Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

– The Valhallan ice weasel, which has spread to many other worlds with a similar climate over the millennia, does indeed emit a peculiar wailing sound when looking for a mate.

– 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.

– Not entirely true, according to some of the less deranged among my colleagues from the Ordo Malleus, but his earlier encounters with the sorceress-turned-daemon might indeed have left him unusually sensitive to such emanations.

– Which would of course have access to most, if not all, the channels open to Cain by virtue of his Commissarial status – a fact which probably went some way to explaining how Jurgen was able to anticipate events quite so presciently on occasion, even those for which a trooper of his rank would have no security clearance.

– Presumably the Lord of Pleasure itself.

– Which may indicate that he was still close enough to Jurgen to derive a measure of protection from his abilities: such images are often imbued with sufficient warpcraft to ensnare the unwary, who stare at them enthralled until cut down by heretic guards or, worse still, their souls are irrevocably stained by the taint of corruption.

– Perhaps, given what they’d been engaged in prior to his arrival, it’s just as well he doesn’t go into any further details at this point.

– Another indication that Cain was within Jurgen’s warp-dampening aura at the time, as one characteristic of this kind of daemon is the ability to appear preternaturally attractive to its victims.

– Not quite the nine hundred years previously mentioned by Proktor, but close enough.

– Which is hardly surprising, given that the psychic shock of meeting him for the first time knocked her unconscious, a circumstance which first revealed his rare and valuable gift.

– Which is why I always approached such situations as though I didn’t have it – the one time I trust to it being guaranteed to be the occasion on which it doesn’t work.

– Not that surprising, given that they’d been Inquisition agents for years by this point, although it’s true most members of their respective callings would have been completely out of their depths in a combat situation.