Science and Technology
Servitors, Servo-Skulls and Homunculi
The Imperium's mastery of genetics and biological sciences compensates for its refusal to trust thinking machines. Where one might expect to find a highly intelligent cogitator such as the important functions of aiming ships weapons in the immense distances of Space, or in the calculation of the flow of wealth, one will often find one of the Imperiums bio-mechanical horrors instead. In roles once held by machine-servants and artificial intelligences, the Imperium places its reliance in flesh and brain-meat - deploying a collection of horrific engineered biological forms to do work humanity once relied on thinking machines to complete.
Servitors
The most common of these horrors is the Servitor a human or abhuman cyborg that has been deliberately robbed of free will by extensive technological augmentation of the brain. Servitors fulfil many roles across the Imperium, they are ubiquitous, save for the most technologically regressive worlds Servitors can be found everywhere.
Servitors serve two practical uses, one they can perform activities where thinking, sentient, human would fail for various reasons, two they serve as an example for criminals that dare to breach the laws of the Machine Cult or the Imperium.
Servitorisation is a punishment considered preferable to death as it ensures that the body of a criminal will serve where its deviant mind would not. The process is complex and cruel, Servitors are sometimes referred to as 'lobotomized' (a barbaric practice of involuntary neurological mutilation) but that fails to appreciate the extent to which this punishment is enacted on the brain of the individual. Servitorisation is not about causing deliberately inflicted brain damage, far from it, the process 'preserves' the brain to act as the central intelligence for the cyborged machine it will later power. The brain is extensively implanted with bionic augments that trap it in cycles of pre-programmed behaviour unable to deviate from them without additional programming by a Tech-Priest. This is important for while particularly stupid individuals might be condemned to an existence of menial servitude bright intelligent brains serve to become advanced calculators or the control mediums of vast machines.
Exactly how much of the sentience of the individual survives inside the mind of a Servitor is a question few Tech-Priests have applied themselves to studying. And all for the better, for the unanswered possibility that something does survive the process serves as an all the more terrifying deterrent to criminals and rebels.
Nobody knows exactly how many Servitors are comprised of lobotomised criminals in this way, the scale on which Imperial technology makes use of biological components naturally requires a extensive use of vat-grown biological matter to supplement the flow of convicted citizens and Mechanicus menials into servitoristion facilities, much like the unknown fact of how much a servitor is aware of, what the ratio of vat grown to natural born servitors is is an unknown the Imperium has no interest in answering.
There are more than a few examples of Servitors one can name;
- Tech-Thralls sometimes called 'Labour Servitors' on Imperial Worlds, Tech Thralls are Servitors designated for labour use, they might be pressed into combat in times of dire need with extensive reprogramming but for the most part they are dedicated to either aiding human labourers in their tasks or labouring in areas where humans cannot. Agri-Servitors can be found plodding through crops with scythe-like bionics to aid the harvest, and ogre-like Migou crafted from vat-grown brutes have augmented bodies that can survive the toxic atmospheres of many mining and forge worlds -the complexity of these servitors vary, from multi-task servitors capable of multiple roles, to monotask servitors who are devoted to fulfilling one specific duty.
- Interfaced with Vehicles and Vessels Servitors can commonly be found amputated to save space and blended into the machinery of many vehicles and every void craft in the Imperium. Serving as the thinking brains to power targeting computers, navigational devices, even simply bound into servitor-choirs to blare out hymns to sooth the souls of sailors at Warp these more static servitors are common examples of their kind.
- Expertise Servitors are almost invariably culled from criminals who possess some specific desirable talent, skill or intellectual capacity for a complex task. They are no more capable of independent thought then a normal servitor but enough is allowed to survive to ensure they server almost as an 'artisanal' example of their kind. A good example would be the Calligraphus scribe-Servitor whose keenly augmented mind and quill-tipped limbs make it incredibly efficient at copying documents, transcribing speeches and taking minutes of meetings. Expressionarius Servitors are a particularly horrific fate awaiting those with artistic talent who dare speak out against the Imperium their artistic brains twisted and augmented to devote them to a lifetime of producing rote artwork for Imperial propoganda, or decorating an Imperial site.
- Combat Servitors cover a wide range of cyborg creations from the simple Gun Servitors who act as platforms to lug heavy weaponry into battle, to the fearsome Murder Servitors who are outfitted with horrifying arrays of blades and are as much weapons of terror as they are combat machines. Combat Servitors are used both support units, and disposable forces, where it is felt that human lives being expended would be a waste - many powerful individuals surround themselves with a variety of these creatures finding comfort in their unthinking dumb loyalty to them.
