Dominic Seroff
Dominic Seroff was an Imperial Guard Commissar, a contemporary and later bitter rival of Sebastian Yarrick.
History
Seroff was educated at the same Schola Progenium as Yarrick, and both were selected for the Commissariat and apprenticed to the legendary Lord Commissar Simeon Rasp. At the time of their deployment to Mistral, Yarrick reflected that, although he did not doubt Seroff's dedication and ability, his appearance was too boyish, almost dandified, for him to be taken seriously as a Commissar.[1a]
The Second War for Armageddon
Seroff never forgave Yarrick, and did his utmost to ensure that Yarrick never advanced through the ranks of the Commissariat, and on more than one occasion used his growing influence to assign Yarrick to hazardous missions that would hopefully get him killed. To Seroff's endless vexation, Yarrick always survived.[2a]
The two men met again on Armageddon, by which time Yarrick was still an "ordinary" Commissar, while Seroff had ascended to the rank of Lord Commissar. Seroff's hatred of Yarrick was so vehement that he unconsciously sided with Overlord Herman von Strab as Waaagh! Ghazghkull overran the planet. Seroff was no fool, and therefore recognized that every one of von Strab's decisions led to greater and greater disaster for the defending Imperial forces. As the Commissariat's ranking officer on the planet, Seroff was the only one with the ostensible authority to remove von Strab from command, yet he refused to do so, ignoring the pleas from not just Yarrick, but also Princeps Kurtiz Mannheim of the Iron Skulls Titan Legion, and Canoness Setheno of the Adepta Sororitas. Mannehim noted with frustration that he had come within a hair's breadth of convincing Seroff, until Yarrick's name came up, and Seroff cut him off. Seroff himself questioned the wisdom of his decision, but quickly convinced himself that the "right" thing to do was to hold Yarrick accountable, through any means necessary, for the death and disgrace of Rasp, even if that meant siding with a megalomaniac incompetent like von Strab. Seroff was last seen witnessing, without objection, von Strab's launching of virus bomb missiles across Armageddon's surface, in the false belief that the munitions were virulent enough to eradicate the invading Orks.[2]
Yarrick emerged from the war as one of the greatest heroes not only of Armageddon, but of the entire Imperium. For his complicity with von Strab, Seroff was in total disgrace, and was reassigned to a backwater planet (along with, ironically, another one of Yarrick's nemeses, Inquisitor Ingrid Schenk). There they were essentially marooned to nurse their hatred for Yarrick and regret their falls from grace. After over a century of exile, the world was suddenly struck by a mysterious plague which rapidly and horrifically killed its victims and mutated inanimate matter. The plague was eventually revealed to be the work of Typhus who sought to punish Schenk for her expropriation and experimentation with the Plague of Unbelief otherwise known as Zombie Plague, which the Herald of Nurgle regarded as his own work. Though they both survived the initial outbreak, they were eventually overcome by the raw mutations and delivered to the Terminus Est. There they briefly encountered Typhus, who taunted and admonished them before triggering their own personalised afflictions, killing Seroff and dragging the tortured and mutated Schenk off to an unknown fate.[3]
See also
Sources
- 1: Yarrick: Imperial Creed (Novel)
- 1a: Chapter 1
- 2: Yarrick: The Pyres of Armageddon (Novel)
- 2a: Chapter 1
- 3: The Last Ascension of Dominic Seroff (Short Story)
