In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.
So says the opening blurb that accompanies every piece of media related to Warhammer 40,000, encapsulating the core of what makes this media giant distinct. Across tabletop games, video games, and tie-in novelizations the universe seeks to portray a universal truth of the setting—there is little relief to be found in this far off age. Only conflict. However, whether the darkness is entirely grim can vary from author to author, creating a tonal conflict that may make readers uncertain whether the universe should be taken with grave seriousness or be perceived as tongue in cheek. This essay is doing a deep dive into two of the setting’s most notable heroes and the disparity between their depictions in the context of this grim future - Ibram Gaunt from the Gaunt’s Ghosts series by Dan Abnett and Ciaphas Cain from the Ciaphas Cain novels by Sandy Mitchell. I’ll look at how these contrasting approaches have created a fuller universe, as well as how they have vaulted the faction of the Imperium of Man directly into the spotlight of the series as a whole.
The core premise of Warhammer 40,000 is that the universe of the 41st Millennium is in a constant state of warfare enacted by various factions. We have the Eldar, essentially elves as space aliens, the brutish Orks, the eternally ravenous Tyranids, the cybernetic liches known as the Necrons, the harmonious Tau, and of course humankind as represented by the Imperium of Man.[1] Each of these peoples harbors strong hostility for all other groups, believing the rest of space is full of nothing but their enemies. While the tabletop game encapsulates all of these various groups, it is no exaggeration to say that the Imperium of Man is front and center in the universe’s stories. With the most figurines, the most material, and the most sympathetic point of view, both within the context of the universe and in our own reality as a fictional group they are considered one of the strongest factions. They are championed most prominently by the Space Marines—genetically engineered supersoldiers who stand head and shoulders above the common man, designed for the sole purpose of protecting the common folk of the Imperium of Man.
Much more than just a tabletop game, Warhammer 40,000 also comprises an entire fictional universe, the Black Library. Within that, two of the most iconic series of the canon are Gaunt’s Ghosts and the adventures of Ciaphais Cain. Coincidentally, both series revolve around a commissar who takes charge of a ragtag group of misfits in order to bring acclaim and honor to the Imperium. Their resulting successes vary, as do the trajectories of their lives and, inevitably, their deaths or lack thereof. These series are considered two of the most prominent in the entire bibliography of the Black Library, not only due to the number of volumes in each series but also due to the quality and strength of their writing.
Ibram Gaunt’s claim to fame is in the distinction of taking a number of soldiers who barely amounted to a single regiment and crafting them into the finest of soldiers for the Imperium. In movie terms, it is akin to the drill sergeant who must work magic by taking the chaff and spinning it into gold. Gaunt brings his Ghosts from the Death World of Tanith to the chaos-infested hive world of Vergath, serving at the behest of the human Emperor as all good and noble commissars should do. His work, and the work of his Ghosts, serves as a small peek into what will come to be called the Sabbat World Crusades—the journey to claim foreign planets for the sake of the Imperium’s venerated leader.
The book series spans the full period of Gaunt’s career, guiding us from the commissar's desperate struggle with a position conferred onto him by his dying predecessor, into the struggle to not only train a disparate group of soldiers but have them be worthy to live and die for their cause. The man himself is only one of a group that includes characters such as the former ganger Tona Criid, the tragically maligned Sniper Rhen Merrt, and the underage regimental musician Brin Milo. This is a series where the Imperial Guardsmen, otherwise cannon fodder and numbers on a dataslate in the vast conflicts between Inquisitors and Xenos, Space Marines and Chaos, are given faces. Names. Identities. Soldiers who will, as the conflicts rage on, be felled one by one.
By humanizing the Imperial Guardsmen as we explore both their lives and their deaths, we gain greater sympathy with them than with the more alien xenos. The Imperial Guardsmen are also notably forced to face off time and time again with what the world of Warhammer 40,000 deems the forces of Chaos: those soldiers and Space Marines, formerly the rank and file of the Imperium, now tainted by the allure of beings beyond the void. In these clashes with inhumanity Dan Abnett, the author of the Gaunt Series, is able to better emphasize the humanity of his heroes. Flawed, desperate heroes who have been whipped into a fighting force by a single man, to the point that when their commander’s suicide mission of atonement is announced they are almost fighting amongst themselves for the chance to die honorably—not for their Emperor, and not for any greater cause, but for a man they know has put himself in danger for them time and time again. In this respect, Gaunt has become something akin to a living saint—a manifestation of a divine will that has been proven to exist but only for the special. The chosen.
