Sebastian Yarrick

Sebastian Yarrick, born Sebastian Vaarden on Taos III, is a commissar of the Astra Militarum, also known as Old Man Yarrick and, by Orks, as Old Bale Eye.

Orphaned at the age of seven when Orks invaded Taos III, in an invasion dated no more narrowly than the 41st millennium, he saw his grandfather, a veteran sergeant, killed in the fighting, survived three years in the wild, and took the name Yarrick. He subsequently became a commissar. In the late 41st millennium, as a junior commissar serving with Dominic Seroff under Lord Commissar Simeon Rasp, he was attached to the 77th Mortisian Infantry sent to the world of Mistral against an uprising led by Baron Bartholomew Lom, though he did not command the regiment. Approximately a hundred years before the Second War for Armageddon, in a year not otherwise recorded, he led the 252nd Steel Legion on the moon of Aionos against the Heretic Astartes warband known as Harkanor’s Reavers. Before the Second War he had already served in a dozen campaigns as a commissar with Armageddon’s Planetary Defence Forces; those campaigns are not individually named here.

During the Second War for Armageddon, dated 941–943.M41 with Ork planetfall in 941.M41, Yarrick was on Armageddon to help found the 4th Armageddon Regiment and was due to retire on the day the Orks landed. He sent a call for aid and was banished by Overlord Herman von Strab to Hades Hive, whose defence he commanded. The Ork Warboss Ugulhard severed his right arm with a power klaw (a powered Ork claw); Yarrick killed Ugulhard and took the klaw for his own. His left eye was wounded in the same battle, though accounts do not agree who struck it. Accounts differ on how the siege ended: one says he was nearly killed fighting Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka and that the remaining defenders escaped in shuttle runs while he was near death; another says a relief force arrived just after the hive had been conquered and that few humans, including Yarrick, survived among Ork corpses; another says reinforcements rescued him after the hive had largely fallen, with fighting still in the underhive. The hive was not destroyed in that siege and still stood, badly scarred, afterwards. He did not command the later offensive led by Commander Dante that drove the Orks from Armageddon.

An expedition to the Ork world of Golgotha, where Yarrick was captured in the Ishawar mountain range, is dated to 944.M41 and also described as three years after the end of the Second War; as the Second War is dated 941–943.M41, these figures do not align, and both are recorded without reconciliation. One account states that Ghazghkull later released him, another that he escaped; he returned to Golgotha with Titans, Skitarii, and an Ordinatus engine, an attack that one account says scoured the world of Orks before they retook it and another says left the Orks in possession throughout. He did not take part in Operation Thunderstorm or in a Black Templars crusade on Golgotha in 996.M41. In the Third War for Armageddon, from 998.M41, he arrived two weeks before the Ork invasion, accepted supreme command, had Hades Hive evacuated rather than defended, ordered aircraft against the Ork landing, and personally led Cadian Shock Troopers against an Ork Rok; he did not fight at Helsreach. With High Marshal Helbrecht he later cornered Ghazghkull’s flagship, Kill Wrecka, in the Haunted Gulf, a region of space, in a year not coherently recorded; Ghazghkull escaped into the warp. In the Era Indomitus, in a year not more narrowly recorded, he landed on the world of Icaria from the Space Wolves strike cruiser Ice Troll, wounded Ghazghkull, was knocked unconscious, and was taken off the world as it broke apart, surviving. In the Fourth War for Armageddon, dated to M42 and ongoing, he returned to Armageddon, rallied a breaking line near Hive Volcanus, and led an armoured convoy to Hive Death Mire; Helsreach remained beyond his reach.