- Devotional Servitors are a mix of individuals turned over to Cult Mechanicus and Imperial Cult religious activities. From Servitor-choirs, to those that trudge the streets of Imperial Cities bellowing proclamations endlessly, to those who serve only to scourge themselves as perpetual penitents for particularly theatrical priests. Arco-Flagellants straddle the line between these and combat servitors being both examples of the horrific fate of heretics, and raging bezekers when released.
Servo-Skulls
While Servitors are an expression of one of the worst forms of punishment the Imperium can inflict on a criminal, Servo-Skulls are considered a symbol of veneration. A posthumous honour in the eyes of an Imperium built on its veneration of the dead and the past, it is not uncommon for the skull of a deceased Imperial servant of stature, statues are, after all, reserved for only the mightiest Imperial rulers and heroes, for most their remains being reused as a Servo-Skull is the highest form of posthumous veneration they could hope for.
Shortly after death, the venerated body is decapitated and the head flensed of skin and muscle, to create the core of what will become the Servo Skull this is then fitted with rare anti-gravity technology and outfitted with cogitator units and a number of other accessories to allow it to perform its duties.
In the case of Servo Skulls intended for companionship a combination of brain preservation and memory engrams of the deceased are incorporated into the Servo Skull in order to create a very limited simulacra of life. This is often a practical design element allowing the memories of the individual to be preserved in some form allowing the Servo Skull to be used as a reference index. Such Servo-Skulls are often fondly maintained over generations, and are often ascribed with 'personalities' by their owners. Though they are far less intelligent then a true thinking human, these more advanced examples can have quirks in their behaviour due to arcane Natural Language Processor codes allowing them to respond to the commands of their appointed owners.
Such advanced Servo Skulls are however, less common, the vast majority of Imperial servants honoured with being transformed into such a thing are not worth the complex preservation work and cogitator logic-engines needed to maintain their memories to create such simulacra, and instead house basic processors or even noospheric receptors to perform basic tasks or operate under guidance from a neural interface. These are 'drones' - mono-task machines programmed to perform basic routines such as flying in patrol circuits as reconnaissance and surveillance units, or delivering messages to a pre-determined address or individual they have been programmed to seek out, some are armed, bearing needlers and small las weapons either as tools of assassination or orbiting an individual as a secondary source of protection.
Truthfully there is no end to the variety of roles a mono-task Servo Skull can perform and they are as ubiquitous as Servitors in the Imperium. Some Nobles may be attended to by a whole swarm of such creations, often favoured former servants they have outlived in their unnaturally long life-spans but who they keep close, both to honour them and remind their servants that they will serve them long after their lives have ended if they are loyal and dutiful.
Homunculi
Homonculi are the ultimate fusion of Imperial bio-engineering and bionic technologies, to someone outside the Imperium they are horrifying expressions of humanities arrogance, new life made to serve mankind or simply as a pet. They are rare enough creations, the most common of them are animal-like in shape, often created based on renditions of the native fauna of Terra before the Age of Strife brought about the extinction of most known species on the human homeworld. Plenty however, such as the grotesque Cherubs, are rendered in malformed near-human shapes in order to amuse, or reflect some favoured artistic creation that by all rights should not have been sculpted in flesh-form.
None of these things are sentient, they are, at best blessed with animal intelligence but the majority are decanted from the flesh-vats as little more than braindead bodies, perfect to be extensively refitted with cogitators and neural interlinks to slave them to whatever
Machine Spirits
It is a core tenet of the Cult Mechanicus that all machines are endowed by the Omnissiah with a Machine Spirit - the core or 'soul' of the device which must be placated with appropriate ritual behaviour in order for it to fulfil its sacred function. These rituals are shrouded in mystery and tradition, and can vary from something as simple as pressing a series of buttons while reciting a carefully-timed fragment of Binaric prayer to elaborate, cargo-cult rituals involving sacred unguents, incense and invocations of the Omnissiah.
Great Machines
The Machine Spirits of so-called Great Machines - immense, complex constructions like an Imperial Navy warship or a Titan - are nurtured and coaxed into life by the priests of the Cult Mechanicus. This is a delicate and sacred process which begins with the uploading of a living neural pattern: by ancient Machine Cult law, this must be taken from an animal. This neural pattern is embedded deep in the machine's systems, filaments growing through every control system and layer of code. Throughout the engine's lifetime it will learn and grow, becoming marked by the experiences and histories of the human crews which serve the mighty machine, and taking on some of their qualities and memories.
The Cult Mechanicus keeps banks and banks of genetic data and neural matter for this purpose. Various animal minds are approved and tested for various machine taskings: a freighter might use some sort of placid herd animal mind, easily roused to rapid action by threats but otherwise easy to guide and handle during long straights of inactive travel. A Warhound Titan, by contrast, will often use a predator's mind (often a pack hunter given warhounds are often deployed in squadrons), aiding the Princeps linked into it by giving them instincts humans otherwise lack.
