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Post by CELS on Aug 9, 2004 13:42:45 GMT -5
Servitors come in all shapes and sizes in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. From primitive servitor cargo-lifters, to cooks or even star ship servitor-crew, from brainwashed, lobotomized and mechanically enhanced criminals to vat-grown cherubs... What exactly are servitors though? What level of intelligence do they have, and does this vary? Are servitors intelligent? Does the level of intelligence amongst servitors varry immensily, or are they all simple-minded machines of flesh?
And what about the cost and rarity of servitors? How common are they? Can people of middle class afford a cheap servitor? Is it realistic for agri-worlds to use great numbers of servitors (hundreds of thousands, or even millions)? What about armies of servitors for the Adeptus Mechanicus Tech Guard?
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Post by Tynesh on Aug 10, 2004 6:48:23 GMT -5
Oooh Oooh Fun thread! No but seriously folks...the one resource that the Imperium has in droves is humans. Millions will probably die everyday in the name of the Emperor, and no one really cares that much. In the 41st Millennium human life is cheap and expendable to a great extent (Exterminatus) On some worlds I believe that many people may have access to a personal servitor because in many respects they are equivalent of human domestic servants that have served masters for most of history. Indeed some may be akin to slaves while others fufill other occupations like CELS said of cooks and cleaners etc. One important thing is that they will require less attention, less food(maybe liquid nutrients?) and less satisfactory living spaces (if any). They will carry out most orders easy and routinely and they will never get fed up or answer back. I see servitors as being in many ways (no offense intended) very low intelligence humans, either by design or by memory wipes. In some ways this could be likened to the behaviour of humans suffering from disabilities like autism. They are aware of their surroundings, but not conscience of them. They can be trained/programmed to do a task which they can then repeat over and over. (Like being a menial burger flipper at McDonalds?) Some may have varying levels of intelligence, indeed some may be configured to be accountants or surveyors or stocktakers (Think the 'Matches' scene in Rainman). Many bits of tech could feasibly exist today to make a servitor. Cybernetic implants, external control of brain functions and the more mechanical bits. Certainly they could be incorporated into heavy duty machines to increase strength etc. It is quite interesting to think about how little of the body is needed opr can be replaced and still retain a functioning life. Kidneys, digestive systems, heart and lungs etc could all be replaced with other devices. Indeed in some accounts some servitors may just include the brainstem, ala Robocop style. Just a few quick thoughts!
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Post by Minister on Aug 10, 2004 8:23:25 GMT -5
Warning: personal interpretations and baseless claims ahead.
Servitors are available to the general public, but the cost is prohibitive enough that only the upper echelon can actually afford to purchase or rent them. It is considerably cheaper to simply hire a human servant than a servitor, and humans are more suited for general work in any case. Servitors are generally only used by those who want to demonstrate their wealth, or by those who have a specific need for their abilities.
Imperial organisations are by far the greatest users of servitors, and the monotasks are the most common. Operations are either very simple (moving crates about) or very complex but hugely focused (monitoring comms traffic flow). Multitasks are commonly used to assist the likes of tech priest enginseers and other specialists. Servitors may also be used in manufacturing processes, particularly in the mass manufacture of delicate equipment.
Combat servitors are rare for one simple reason: they're stupid. They may be theoretically smart, but they lack the capacity to act based on the situation. For this reason, they are most commonly used as support units (either with implanted heavy weapons or manning field artillery) and are always under the control of a tech priest. This maximises their good qualities (strength, precision targeting) whilst minimising their weak points (the aforementioned stupidity).
In all cases, a servitor is in effect a walking (or not) piece of equipment rather than an augmented person (which is the basically the definition). Whilst they are sometimes quite intelligent, they are intelligent in the same way as a modern computer (superior at things like calculation and monotonous, repetitive tasks, but at the same time irredeemably moronic and unable to adapt to things which would seem obvious to a human).
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Post by Sojourner on Aug 10, 2004 8:28:56 GMT -5
I think servitors would only be useful where extended working hours coupled with hostile conditions are the standard and unsuitable even for true human slaves or prisoners. Possibly where extensive modification to the nervous system is required.
Servitors are also useful for transcribing dangerous text i.e. chaotically-influenced writings. Because they have no intelligence it's very difficult to breach through them.
They're still wired to toxin dispensers, though.
