quits playing dead and fires a barrage of torpedoes, and with one volley, ''cripples'' the battleship, blowing off most of its primary armament. The ponderous battleship attempts to maneuver for broadside, but fails to notice that in doing so it has lumbered into the center of the merchant fleet, and even if none individually had the strength to hurt it, [[DeathOfAThousandCuts a thousand tends to add up.]] When the ''Indestructible'' took out its engines, the battleship's fate had been sealed.
** Although a single chaos marine may not seem like much considering some of the things Cain has fought, the scene from ''The Traitor's Hand'' where he went ''mano a mano'' with a Khorne Berzerker was great. Cain not only survived long enough for Jurgen to blow a hole in its chest with his melta gun, but completely dominated the fight, deflecting the Berzerker's attacks with contemptuous ease and taunting it while he did so, making it simply one of the ''coolest'' victories he's ever had. To top it off, he called for a cup of tea even before the corpse was cold. To get an idea of how tough Khorne Berzerkers are in the Ciaphas Cain novels, later in the book ''five'' of them slaughter their way through literally ''hundreds'' of Slaaneshi cultists.
*** ...until they met the Slaaneshi demon the cultists were summoning, which ripped them apart. Cain then kicked her so thoroughly that one of the Tallarn soldiers who witness the battle returns home to found a fringe sect of the Imperial Cult that ''venerates Cain as a prophet of the Emperor''. To quote The Book of Cain, Chapter IV, Verse XXI:

*** Cain is consistently described in his novels as one of the best (if not ''THE'' best) swordsmen in the whole Galaxy. Which speaks volumes, given that it's 40K, and Cain is basically [[BadassNormal just a normal man]], if large and powerful.
** In ''Death or Glory'', Cain and his band of refugees are trapped in a valley with a massive hydroelectric dam behind them and an approaching Ork warband ahead of them. Cain's solution to this problem is to blow the dam behind them as they fall back and drown the Orks. This may not sound like much of a feat, but consider that the dam had to be blown open with multiple shots from Basilisk artillery and that the warband was a fairly sizeable chunk of the invader's forces (casualties among the orks from this action were estimated at over 7000, while Cain's force was only around 300, including civilians).
*** Arguably, the entire plot of the novel, in which Cain goes from a survivor of an orbital battle stranded behind Ork lines to the leader of a large force of Imperial irregulars that manages to break the deadlock on the ground by striking the enemy from behind, could count as a single massive Crowning Moment of Awesome. It's no exaggeration to say that Cain's actions literally saved the entire planet in that book, especially given that his adventure culminated in him [[spoiler:killing the gigantic ork warboss Korbul in single combat, breaking the back of the waaagh in a single blow.]]
** The ending to ''Duty Calls'' is a piece of brilliance: [[spoiler:After persuading a rogue inquisitor to admit him into his lair, he manages to survive contact with and apparently "purify" a Chaos ArtifactOfDoom that kills all who touch it. When Inquisitor Vail turns up, the rogue inquisitor discovers the ruse, pulls a gun on Cain and Vail, and flees with the artifact--only to be killed by it while making his escape, as the supposed "purification" was actually due to Jurgen's ability to null psychic power within a small radius.]]
*** Making this even ''more'' awesome is that, prior to this, Cain spends the entire meeting bluffing his way through on secondhand knowledge and bits and pieces of information he's picked up, knowing full well that the slightest slip-up in talking to these guys about things he doesn't know about will get him killed. Later on, when he's discovered, Cain uses a brilliant combination of his people-reading skills, his own massively fabricated reputation, and his opponents' paranoia to maneuver them into place to bring them both down.
*** "Flicker", of Amberley's retinue, gets a ''retroactive'' Crowning Moment in the same book. His backstory involves bringing down an ''entire'' criminal empire, single-handedly, [[CowboyCop against orders]], with just ''one'' murder-and-frame.
** Cain (unwillingly) going toe to toe with a ''Tyranid hive tyrant'', armed with only his chainsword, and defending himself long enough to come out alive. While suffering from a minor but realistic concussion.

[[redirect:CrowningMoment/{{Warhammer40000}}]]