Ciaphas Cain, on the other hand, is proclaimed by both his peers and the fans of the Warhammer franchise as not only a hero but THE Hero of the Imperium—greater even than the Emperor himself, though this moniker is somewhat tongue in cheek. He is a man who has escaped certain death at least once per book, both due to his own resourcefulness and a relentless string of good fortune. The man is both self-deprecating and sarcastic, at least on the inside; to the universe at large he is one of the most competent commanders in the universe. But he does not regard himself as a hero: he is quick to rationalize many actions as entirely self-serving, without taking into consideration that heroes are not the type who will proclaim themselves as heroes.
From the very first pages of the Ciaphas Cain series, one gets the distinct impression that Ciaphas Cain would truly rather be anywhere else than on the battlefield. He is a man who would be happiest pushing paperwork around or sending out orders, who is instead tasked with that greatest and most horrible of duties—fieldwork. What he has in common with Ibram Gaunt is that though he serves the Imperium, he does not buy fully into its glorious mission. He does not blindly follow orders for the sake of following orders though unlike Gaunt—whose actions are eternally driven by his own sense of duty, heroism, and a desire to do right by the Imperium and those who serve beneath him—his actions are almost entirely for the sake of self-preservation.
Linguistically, what makes these two novels quite distinct from each other is that the Gaunt series is told through a shifting third person point of view emphasizing the individual voices of each member of the troop. It creates camaraderie among the chorus; it is military fiction which emphasizes the weight of every body, every voice, felled in combat. The weight of every life lived and, eventually, taken. Meanwhile, Ciaphas Cain’s own books are first-person memoirs in which he is free to tell the truth in his thoughts, though annotated, stylized, and commented on both by a trusted aide and then later by historians of the Imperium in order to dissect the thoughts of this most heroic, mysterious, and deeply memed man.
Both of these styles contrast greatly with the almost mythological framing of the Imperium and the religion surrounding its esteemed God-Emperor, the Emperor of Man. Devotion to the Emperor of Man is a religion in and of itself, with warriors rushing into battle boldly declaring that “The Emperor Protects”. But the more we see of the worlds through the eyes of our commissars, the less true this maxim holds. The Emperor of Mankind is as distant a deity to his soldiers as any divine being in the records of our own humanity, with the distinction that his Living Saint Celestine, a manifestation of holy faith in the emperor, does exist and takes to the battlefields of her choosing. Those deemed important enough to manifest upon as an act of divine intervention get rescued, while everyone else is forced to get by with nothing but prayer seals, pistols, and hope that the Emperor is with them.
Gaunt and Cain both have literary antecedents. As a franchise that was created in Britain, it is unsurprising that its military leaders are based on prominent figures from British literary tradition. After all, pop cultural references run rampant throughout the narrative tradition of Warhammer 40,000, whether it be from the Dune-esque God Emperor of Man or the Xenomorph-esque designs of the Tyrannids. But it is this easy association with familiar, beloved faces in military fiction that assists in endearing the members of the Imperial Army to the reader.
Gaunt is based on Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe, a sergeant of humble beginnings pulled up by his bootstraps to increasingly harrowing battlefields, with Cornwell’s narrative style and writing style felt throughout the series. Like Gaunt, Sharpe is a rank and file soldier elevated to officerhood. But the difference between Sharpe and Gaunt is that the Napoleonic wars were never so filled with desperation and death as the year 40,000, and no soldier was able to return to the battlefield so often as Gaunt’s Ghosts are. Being set in the far future allows for the books to half-resurrect their soldiers, prolonging the suffering of their soldiers through the use of advanced medical techniques and mechanical augmentation. One might almost suspect it would have been kinder to allow them to simply die, instead of being returned to the battlefield. But as is common here and throughout the Imperium, one’s life does not belong to oneself but to the Emperor.
Ciaphas Cain, on the other hand, is based on George MacDonald Fraser’s Harry Flashman, with a touch of Rowan Atkinson’s Blackadder. As a character Flashman was known for being a rake, cad and general coward who, through good fortune and coincidence, rises up the ranks to become a decorated general. His, and by extension Cain’s, series are characterized by good fortune such as fortuitous circumstances with persons holding the correct equipment or finding a hidden passageway from which one emerges unscathed. What distinguishes between them the most is that Flashman is also a known, or at least exaggerated, womanizer. Cain, on the other hand, may be many things but a reckless lover of woman he is not. There seems less time for flagrant seduction in the grim darkness of the far future, but it also serves to make Cain more heroic than he considers himself.
While the first thing that stands out about Ciaphas Cain is his absolute cowardice in the face of ultimate danger, the second thing that stands out about Cain is that he is no mere coward. He has a savviness about his role in the grand schemes of the Imperium, an awareness that if he did not play to the personalities of those around him, he would likely be looking at the wrong end of a gun. In Cain’s view, the role of a commissar is as one who is not respected but inevitably stabbed in the back, a person who commands only begrudging respect as fits their station but not any admiration or care for safety. The great irony here is that, though his throughline is focused on his own self-preservation first and foremost, what he inevitably learns is that in order to protect himself he must also protect others.
