Zolfian was the War Minister of the humanoid Daleks. After assassinating Drenz and staging a coup, he led his people to war against the Thals as their War Lord, causing the neutron explosion from which the War Machine Daleks who would later threaten the universe were born.
Biography
In 2003, (COMIC: The Dalek Tapes) or thousands of years prior to the 2060s, in his capacity as the War Minister of the Daleks, Zolfian directed the construction of a stock of neutron bombs after mining operations in the Radiation Range uncovered large stocks of pure cobalt to build them with. Once satisfied with the stock, Zolfian addressed the War Council meeting, declaring that the Daleks were now ready to exterminate the Thals for all time. Drenz, the pacifist ruler of the Daleks, burst into the meeting and ordered that the warring stop, lest the Daleks, meddling with forces they did not understand, accidentally destroy the planet; Zolfian reacted by murdering Drenz right there and then, declaring him unworthy of leading their proud race.
As the war effort began, Zolfian oversaw the creation by the scientist Yarvelling of one-person mobile minitans, the Dalek War Machines (which the mutant Daleks would later adapt into their casings). For two weeks, the weapons factories at Darren were under full pressure. However, a freak meteorite storm entering Skaro's atmosphere caused the bombs to detonate ahead of time, annihilating most of the Daleks' civilisation and turning the planet into an irradiated hell, fulfilling Drenz's prediction. Zolfian and Yarvelling took refuge in the Dalek War Council Chamber, turned into a fallout shelter by Yarvelling's intelligence.
Two years later, they emerged from shelter to look for surviving Daleks and destroy any surviving Thals, but found the surface of Skaro to be devastated and contracted radiation sickness. They were discovered by a "machine Dalek" — a mutated Dalek survivor inhabiting the war machine Yarvelling had developed. The two old Daleks rebuilt the war factory, started a Dalek production line, and made a special casing for the first Dalek, who declared itself the Dalek Emperor. Zolfian and Yarvelling died of radiation sickness just as the casing was completed. (COMIC: Genesis of Evil)
Legacy
The later Daleks remembered War Minister Zolfian as figure of legend who "triumphed in war and was popular in peace". (PROSE: The Dalek Dictionary)
The events leading to Zolfian's death were chronicled in the Dalek Tapes, a collection of tapes found by the Doctor in an ancient library on a twilight world. (COMIC: The Dalek Tapes) The story was also told in the pages of TV Century 21 in 2065, (COMIC: Genesis of Evil) with its front page on 30 January reminding readers as the tale progressed that Zolfian and Yarvelling were reported as the only survivors following the explosion of the neutron bombs. (PROSE: Stingray Attacked!) These events were also depicted in the Dalek Chronicles which were recovered in 2094. (PROSE: The Dalek Chronicles Found!)
Something akin to the story of Yarvelling, Drenz and Zolfian was one of the creation myths formulated by species conquered by the Daleks about their oppressors. The myth, however, altered certain details, speaking of the "Sea of Ooze" and suggesting the Dalek War Machines were originally intended to be autonomous robots. Human historians who recorded the myth at length in their history of the Daleks did not give it much credence, though they granted that, for one moment at least, the Yarvelling story may have briefly "become" the true origin of the Daleks at one point during the Last Great Time War. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)