White Dwarf Stories covers that little corner of the Black Library tucked away between the covers of Games Workshop’s flagship periodical. Many established writers have gotten their start there, with short stories paving the way for future work. Each installment, we’ll look at a different story and who knows, you just might find it in a future anthology!

Not for the first time, I’m reminded of just how much fun it must be to be a part of Games Workshop’s content and editorial teams. While the release of the game’s Eleventh Edition slowly came into focus for those of us on the outside, we can in hindsight see the design behind releasing a five-part serial to kick off the new year, ending in May the month before we’re back on Armageddon.

And so we’re treated to the stories of Shock Trooper Elias Bain, a Cadian of the 96th freshly-inducted into the regiment’s elite squad, the Callous Jacks. And to tell it, the Black Library brought in a new face, Neil Andrew Miller.

The Black Library’s Unlikeliest Author

There’s little chance you’ve heard of Miller before now, as it’s the nom-de-plume he’s using for his Warhammer writing. On the other hand, perhaps you’ve heard of comedy writer Nick Spalding. No points for guessing that they’re the same person (not that he makes any secret of it), but Nick has had about as unlikely a path to getting here as you’ll find.

For ages, the term “self-published” was just a nicer way of referring to someone’s vanity project. Bang out a bunch of words, pay a book manufactory to bind ‘em up with your name on the cover, and voila- you’re an author, Harry!

Before the digital age, self-publishing success stories were out there, but they were rare. A trained printer, Walt Whitman helped set some of the type for his self-published book of poetry, Leaves of Grass, in 1855. Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit was self-published, as was The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer some three decades later in 1936. For a more contemporary example, consider teenager Christopher Paolini, whose parents helped him self-publish his debut fantasy novel, Eragon, in 2001.

But then came the digital age, and as with so many other industries, everything we knew was turned on its head.

In November of 2007, Amazon launched its first Kindle e-reader, allowing writers access to a platform for distribution that bypassed the traditional book publishing model- cutting out the middlemen, as it were. This was the kind of potential exposure that the Whitmans, Potters, Rombauers, and Paolinis could never have dreamed of in their day, lugging around their boxes of a few hundred initial copies and wearing out their shoe leather trying to sell them.

Three years later, embroiled in a tech arms race with Apple, Amazon makes a huge change to its compensation structure for publication royalties. For books priced under ten bucks, writers would get to keep a whopping 70% where before they were only getting half of that. This sea change ushered in a boom of self-publishing, now a far more lucrative endeavor than at any time in the past.

Digital e-reader devices continued to climb in sales, and in the first half of 2010’s you began to see a number of indie authors make it big through this non-traditional (and previously disdained) approach. Amanda Hocking, writing paranormal romance stories, started self-publishing in 2010 and was a million-seller by the following year. Hugh Howey self-published Wool, initially a short story that grew into a much longer narrative that not only landed him a deal with Simon & Schuster but also would go on to become the tv series Silo on Apple TV+.

And that, of course, brings us to Nick Spalding.

Spalding self-published the romcom Love... From Both Sides in 2012, right in the heart of the boom. Within a year it had sold a quarter of a million copies, which soon brought him a mainstream book deal with Hodder and Stoughton (now an imprint of Hachette, which should have a different resonance for us fans of Warhammer and the Black Library) before he moved to Amazon’s Lake Union Publishing.

So when I say that Neil Andrew Miller is the Black Library’s unlikeliest author, it’s not because he doesn’t deserve to be here. Rather, it’s a reflection of how many things had to go right- things that before the digital era would have seemed like wishful thinking- to put him in the position he occupies.

Even then, The Chronicles of Bain was hardly a foregone conclusion. As he tells it,

About five years ago, I needed a sci-fi franchise for one of my Nick Spalding characters to be a fan of - and before you could say Ferrus Manus I leapt at the chance to use Warhammer 40k.

Researching for the story that eventually became Third Wheel, I was pulled back into the 40k hobby in no uncertain terms. The book got published, but I still continued to immerse myself in the lore, purely from an enjoyment perspective.

And then - wouldn’t you just know it - the talent agency I’m represented by also has a very respected and brilliant Warhammer author on their books1, and that was my ticket in.

I pitched a few stories, and one got picked up.

So all of these events had to line up just right to bring us to the subject of today’s piece, the five-part serial story The Chronicles of Bain.

A Tale of Years in the Making

January’s issue of White Dwarf featured the new Shard of the Nightbringer model on the cover, with the pages within filled with the Wardens of Ultramar, lore for the new Warhammer Quest: Darkwater… and Miller’s Black Library debut.

Part 1: Skullchewa

Miller kicks things off in media res in the first installment of the Chronicles, with Elias Bain fighting for his life against a raging Ork Nob before filling everything in with flashback. That Nob, Skullchewa, is target numero uno for the Callous Jacks- with Bain its newest recruit.