The underlying thread that runs through the adventures of Ciaphas Cain and Ibram Gaunt is that no matter how ridiculous the situation, how insurmountable the odds they are forced to face, they are able to overcome simply because they are singular existences. Heroes. This immunity does not extend to the rank and file, to the soldiers around them who live and die for want of a nail. No army can exist without soldiers, the Imperium of Mankind included, but there can be no soldiers if they do not believe in the cause.
For “mere” humanity to be able to overcome the vast and desperate odds that have been placed in their way, in a universe riddled with Gods of Chaos and xenos races with superior technological capability, then surely they must have a far greater purpose than these other species?
To an Empire like that of the Imperium, the existence of single leaders and figures of admiration like Cain and Gaunt both are essential. Gaunt’s determination in the face of impossible odds and ability to stir the fighting spirit of even the most jaded of soldiers; Cain’s survival ability, as well as his supposed leadership skills—these lend credibility to the idea of the resilience of its forces. The Imperium is superior because its people are superior, a creed that in our own reality we have seen reflected in empires beginning from the ancient Babylonian and Greek to the more recent Austro-Hungarian or Imperial Japanese. And in the same vein, great Empires have also elevated the ranks of their most illustrious military officers in order to make this same statement.
We are superior to you. We will not bow to your will.
There is a certain irony in the contrast between the situations of Cain and Gaunt that makes the two series fascinating to read side by side. Both decorated men who have, by hook or by crook, gone on to achievements of great acclaim. But these are victories not won without sacrifice, and they are not won by one man alone. They are won through the efforts of those around them. One wishes to protect others, but in doing so must sacrifice. The other wishes to protect himself, but in doing so inadvertently protects others. Flawed, yes, but not so flawed that the reader cannot find themselves drawn into the spell cast by the narrative.[2]
But what magic is this that means we, living outside of their universe, see the failures and great flaws of these men as emblematic of their true heroism? In their respective texts, both Gaunt and Cain are considered atypical officers because they are intelligent, resourceful, determined, and charismatic. So what does this say about the “typical” military officer of the Imperium, that those who are able to distinguish themselves are those who eschew the expectations of the post? Possibly the same thing that might be said of military officials in our own reality. Those who keep their head down, follow the letter of the law, and parrot the teachings of those who have come before them without fail will amount to little. These novels offer commentary and satire in equal measure on that which already is, both in the Imperium and in our own reality.
What Gaunt and Cain demonstrate are two very real, and quite cynical, realities in the far future of the 41st Millennium. Both of these men are representatives of the Imperium of Man, of the elevated officers that lead their men to do difficult or even impossible tasks. More than that, they serve as beacons of the shining potential of mankind. Of the cause that they champion. Their heroism is celebrated in the pages, both in-world by friends, foes, and the watching eyes of the Imperium, and out of world by dedicated readers spreading the evangelical word of the Imperium. And even as they do so, they unwittingly peddle the propaganda of fictional forces— seeing heroes where there are merely men, flawed men, doing the dirty work others will not do. Placing them upon an impossible pedestal.
Notes
[1] These disparate races do receive their own viewpoint novels, such as Da Big Dakka for the Orks or The Infinite and the Divine for the Necrons, but these are clearly written with, for lack of a better word, an alien morality. It becomes harder for the reader to associate with them because the closest cultural parallels they have are hooligans or rogue AI.
[2] Then there is the question of where they measure up against the Imperium’s finest soldiers— the Adeptus Astartes. The Space Marines, crafted from the gene-seed, the DNA of the Emperor himself and passed down from generation to generation of supersoldiers. To these behemoths of men, on paper even the most worthy of guardsmen should be lesser than they, being made from common stock. However, the balance of power and capability in these books seems far more heavily weighted towards the humble guardsmen, the deaths of Space Marines being utilized merely to show how capable an enemy is. How much greater It is part of the uneven nature of Warhammer 40,000—the flexibility of strength and weakness. The relativity of power in order to showcase the perceived superiority of any given hero, at great odds with the strictly balanced and numerically calculated universe of its parent game.
Kyle is a writer, game designer, and full-time complainer from the Philippines. Her
nonfiction has appeared in publications like Interstellar Flight Press, Strange Horizons,
and Into the Spine. Her games include the IGDN Honorable Mention MORIAH,
Primadonna from PlusOneEXP, and Forsaken from Afterthought Committee. You can
find her on X and Blusky at @PercyPropa, or find her work at whatkylewrites.carrd.co.