Lord General Zyvan

Lord General Zyvan is the Guard commander who keeps hiring Ciaphas Cain and then pretending the results were the plan. He has the manner of a man who has seen enough campaigns to know that a competent commissar with a Blank is a strategic asset, even if the commissar insists he is a coward.

Cain's memoirs put Zyvan in the doorway of several sector-scale messes, issuing orders that happen to leave room for Cain to stumble into the actual solution. Zyvan is not fooled. He is busy. The distinction matters to him more than it does to the troops.

He is not a Valhallan mascot or a Cadian poster. He is the professional who has to win the war after the heroes have finished being quoted. Cain survives. Zyvan uses that. The Guard calls it patronage. Zyvan calls it staffing.