One of the high points for me of this year’s Lock & Load was seeing people picking up the Limited Edition Major Prime Victoria Haley boxed sets. Each of these included a hardbound copy of the novella “At What Cost,” written by yours truly. While I have written a substantial volume of Iron Kingdoms fiction over the years, most has found a home inside WARMACHINE and HORDES books or in No Quarter magazine. “At What Cost” was the first work I’ve ever had printed as a real, honest, book-type-book of my own, with my name on the front cover and everything!

With this novella now available as a digital release on Skull Island eXpeditions it seemed a good time to discuss some “behind the scenes” aspects of developing this story. I’ll be careful not to give away spoilers! Just one of the inevitable perils of letting people buy models to play the characters we’re writing about.

The idea for this story goes back to the initial release of the Mk II books and was also tied into our first discussions about the Convergence of Cyriss.

When we were working on the larger plot elements of Mk II, one of our first goals was to take Deneghra to a new place in her standing in Cryx as well as in her partnership with Asphyxious. This accompanied an evolving relationship between Deneghra and Haley; I wanted to focus on something a little more nuanced than the pair trying to murder each other every time they met.

We decided Deneghra should manipulate her sister into neutralizing one of Asphyxious’ lich lord rivals, something that would initially seem like a Cygnaran victory. This would serve to show Haley’s deepening power while shedding a new light on Deneghra. The way this story would unfold worked well with our Mk II force book release plan, as our readers would get Cygnar’s side of the story first and would only understand why this happened when the Cryx force book was released near the end of the WARMACHINE force books series.

This was just the beginning of a longer story arc for Haley. I had been considering how things had been a little too easy for her overall, despite losing her arm to her sister and being there for Cygnar’s recent setbacks—like the loss of Northguard and the Thornwood. We hadn’t had a chance to see Haley endure a truly meaningful, personal setback.

Haley is perhaps the most naturally gifted arcanist on Caen. We’ve shown that she has a special power over the connection between magic and machine that defines mechanika. She is not an inventor, like Nemo, but a magical prodigy—someone with tremendous intuitive control over the flows of supernatural energy. But the ability that makes her remarkable even by warcaster standards is her ability to influence the flow of time.

Our setting is filled with powerful characters, several with arguably more extreme and far-reaching powers and certainly many with more unusual backgrounds. But I think it is precisely Haley’s humanity (as well as her youth) that makes it hard for some readers to accept her powers despite being willing to embrace other extraordinary characters. Perhaps it is because, unlike several others, she does all this without the help of the gods or by being an inherently supernatural being.

More than anything, there’s the sense that Haley did not earn her powers. This can happen with our characters sometimes as a consequence of how we typically need to introduce our warcasters and warlock characters: their role in the miniature game often requires readers to meet these characters in the fullness of their power rather than seeing them rise from humbler origins. This is especially the case with our younger prodigies, whom we don’t get to see stumble and fail before they come into their own.

As we entered into the Mk II storyline, I wanted to take Haley on a journey that would take away the one thing that defined her most—her power. We set this in motion starting in WARMACHINE: Wrath when Haley was poisoned while saving Artificer General Nemo. In WARMACHINE: Colossals, she was able to join the fight only to discover the depths of her helplessness. By the time she returns to Point Bourne, she faces the very real possibility that this poison might kill her. This is where “At What Cost” begins, taking Haley through a difficult ordeal to confront some compelling temptations.

When working on the concept for this story, I talked to Matt Wilson about Haley’s evolving outlook on her mechanikal hand and how this provided a direction we could use. These discussions first revealed the likelihood that, if pressured, Haley might be at risk for losing touch with her humanity. This examination of Haley’s possible struggles coincided naturally with the work we were doing to describe the Convergence of Cyriss. It occurred to me that this society might offer Haley some very persuasive if radical solutions to her affliction.

As these ideas started to come together, I found myself imagining a tense encounter between Haley and Iron Mother Directrix. There are so many layers to even a simple conversation between these characters, including how Directrix’s background and relationship with her daughter Aurora might affect how she would handle someone like Haley. It also occurred to me that Sebastian Nemo would play an equally prominent role, as a mentor as well as someone with a uniquely informed perspective on the Convergence, following on the heels of the events in Dark Convergence. Though Directrix and Nemo would not meet face to face, it would be their competing perspectives that would define the conflict within Haley’s mind as she considered her possible fate.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed both planning and writing this story, in particular the smaller and more intimate scope of events and the chance to depict Haley grappling with a problem she seemingly has no way to resolve.