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Post by zholud on Aug 10, 2004 8:42:30 GMT -5
Servitors come in all shapes and sizes in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. From primitive servitor cargo-lifters, to cooks or even star ship servitor-crew, from brainwashed, lobotomized and mechanically enhanced criminals to vat-grown cherubs... What exactly are servitors though? For me the very important point that there is a very wide variety of servitors and that may cause troubles in defining them correctly. Relatively unsophisticated lobotomised lifters are just another way to evade creation of simple robots for the same tax. Those who ‘supply’ bio-parts in this case are criminals, thus this is considered a punishment. At the same time servo-skulls are honoured members of AM, who should be gifted with such continuation of service. They seemingly are lobotomised as well though, after all there weren’t IIRC any mentions of skull-inquisitor, skull-magi or the like. Again it is fear of giving distinctly inhuman (machine) form too much power. Note, even Magi are vaguely human in appearanceWhat level of intelligence do they have, and does this vary? Are servitors intelligent? As well as humans are intelligent I’d say. And what about the cost and rarity of servitors? They are more a matter of prestige and their supply is artificially limited. Even if one simple servitor costs to producer as two mere human slaves, they aren’t easily obtainable. Can people of middle class afford a cheap servitor? It depends, but generally no. Is it realistic for agri-worlds to use great numbers of servitors (hundreds of thousands, or even millions)? I guess the augumented humans are they way to go there, i.e. ones who can make decisions and who can multiply/reproduce… after all even servitors seems should die of old age.
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Post by Minister on Aug 10, 2004 9:25:39 GMT -5
On Servo-skulls, these are not servitors, in that they have no working biological parts. It's more a simple casing, to inumb what is essentially a small robot with a spirit to act as a guard for its purity.
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Post by zholud on Aug 10, 2004 22:46:01 GMT -5
On Servo-skulls, these are not servitors, in that they have no working biological parts. I still think that they contain not only skull but brain of human, so they are still wet-ware... at least I wrote part of fan fiction as the skull story...
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Post by Dazo on Aug 11, 2004 0:06:14 GMT -5
Well i had a look in inquisitor and all it says is that they are totally mechanical nothing about wet brains. How the hell it is een as a reward for loyal service escapes me as it seems that only the skull itself belonged to the honoured person, nothing of the man remains it would seem
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Post by CELS on Aug 11, 2004 0:30:13 GMT -5
Well, I had to do something to keep people from running outside in this lovely weather. This summer saw the highest temperature in my city (Bergen, Norway) ever recorded!! To sum up all the important things PROS[/li][li] Less food (probably fed by intravenous substances) [/li][li] No need for seperate living quarters (you can just puth them in a closet] [/li][li] High discipline. They'll never rebel, ask for a raise, and they'll do anything you say (in theory. See discussion of primal instincts below) [/li][li] They can obviously be given enhancements which other servants might not appreciate, such as hydraulic lifter-arms, or a vacuum-cleaner attached to their legs [/li][li] No reproduction. You can have an army of them, and you don't have to worry about your husband having children with the maiden And safely put them on agri-worlds without fear of overpopulation. [/li][li] Tough as nails. No calling in sick because of the flu, or getting the cold. You can pump them full of chemicals that'll kill any germ outright, and not have to worry too much about side-effects. It takes a bolter to stop these things. [/li][li] Low maintenance. Servitors aren't payed, and any maintenance they go through is probably considerably less than salaries. [/li][li] Better workers. Most humans have a tendency of only working as hard as they have to. If they can jog instead of run, they will, and if they can take a five minute break, they will. Servitors won't. [/li][li] A sign of wealth. Needless to say, advanced servitors are much more expensive than some kid from the lower hives who will work for a bowl of rice every day. CONS[/li][li] Dumb. Unless you have a lot of money, servitors are likely to be less advanced, have less programming, and thus be dumber. One might be able to avoid this by leaving some of the original intelligence and personality, but this makes the servitor less than safe. For less advanced servitors, you can't ask just ask an librarian archive-servitor to wash your car. It wouldn't know what you're talking about. It would look for a book about washing cars. [/li][li] Expensive. The lower the tech-level of the world, the higher the cost of both purchase and maintenance. [/li][li] Ugly. Hydraulic lifter arms aren't exactly pretty, and more delicate bionics are expensive. Of course, if you have the money, servitors can actually look quite cool (as Maxilla from the Eisenhorn novels can tell you) [/li][li] No reproduction. One of the nice things about slaves, is that they have slave-children which also belong to you, and are brought up to replace their parents. Warning: personal interpretations and baseless claims ahead. So much for valid arguments That seems to be the general impression, yes. Of course, servitors are extremely useful if they have bionics such as hydraulic lifter-arms, for specific purposes. So even if this isn't useful to a middle class family (who don't really own