Rykoff was a male cadet in Lothal's Academy for Young Imperials. He was assigned to squad LRC077, and was a member of Unit Aurek. He was a replacement for Jai Kell, a Force-sensitive individual who had escaped from the academy with the help of Zare Leonis and the Spectres in order to go into hiding. Rykoff tended to be somewhat calmer than Kabak, another cadet who joined the Imperial Academy around the same time.
Rykoff, along with Kabak, joined Lothal's Academy for Young Imperials of the Galactic Empire as a cadet to replace Jai Kell, who had been forced into hiding, as a member of Unit Aurek of squad LRC077. He and Kabak were both initially disturbed by the yelling of one of the academy's tougher sergeants, Currahee, not realizing that it was largely for show, as the academy's weakest cadets had already been weeded out. Zare Leonis, a cadet who was secretly hoping to rescue his sister, immediately noted Rykoff's calm temperament in comparison with Kabak.
Both Kabak and Rykoff were witnesses to a confrontation between Leonis and Nazhros Oleg in which Oleg insinuated that Leonis was a traitor and the two then nearly came to blows. The entire group was then punished collectively by Currahee, given three demerits each and forced to run laps at 0400 in the morning.
Rykoff later participated in a group exercise with Unit Aurek involving the acquisition of "high-priority targets", namely droids that were being decommissioned by the Empire due to their advanced age. He watched as Oleg destroyed one of the droids, criticizing Leonis's softness, and was then praised for eliminating something that the Empire would have had to disassemble anyway.
Rykoff was present for a conversation in which it was discussed that the Empire was conducting interrogations and seeking out traitors in its ranks. He seemed reassured by Leonis's insistence that some of the more outrageous things the cadets had heard were simply rumors. He later put his arms behind his back, silently defending Leonis following another confrontation with Oleg. Finally, as the cadets were tasked to take part in a crackdown on corruption on Lothal, he was paired together with Kabak, leaving Leonis paired with Oleg.
Rykoff was a minor character introduced in Jason Fry's 2015 Servants of the Empire: Imperial Justice as a cadet replacement for Jai Kell, who had fled into hiding in the previous installment of the series. Rykoff appeared in several scenes, but had only two lines of dialog. Author Jason Fry named this character, along with Rykoff, after a baseball writer of his acquaintance. As both of the writers in question are Yankee fans, he made their characters "bad guys."