I was particularly impressed with Miller’s economy of space, packing a lot into the small number of pages he’s been allotted to make this first impression. Very quickly we get a good read on Bain’s character, with his mix of calculated cunning (“Bain resolves to get on Tegg’s good side as soon as possible. The hard-faced corporal clearly has sway with them all. That’s important. That’s valuable.”) and genuine piety (“Everyone else chuckles at this display, even Artoli. Bain does not. Tegg’s attitude edges close to blasphemy.”)

Not only that, but he does a great job setting up the first piece’s villain by sprinkling in a delightful touch of horror to go with it all:

The only misstep for me comes at the very end as Bain is wounded in battle. We learned earlier that Bain’s lived a charmed life, never injured during his service- a fact that he attributes to his faith in the Emperor, and the protection it grants him in return.

Once wounded, though, Bain exhibits what I refer to as the ‘brittle faith syndrome’ I see too often in Sororitas stories. That’s when a character lives their faith at a level ten, but plummet to zero once it’s tested or set back. An all-or-nothing binary when what I’d really expect to see is maybe a recalibrating five, less “the Emperor has forsaken me” and more, “is the Emperor sending me a message through this setback?”

Of course, there’s plenty of story ahead for nuance and recalibration, so no points deducted from the ringside scorecard.

Part 2: The Hole

Then in February the second installment offers an explanation for why the series is called the Chronicles, since we now find a partially-augmetic Bain two years later on a demolition detail for the Callous Jacks. The Guard has been giving ground on Ancar Majoris, and the Jacks have been tasked with destroying ammo stockpiles left behind to prevent them from falling into Orkish hands.

Something goes terribly wrong, however, leaving Bain presumed dead and trapped in a mineshaft. The story becomes the Warhammer 40K version of Cast Away, to delightful affect. The pacing changeup from the first installment is a canny choice, giving this story a very different feel- as well as an opportunity to further explore Bain’s increasingly-desperate faith.

This one’s terrific work from Miller. I will note that there tend to be two kinds of humans-versus-ork stories: ones where there’s a language barrier between them, and one where there isn’t. Rob Young’s Leontus: Lord Solar handled this splendidly, giving the titular character a compelling reason for speaking Orkish and using it to great effect. David Annandale’s Chains of Golgotha has a dramatic moment where Ghazhgkull speaks in High Gothic to Commissar Yarrick.

Miller takes the “no barrier” approach here, with Orks appearing to all be speaking Gothic.

I don’t love it, but I accept there’s plenty of precedent and it doesn’t take away from Miller’s story here. Just my cross to bear nit to pick.

Part 3: Glory Makes Us Fools

Another installment, another time jump. We’re now a few years further down the road with Bain, and now he’s a freshly-minted Sergeant for the Jacks. This “time capsule” approach is clever; by allowing each story to inhabit its own space rather than being a direct continuation, you’re not demanding a lot of the reader, as someone reading these as they’re released won’t need to remember much from installment to installment. “Bain fought an Ork” is about all you need to recall from the opening round, then “Bain was in a hole” for the next.

For this one it’s a situation we’ve seen Guardsmen in before, caught between an implacable foe in front of them and a miserable bastard of a commissar behind them. Beyond the action, this installment moves the character forward in two ways.

First, Miller has continued to anchor faith as something central to the character- and does an uncommonly good job of it. From the naive, brittle faith of the first to the desperate faith of the second, by the time we see Bain on Hycar’s Doubt it’s a faith much worn down by the trials of the soldiering life. He utters profane curses (“Throne damn it!”) as a matter of course, and much of the early certainty of his belief has eroded away.

This isn’t to say that Bain is descending into moral vacancy, and here’s where Miller shows a deft hand with the quill. That would be the simpler story, the more easily-told-tale. Instead, the source of Bain’s conscience simply relocates in his mind. He’s not listening to the Emperor as much anymore here, but he is listening to the voices of his fallen comrades.

Across three stories Bain has clearly developed as a character in a way that is consistent and understandable. For a story tucked away inside of a magazine Miller sure has me dying to see where we go from here. Job done.

Part 4: A Life That Matters

It’s around this one that I started to really appreciate Miller’s mission variety, getting the sense that the guy saw a great opportunity in a five-part serial to show the kind of range he’s capable of. The first is a close-quarters fighting story, the second a survival tale, the third an subterranean tunnel exploration (a la Sandy Mitchell’s Caves of Ice or The Relentless Dead, by Steve Lyons)… and now, a high-speed getaway caper in a dilapidated Chimera.

As an action story it’s great, a galloping, kinetic tale that Miller maintains at a frenetic pace. The Orks are getting closer every moment, and safety still ever so far away. It’s a cracking read, but what’s really pulling me into these is his development of the main character.