that many heavy things), it is very useful for farmers, mechanics, baggage handlers, etc. So while they're not used by the middle class families, it doesn't necessarily mean that they can't afford one. Maybe the affordable ones just aren't useful to middle class families. I agree whole-heartedly. I disagree. I'd say they lack the capacity to improvise, but they're totally capable of acting based on the situation. If they weren't, servitors would be far more rare than they seem to be. For a crude comparison, combat-servitors would probably have the same intelligence of computer opponents (aka bots) in certain computer games. Take WarCraft 3. The computer is totally capable of reacting to the situation, defending his base if under attack, and making attacks if he has enough resources. What the computer cannot do however, is analyse your style and adapt to it (building an unusual amount lot of anti-air defence if you use a lot of flyers). This I agree with, as it is still valid with my comments above. --------- || ---------- For me the very important point that there is a very wide variety of servitors and that may cause troubles in defining them correctly. Relatively unsophisticated lobotomised lifters are just another way to evade creation of simple robots for the same tax. Those who ‘supply’ bio-parts in this case are criminals, thus this is considered a punishment. Agreed. But I think we all agree about the lower limit of servitors, the arch-typical lifters. What about the upper level? Would they be comparable to C3PO? Would you be able to have a conversation with them, or would it be like talking to a computer? Human: "Nice weather today." Servitor: "Sun and 35.424 degrees." Human: "How are you?" Servitor: "All systems operational. Next maintenance-session in 21.8 hours." Etc... This is a bit of a paradox, as others point out. I'd like to add though, that not all servo-skulls are former Tech Priests. I seem to recall reading about scribes who have their ancestors as servo-skulls. Are you saying that servitors are as intelligent as normal humans? Indeed. But I just don't understand how agri-worlds can function with only tens of thousands of citizens, if there aren't swathes of servitors on these worlds. If it was StarWars, I could understand it, but in the 40k universe, there are no robots and very, very little automated machinery.
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Post by Dazo on Aug 11, 2004 0:44:05 GMT -5
Here's a couple i think you missed, or never occoured to you, what with you not being a wishy washy liberal like me
CONS Morally wrong, but thats just my opinion
High discipline. They'll never rebel. they won't differentiate an inquisitor from a heretic so any one with access can re-program what is a very dangerous piece of equipment. Of course you could just add this to the dumb pile.
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Post by CELS on Aug 11, 2004 1:30:49 GMT -5
Here's a couple i think you missed, or never occoured to you, what with you not being a wishy washy liberal like me CONS Morally wrong, but thats just my opinion Perhaps, but that is so besides the point it's not even funny There are so many things that are morally wrong in the Imperium that they make G.W. Bush look like Gandhi! I won't even bother giving examples... I did note that they had high discipline and that they'd never rebel. As for doing whatever their master commands them, even fighting inquisitors or other Imperial servants, this can be said about a lot of people in 40k. Any tech-priest worth his salt will destroy an Inquisitor without blinking if a high ranking member of the Cult Mechanicus commands it. And then you have the many incidents where a bunch of people rebelled against the Imperium because they were following their masters (Horus Heresy, Vandire Heresy...) You do bring up a valid point, but it's not exactly a major one, in my opinion
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Post by Sikkukkut on Aug 11, 2004 2:50:57 GMT -5
There's one HUGE advantage servitors have over true robots: they come with a whole lot of inbuilt functions that are fundamental and natural to an organic brain, but are tremendously hard to duplicate in a mechanical one.
To give some context: about a year ago now, a writing group I'm part of got given a tour of the cybernetics labs at our city's university. Near the end of the tour, our guide showed us a video of a project he'd worked on in Europe: it was footage of a robot they'd programmed to open a door.
It took fething ages.
They had to program the robot so that it could use a camera to move around. Then they had to program it so that it knew how to use a second camera to calculate distances with binocular vision. Then they had to work out how they could program it to move the cameras and refocus them as it moved - that was tricky.
Then they had to program it to be able to tell, by shape and texture and shadow, which of the things that the cameras could pick out was the door handle.
Then they had to make sure that the programs moving the claw-hand and the programs watching the claw-hand move could synchronise and control it so it could align the claw-hand with the handle.
Then they had to get it to master the co-ordination needed to inch... the claw... forward... so... slowly... to enclose the handle.
And don't get me started on the amount of work involved in teaching it to use the handle without turning it incorrectly, using too little force, ripping the handle out of the door...
It was as painful to watch as you might think, this gigantic metal claw slowly... slowly... moving... toward... the... handle... and... pausing... to... think... about... its... next... move...
Oh, and of course the team would have had to start from scratch if the handle was replaced by one fo a different design or any one of a hundred other tiny features went wrong.
