Lotara Sarrin
"Fire the Ursus Claw!"
- – Lotara Sarrin, at any chance she gets in a void battle.
"No one runs from the Conqueror!"
- – Lotara Sarrin, before shooting down a ship full of defecting World Eaters and crew.
So what happens if you give a thirty-something woman - surrounded by psychotic murderers - full authority of a fuck-off huge starship during one of the biggest cluster fucks known to human kind? She commits murder - but not just any murder, oh Khorne no. The woman we speak of is none other than Lotara Sarrin, who would go on to commit such an absurd amount of Warp-murder that she receives a mark of honour from that swell guy and earns some level of respect from that other guy.
Naturally, her status as a bad-ass easily makes her good waifu material - that is if you like your 'waifus' cold, aggressive and dominant (which luckily I do), and don't mind the Heresy.
TL;DR: She's a low effort ripoff of Admiral Daala from the Star Wars books.
History
The commanding officer of the World Eaters flagship Conqueror since she was 30, Lotara was one of the youngest ship officers in the Imperium. Despite her regular human status Lotara had a degree of respect within the World Eaters, wearing their bloody hand honor emblem and being on somewhat amicable terms with Angron himself. After Lotara complained about Remembrancers aboard her ship, Angron immediately had them expelled. During the Horus Heresy, Lotara stayed committed to Angron and commanded the Conqueror during the Shadow Crusade.
During said Shadow Crusade, Lotara balanced her own lust for void-murder and giving Angron lip for wanting to fight his whiny brother. During the battle of Armatura, with the safety of distance between herself and the murder machine, she gave him the verbal sneer of the millennium:
- Angron: "How's my ship doing?"
- Lotara: "You mean my ship. And we're doing just fine."
During the same battle, the Smurfs made a boarding attempt on the Conqueror and that's when Lotara realized the World Eaters supposed to deal with them had gone to join the fun on the planet below. Her reaction?
- Step 1: wake up all remaining Dreadnoughts on board, then join them in going to town on blue power-armored ass with her naval armsmen.
- Step 2: Shoot the captain of the defenders when he came back smack between his helmet's eyeplates with her laspistol. Then chew him out twice as hard because not only did he dare desert his post, on top of that he dared return fire at a superior officer reprimanding him.
It is rather telling said Astartes captain agreed to be confined to his quarters for a while rather than keep up being on the receiving end of the temper of this mere mortal woman.
Around this time, Lotara also noticed Angron was deteriorating. After some investigation and pointed questions with the local cog boys on her ship, she learned the Nails were killing Angron. How she remained calm and didn't shoot them in the face like she did to the captain of the boarding specialist Astartes squads, is still unknown because they were faced with a duty they simply could not perform. Which is very different from wilfully deserting your post: in any other military Delvarus would have been in for at the very best a court-martial and demotion, if not much worse! (Then again, she did force the AdMech to focus on repairing the Ember Wolves Titan Legion division, so she still had quite a pickle with them.)
After Nuceria, the subsequent loss of her card playing companion Lhorke and Angron's ascension into daemonhood, shit began to go fuckways because Chaos. Dropping out of the Warp due to human error left the Conqueror mostly isolated. The Word Bearers either did not notice or simply did not care about the World Eaters' flagship dropping out of transit, and even some World Eaters vessels did not drop from transit with them. From this point on, Lotara steered the World Eaters fleet (or what remained of it) from planet to planet to satiate the need for murder and replenish supplies.
On their way to the party of the century, Lotara began to feel like the ship was trying to kill them. The usual Khorne fuckery ensued: Blood from the showers and taps, lice leeching blood from the people's scalps, constant infighting, murderous rampaging World Eaters, and of course the thing Angron had become turning half the ship into a fleshy, bloody mess. Captain Sarrin did the unthinkable and plotted a mutiny/abandonment-of-ship with a few sane World Eaters. But at the very last moment, when the insubordinate crew fled and that swell guy Kharn confronted one of his own, it was revealed that Lotara wasn't going anywhere and she proceeded to gun down the fleeing vessels while speaking one line: "No one runs from the Conqueror."
That said, Lotara's loyalty could only be pushed that far: when Angron finally went completely batshit insane after being refused the honour of leading the attack on Terra by Horus and started rampaging through the ship, she pretty much conned Khârn into making a deal with Gendor Skraivok to have Angron locked up in the maze Perty built to contain Vulkan until it was go time.
It is still unknown what Lotara's fate is, but it is common fanon that she is part of the Conqueror like some Titan pilots fuse with their God-Machines, or perhaps if she herself has ascended to daemonhood and effectively became the ship's new machine spirit.
This was confirmed in Echoes of Eternity, where her physical body has been merged with the command throne and became some of form of cannibalistic vampire thing while her spirit is hanging around the bridge in misery.
In Novels
Notable novel appearances go here. Betrayer, her first apperance. Lost and the Damned. She and Kharn work together with the Night Lords to lock Angron up in Curze's Vulkan maze.
In ADB's Echoes of Eternity, Sarrin tries to command a run-down Conqueror. Most of the crew is too busy being flesh-blobs merged with the walls than actually keep the ship afloat. In a desperate video call with Horus, it is revealed that the Lotara Sarrin in this story is an AI construct created by the Conqueror's Machine Spirit, made to command the ship's different stations. The real Sarrin is most likely fused with the ship like the other human crew.
On The Tabletop
She doesn't have any official rules, but this category being here means someone is cooking up some homebrew.
In Video Games
Lotara is represented in the Horus Heresy Legions mobile TCG. Disappointingly enough, she doesn't belong to the World Eaters legion and comes as a Neutral warlord as Imperial Army, thus barring her from access to legion cards, but in hindsight putting her in with the World Eaters legion might make them stupidly OP due to her ability. Her ability places a 2/3 Front Line with Flank in play for a mere 2 energy, so you can always cover what you're about to put on the field and throw them at what your opponent plays on their turn. Lotara decks are somewhat decent in the 1000 - 1500 rating bracket once you have access to cards such as Mount Pharos to generate some Astartes cards. What is unique however is that Lotara starts with a special card like the Primarchs and Valdor do, this one-off card stuns all enemies for free, perfect to shut down your opponent and protect an important card.
Gallery
Waifu imagery goes here. It is interesting to note that while in the books she is blonde, almost all the fanart of her presents her as a brunette.
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Lotara's card in the Horus Heresy Legions TCG
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