At this point- and again, we’ve flashed a handful of years forward- Bain’s loss of faith is now complete. He’s not anti-Emperor by any means, but he simply doesn’t give much of a shit any more, a far cry from the Emperor-botherer we saw at the outset. It’s an important distinction that keeps him on the right side of heresy, but he’s clearly jaded. And weary. Assigned to rescue a planetary official, his exhaustion isn’t just physical, it’s soul-deep.

All of this… the full measure of the arc of Bain’s descent, comes to a sharp underline in the story’s closing moments.

Part 5: Da Nasty Git

And here we are, the final installment of Miller’s nearly half-year run with The Chronicles of Bain. I have no idea how he’s going to cap it off, but the direction it’s been taking suggests it’s probably either some last-moment act of noble self-sacrifice- or heresy.

What we get instead is quite a surprise. An Ork story? We’re thrust instantly into the mind of Grat Zuglug, Ork Kommando on an assassination run. Grat’s not the biggest of the krew, but he’s the most kunnin’ and if we can just get his knife on the throat of their target he’ll be the Nob’s right-hand boy.

Their target? “Da Nasty Git,” and you quickly realize that this is the latest nickname given to Sergeant Elias Bain of the Callous Jacks- and the first one that has been given to him by the enemy. Using the plot device of the first story, Skullchewa, but in reverse for the closing story of the series is a chef’s kiss realization. Instead of the Jacks hunting the Orks, we’ve come full circle with the Orks hunting the Jacks.

Through this we also come to realize where they are. Each story in the Chronicles has been set on a different world, reflecting the continuing deployments of an Imperial Guard regiment.

It’s quite the reveal, and lands perfectly given that this final story was published in May’s White Dwarf.

As the Orks make their play, the point of view eventually reverts back to Bain and the Jacks as they are mysteriously summoned back to outpost command. Upon arrival, the first sign that something’s afoot is the presence of Astartes guarding the building. Bain is escorted into the strategium, a room filled with cogitators and holo-projectors, commissars and generals. In other words, a proper Imperial war room.

And there Bain comes face to face with someone that strikes more fear into him than any Ork ever has: Commissar Sebastian Yarrick. Yarrick, preparing to depart the planet, is wanting to make sure the Guard is in capable hands during his absence and that includes promoting Bain to an officer.

I’ll leave the rest unspoiled, only to note that Miller avoids the usual pitfalls in writing in major characters by casting them in service to the writer’s own protagonist. Yarrick is definitely Yarrick here, a man who’s seen too much and done too much to have much time to suffer dissent.

Miller absolutely sticks the landing here, and he’s done it because he’s ‘done the work’ in all of the preceding chapters. Doing the work is my term for a writer doing the necessary “building-up” early in a story to ensure that later emotional beats and narrative payoffs land effectively, a sort of “Chekov’s gun” in reverse. Everything that happens in the climax of Da Nasty Git is a result of everything Miller’s taken pains to lay out for the reader already, and as a result it closes out the arc terrifically.

Final Thoughts

A week ago if you told me I was going to spend 3000 words writing a deep dive about a short story that appeared in White Dwarf, I’d have thought you mad. Who’d have that much to say? Hell, who’d want to read that much? I can’t answer the latter, but I can certainly note that The Chronicles of Bain was a very pleasant surprise, and between it and Jake Ozga’s Tattered Sails, the story from my debut of White Dwarf Stories, I’ve completely revised my opinion of White Dwarf’s creative content.

For whatever reason, I’ve carried the seeming misconception that White Dwarf was a lesser tributary of the Black Library pipeline. It’s not entirely ungrounded; stories that ran in the digital Theme Weeks and Advent Calendars appear to have had a much higher rate of ending up in paper. Indeed, the recent No Peace Among Stars anthology was entirely populated with digital-first content (my review here2). White Dwarf stuff does make its way in here and there, such as Jon Flindall’s Tome Keepers: Legacy of Defiance in the Blood of the Imperium anthology, or the recent Grombrindal books).

But even if it was a lesser tributary, it’s clear that the content there is not lesser. Sure, it might well be that Ozga’s story was a ‘leftover’ from his period of work in Age of Sigmar rather than something written more recently, but a good story is a good story all the same. As consumers we aren’t privy to the demand and decisions that so occupy the Black Library’s editorial team, so for all I know they’re sitting on a mountain of unpublished gold.

As for Miller, I’m delighted to note that this won’t be the last we’ve seen of him (nor, hopefully, of Elias Bain). As he noted on his Substack:

If you’ve already read The Chronicles of Bain, I’d be keen to hear your thoughts! If not and you’ve got ‘em handy, go grab White Dwarf issues 520 through 524 and treat yourself.