Now the thing about a servitor is that they are based on a human brain without any higher functions: no cognition, no memory, emotion, personality, and so on. But they do have perception and motor centres. That is, if you want a servitor to open a door, you need to make sure it understands "door" and "open", but you don't need to teach it from the ground up how to move, how to know what a door is or how to move its arm to do the opening, because all that is there. It knows how to walk and how to move its arm and how to co-ordinate those movements with the input coming into its eyes because all of that is right down there in the wetware. Even if the servitor is never going to do anything but stack boxes, think what a huge head start you've got there.
Downside of organics: yes, there is the vestige of a living thing there and that does seem more responsive to Chaotic influence that a straight inanimate object would be, where that's an issue. Consider the early scenes of Ravenor:
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Post by zholud on Aug 11, 2004 3:57:32 GMT -5
[/li][li] Less food (probably fed by intravenous substances) [/quote] But these substances can be quite expensive… at least now it is cheaper to give food to person who spends achieved energy on feeding as well than to ‘feed’ him intravenously. So in money terms it is hard to say whether you are right or wrong. [/li][li] No need for seperate living quarters (you can just puth them in a closet) [/quote] I guess this crucially depends on amount of ‘flesh part’ in servitor… the unmoving stay can lead to necrosis. [/li][li] Tough as nails. No calling in sick because of the flu, or getting the cold. You can pump them full of chemicals that'll kill any germ outright, and not have to worry too much about side-effects. [/quote] Why not to pump ordinary citizen in the same way? Answer – because bacteria are external and body clears itself from chemicals sooner or later. Any body including one of servitor. Moreover their immune system can be weakened due to implants (that should not be rejected by body)… This negative effect of implants was even noted in Gav Thrope’s Angels of Darkness[/li][li] Low maintenance. Servitors aren't payed, and any maintenance they go through is probably considerably less than salaries. [/quote] You have to pay a small fortune to Mechanicus… because they should act as monopolists there, rising prices above the cost Agreed. But I think we all agree about the lower limit of servitors, the arch-typical lifters. What about the upper level? Would they be comparable to C3PO? Would you be able to have a conversation with them, or would it be like talking to a computer? I guess this too, but mainly you talk with them as humans I’m sure that ‘usual’ human brain is used as CPU + RAM for the servitor and their speech and reactions are matter of nurture, not nature. Of course wiped-out has to learn the same way as a child does, so if you don’t teach him he is dumb. Are you saying that servitors are as intelligent as normal humans? They vary in intelligence in the same way as normal humans. Indeed. But I just don't understand how agri-worlds can function with only tens of thousands of citizens, if there aren't swathes of servitors on these worlds. I simply think that their harvesters and the like are just left unmentioned in fluff because they aren’t part of wargame. Recall that 0.2% of the US farmers feed the country, and I expect similar ratio on average Agriworld as well.
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Post by Minister on Aug 11, 2004 7:12:18 GMT -5
I disagree. I'd say they lack the capacity to improvise, but they're totally capable of acting based on the situation. If they weren't, servitors would be far more rare than they seem to be. For a crude comparison, combat-servitors would probably have the same intelligence of computer opponents (aka bots) in certain computer games. Take WarCraft 3. The computer is totally capable of reacting to the situation, defending his base if under attack, and making attacks if he has enough resources. What the computer cannot do however, is analyse your style and adapt to it (building an unusual amount lot of anti-air defence if you use a lot of flyers). Hexactamundo. The ability to follow a clearly defined set of directives does not make for a good soldier, as war taken in personal detail is far more complicated than most other situations. Also, something which did spring to mind, a Servitor woula probably require as much as or more support on the battlefield than a human, partially for maintanance procedures but also because soldiers have allways been notorious for their ability to scavenge stuff to make their lives easier. I second the mechanical nature of the servo-skulls. They are entirley artificial, with the exception of the skull itself. Stated in the Inquisitor book, and I'm sure I saw it somewhere else too. Also, the anti-grav unit wouldn't leave much room for the brain... As for harvesting crops etc, you're more likley to have a honkin' big combine harvester thing rather than an army of servitors with scythes. Less expensive and more efficient. As for inteligence? You don't buy these things for conversation. If you want something to act as a C3PO type assistant, buy an augmented slave of high quality.
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Post by ErnestBorgnine on Aug 11, 2004 12:43:07 GMT -5
Any tech-priest worth his salt will destroy an Inquisitor without blinking if a high ranking member of the Cult Mechanicus commands it. I would insert the words "try to" before destroy in the above sentence. The Inquisitors are hardly ignorant that the AdMech have a disturbing amount of autonomy, a lot of secrets (how things work and how to build more of things) and a large potential army wholly loyal to them (servitors and, if push really ever came to shove and the AdMech completely rebelled, I would be shocked if they didn't have some iron men sitting in deep stasis storage somewhere on Mars).
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