Today, Skull Island eXpeditions releases The Way of Caine, the first volume in the Warcaster Chronicles. The book explores one of the original and perhaps most enigmatic warcasters in the vast WARMACHINE cast of characters. As a set of game stats, Caine is loved, loathed, feared, and revered in probably equal measure by players. However, it’s his roguish demeanor and renegade flair that make the character an engaging a favorite, whether you play him on the tabletop or not.

Miles Holmes, a fantastic writer and a great friend, authored The Way of Caine. In truth, I don’t think this story could have been written by anyone other than a true friend, someone who had the patience to work with me and unravel the complex and sordid history of Allister Caine. What started as a seemingly open-ended project quickly became entangled in a web of continuity details seeded throughout the fiction describing Caine’s past. Together, and with input and guidance from Jason Soles and Doug Seacat, we worked for weeks to connect the dots and bring to life the many layers of Caine’s persona. Miles should have cut his losses then, but his commitment to the project and his enthusiasm for the character pushed through every new obstacle that seemed to lurk around every twist and turn of this story. Weeks of outlining were followed by months of writing and rewriting, until the character emerged, multidimensional, tangible, and fully realized on the page. Miles, a player of WARMACHINE himself, brings the setting and the character to life in lush detail through his visual and dynamic writing style and pays homage to the iconic antihero that has been a cornerstone of the setting for a decade.

The story spans several different periods of Caine’s life, from his wayward youth to his first deployment as a warcaster, weaving together plot points from his past to define the most inscrutable gunslinger in the Iron Kingdoms. We find out where he came from, the inspiration for his many vices, and we glimpse the path he might have taken were it not for the guiding hand of one of Cygnar’s other mysterious figures, the spymaster Bolden Rebald. There are a multitude of surprises within, including a cameo from another controversial warcaster, a world-changing event, and several others we discovered as we traced the way of Caine.

I hope you’ll check out The Way of Caine and that you’ll enjoy discovering the man behind the Spellstorms as much as I have.