Erda

This article contains spoilers! You have been warned.

This article contains something which makes absolutely no logical sense, such as Nazi Zombie Mercenaries, Fucking Space Orangutans, anything written by a certain Irish leper or Robin Crud-ace, or Wizards of the Coast hiring the fucking Pinkertons over a children’s card game. If you proceed, consider yourself warned.

This article is about something that is considered by the overpowering majority of /tg/ to be fail. Expect huge amounts of derp and rage, punctuated by /tg/ extracting humor from it.

This article or section is about a topic that is particularly prone to Skub (that is, really loud and/or stupid arguments). Edit at your own risk, and read with a grain of salt, as skubby subjects have a bad habit of causing stupid, even in neutrals trying to summarize the situation.

For a 40,000 year old Karen, she is quite the MILF. But please for the love of the Emprah's rotting testicles, please don't tell Fulgrim of her existence.

"In the Grim Darkness of the 41st Millennium, not even the Emperor of Mankind is safe from the horrors of Child Custody."

– Erda in a nutshell.

"So basically, the entire Horus Heresy has been reduced to 'Karen took the kids'."

– Some anon's description of Saturnine.

Woo boy! Where do we begin. First appearing in the Horus Heresy novel: Saturnine, Erda (Old High German for Earth. Get it? Mother Earth...) is a Perpetual who used to be one of the Emprah's most closest allies. Some Heretics even believe that she was Big E's first and only girlfriend throughout the aeons. Whether or not E-Money actually fertilised Mother Earth with his big, throbbing Power Sword, we have no idea, but we do know that Erda would have had the Galaxy's strongest ovaries to handle the genetic makeup of Big E's manly bits. DUN DUN DUN! Yes, Erda is the Primarch's mummy, not sure how Big Bobby G's foster mom, Tarasha Euten, is gonna feel about this.

Biography AKA The Skubian Heresy: Erda would like to Speak to your Manager

A warning on what you are about to read: with the release of Saturnine, her entire backstory has caused Skub and Nerd Rage on a scale not seen since Matt Ward's Ultramarine Fanwank and Grey Knight Power Scaling.

For all intents and purposes, as a Perpetual, Erda was one of the oldest living beings in the Imperium. She met the Emprah in Terra's ancient past when he was a warlord king known as Neoth in the age of the First Cities. At that time, the Golden Daddy was already shepherding Mankind into the path that would lead to the creation of the Imperium. Erda grew the hots for him and we can't really fault her for this because any normal women could not resist that guy. I mean, just look at that hair and those pecs...Aaaannnyways, Erda became one of the Emprah's closest and most loyal advisers and, during the Unification Wars, was his chief geneticist along with Astarte in the creation of the Primarch project.

However, this is where the true Skub begins. While it makes sense that the Emprah has chosen Erda as the Primarch's mom due to the fact that they are both Perpetuals and their genetics complement each other, Big E prevented Erda from taking part in their lives so he could prepare them for the upcoming Great Crusade. This understandably pissed off Erda to no end as anyone with an overbearing mum would understand. On the other hand, she was horrified of the idea that her sons would be used by the Emperor as automaton-like yes-men as generals of the Astartes legions, especially as he and Malcador were all but disowned by the other Perpetuals as fringe radicals who were pushing the evolutionary envelope too fast to guide mankind's evolution into a superior species. Apparently she was one of the last to leave his inner circle.

Unfortunately for all of us, Erda's way of 'saving' her children involved the creation of a Warp vortex which scattered the Primarchs across the galaxy. Yes, turns out it wasn't the interference of those Warp Goblins that scattered the Primarchs, but the action of a woman. It was an act of such idiocy and lunacy that by 'saving' the Primarchs from the Emprah, it condemned some of them to a childhood worse than death. One wonders how the likes of Angron and Mortarion are gonna react to this revelation. Due to this, Erda officially wins the Galaxy's worst Mom award and seeing as how some likes to chastise the Big E as being a shitty father, maybe those two truly deserve each other in the end.

That is a big part of the skub. Not only is it a stupid move, it is redundant. Chaos already had the means and motive to scatter the primarchs. Both Horus and Argal Tal were even shown visions of them going back in time to be the agents of Chaos that did it, with Argal Tal's vision implied to have actually happened. But no, late in the series, after the Cabal arc was dead, we get her helping forge the setting by being a bad mom. What a TWEEST!

After Erda pulled an oopsy, she then went into hiding for many years. E-Money understandably, had the mother of all God rage, but strangely enough, he never sought to retaliate against Erda (possibly having figured out through divination that the current timeline of eternal stalemate and war was the only option), even when he knew where she was. Or maybe he just uncharacteristically forgave her due to his love of playing favorites. By the time of the Siege of Terra, Erda was living in exile at Guelb, an ancient site in Mauritania close to her birthplace, with a group of servants and even her own personal Space Marine called Leetu. Leetu claimed to be an original Astartes predating the creation of the Legions and the diversification of the Gene-seed that came with the Primarch project; an odd statement since other lore claims that the Dark Angels were the baseline and the other Legions had their gene-seed cultivated from modified DA stuff.

She was eventually visited by John Grammaticus. Grammaticus sought Erda's help in getting into the Imperial Palace and had also arranged to rendezvous with Oll Persson at her home. Erda was shocked to hear that Oll had become involved in the affairs of the Human race again, and expressed worry over his fate when he did not arrive. Though sympathetic to John's cause she ultimately said she had no way to help him enter the Palace due to, you know, a certain couple's quarrel. It is unknown what Erda is doing now in the present, but it wouldn't surprise us if she is still hanging out in her home (or the Custodes might have taken her and Leetu to the palace and left her in some comfort to make sure she doesn't spill).

Now imagine if Rowboat Girlyman met her on accident and she revealed the truth. Somewhere between apoplectic fury, sheer horror at the fact that he was among the loyalists by chance during the Emperor's divinations and arranging of the eternal stalemate and revolted disgust are the best guesses.