Science and Technology

Servitors and Tech-Thralls

Where Menials fail, Servitors serve to provide the Machine Cult with heavy labour and the additional computing power.

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.

From plodding labour-servitors, still relatively human in appearance, to the remnants of flesh encased in the controls of some baroque walking engine, Servitors fulfill many roles. This is because Servitors serve a vital duty to the Mechanicus and the Imperium, with the creation of machines capable of independent thought utterly forbidden the slave-minds of Servitors serve as vital 'processing units' where artificial intelligence might have once provided a way to enable machines to perform complex tasks independent of direct control and human oversight. In this way even those judged irretrievable in their first life may serve again.

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.

Not all Servitors are 'human' however, some are created from monsters grown in gene-vats, abhumans and even animals have their roles to play as Servitors.