The Mechanicus require only a tiny sample of neural material for the stability required to upload to a large machine's systems, meaning some extinct animals live on through these bizarre means.
This process can have its downsides, however. The strength of the primal mind of the Machine varies from forge to forge, from wild animal neural pattern to domesticated one; some Forges prefer to sheath the wild untamed neural pattern raw into the machine, whereas others tweak and lobotomise it until it is servile.
Regardless of local Forge habits, the sacred symbiosis of blending a human mind within a machine's manifold - the neural interface through a Mind Interface Unit or MIU required to pilot a Titan, and preferred by some Navy captains to steer their vessels - has an impact on the human component. The stereotype of freighter Captains being sedentary isn't entirely undeserved, for example, but it isn't entirely their fault either; the mind of the ship influences them just as they influence the ship. A Warhound Princeps might go a step further, displaying predatory body language, or even filing their teeth to points - such is the potency of an awakened Machine Spirit.
The Throne Mechanicum technology integrated into Imperial Knights is a rare exception to these processes, produced to STC patterns to allow a single pilot to operate these large mechanical fighting machines where in their God-Machine cousins of the Titans whole teams of Princeps and Moderati are required. The Throne Mechanicum typically possesses a default source program that dates back to the dark age of technology - embedded in it is a overarching drive to protect the worlds upon which the Knight is based - this infectious thought is something of an origin of how the noble protectors of the Knight Worlds such as Anaximund Alpha came to be and is a unique technology not fully understood by the Mechanicus.
Lesser Machine Spirits
Lesser Spirits, such as those found in laspistols, cogitators and other less awesome devices, are not born from living neural patterns. While the Mechanicus make no formal theological distinction between Machine Spirits, the 'Spirit' of an advanced weapon is more likely to be an ancient onboard computer, with a few characteristic quirks - or in some cases, something unique and supernatural. In most cases the techno-animism of the Machine Cult simply masks interaction with technology that possesses no animus of its own - though nobody educated enough to understand that a Tech-Priest 'appeasing' the spirit of a Laspistol is simply sending instructions to the processor that governs its firing mechanisms and charge regulators would be stupid enough to say such a thing out loud for fear of persecution as a Heretek.
To this end the Imperium and Mechanicus apply a belief that all machines are possessed of this animus though they treat it as something to be respected it should be noted that both the Imperium and Mechanicus possess an innate fear of 'thinking' machines so rather than being responded to with joy, a machines 'machine spirit' answering back to the user is generally reacted to with horror followed by the destruction of the item as noted above, the fear of thinking machines is deeply engrained in Imperial and Mechanicus cultural history.
Data-djinn
Data-djinn are a curious machine-spirit as they have no true form to them - the majority of what a human from M.2 would call 'software' is loaded onto physical wafers that must be inserted into the banks of Cogitators in order to function, these programs are fixed in purpose and never truly leave the storage mediums upon which they are kept. Installing or upgrading new 'programs' into a cogitator is a laborious physical process of removing these wafers and replacing them with new ones - this is thanks to the Imperium and Machine Cult's longstanding fear of granting even the slightest degree of autonomy to data and the machine - a historical fear from a largely forgotten and conflicted event in pre-Imperial history that has made autonomous machines a deeply engrained fear.
Data-djinn are those strings of code that are not bound to any physical form, they exist within data-mediums able to be transferred from cogitator to cogitator lacking none of the impediments that the Mechanicus inflict on most programs that render many Imperial cogitators ponderously slow-operating things. Naturally Data-djinn are only held by Tech-Priests and ownership of such programs by others is rigorously persecuted if they cannot find the protection of a powerful individual - these programs are not named for notoriously fickle creatures of pre-Imperial Terran myth without reason they can be unpredictable when released into a system and improperly handled can become corrupted and malicious code.
Scrapcode
The Archenemy, Chaos, rarely has much respect for machine-spirits often binding machines with unusual and heretical programs drawn from some blasphemous source. But they do have their own forms of aggressive data that can corrupt and infiltrate Imperial machine spirits - formed from the code-speak of Heretekal scrapcode is infested with random and chaotic data and some sort of almost-sentient maliciousness when Imperial machinery is exposed to it. Once a system is infested the scrapcode begins to propagate like a virus in a living creature seeking to overwhelm and subsume the system - in most cases this causes the machine to enter a state of cascade failure and be disabled entirely, but some great machine spirits have been twisted entirely to the will of the Hereteks that infected it, turning the entire machine into a traitor against the Imperium.