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Okay, so I've been kicking this around in my head and kinda linking it to previous head-cannon. I know I tend to go off tangent, so here at the top is the most critical question:
CAN servitors become possessed by Daemons?

Some terminology defined by me for purposes of arguing points:
Spirit- The totality of information in an individual and their moral judgements. In alchemy, this is the key link between the body and soul.
Soul- How you "are" as a being, how you interpret emotions. In 40k, what affect the warp has on you and vice-versa.

And so, (maybe due to D&D influences) I see daemons as all "soul" and lack a body- hence lack a spirit. The vat-grown servitors have little or no spirits or souls, so they'd be prime fodder for possession. BUT- it seems that you have to "allow" a daemon in somehow, whether through a ritual, or "let in" by striking the devil's deal of soul for power.
It gets more interesting when you factor in "Architect of Fate" and the Bastion Inviolate. Takeaway: Ship is all body, but perhaps some spirit as the "machine-spirits" may or may not be real spirits/ghosts and/or AI - but no soul.

Servitors made by Servitudius Perpetuis had souls and spirits at one time, but the spirit got vastly diminished by the mem-wipe/ lobotomy. If it is the Spirit daemons attack, that'd make sense in Bastion Inviolate' s case, but the whole "selling your soul" thing for power and becoming a Daemon prince then makes me question that process.

In conclusion, I think daemons have to attack the spirit. This would make sense for daemon-possessed machines (like that one in grey Knights' book) and why servitors don't seem to have a high prevalence of possession, if any- they're spirit is too diminished that daemon's can't affect them. Again, D&D reference: it'd be like how you can't cast Command or other vocabulary-dependent on an animal- they don't understand language, so they're too stupid to be affected by the spell.

Yes. They absolutely can.

It’s happened in at least one Cain novel, where it’s Servitors aboard a ship.

At least I think it was a Cain novel.

But we also see corrupted Servitors in those Nurgle Tech Daemon models.

Whilst unlikely to last long as a host, they may, arguably, be easier to force a possession upon because there’s so little there resisting.

Yeah it happens but possession is more than just getting a lift, it's also about feeding on the emotions of the hosts which servitors don't have.
Any Daemon worth it's salt would look for anything else.

Again shaky memory, to the point I couldn’t even tell you which book it is, the ones possessed in the Cain novel weren’t aboard a ship of the Imperial Navy, but a Private Hauler they’d co-opted to move the Regiment.

And I’m fairly sure the possession came about because the crew had skimped on maintaining wards and that.

Which strongly suggests, if not outright confirms that aboard Imperial ships, Navy or privately own, routinely ward their Servitors against just that happening. Which makes a great deal of sense. After all, you don’t want a hardwired Servitor being possessed and allowing the Daemon access to your ship’s systems.

Though…that raises another interesting prospect. With the Servitors being needfully networked? Could a single possessing Daemon take over the meat suits of all/multiple such networked Servitors?

Chaos forces get possessed rhinos… and not like the pointy nosey ones… the inanimate GROPO bullet magnet ones.

Also, it’s The Last Ditch, which is pretty formulaic and doesn’t bring that much to the series.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think the ward being mentioned were the general Gellar Field wards against infiltration by daemonic powers into the ship, rather than specific wards in the servitor.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And the daemon was reforming the bridge into crawly tentacle cables that were doing the generic sci fi horror “taking over” routine. Servitors being networked is not really required for a supernatural being that has whatever powers the author deems necessary at the time. Apparently it could just shout scrap code, and make all the available listeners bleed out through their facial orifices, whether they are mechanical or not.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Yes. They absolutely can.

It’s happened in at least one Cain novel, where it’s Servitors aboard a ship.

At least I think it was a Cain novel.

But we also see corrupted Servitors in those Nurgle Tech Daemon models.

Whilst unlikely to last long as a host, they may, arguably, be easier to force a possession upon because there’s so little there resisting.

it happens in cain novel"the last ditch". it also happens several times in the Ravenor series.
we've also seen demons posses soulless constructs.. metal armatures (the 'wirewolves' used by the bloodpact in the later guants ghosts novels), machines (a few times in the revenor series), even Men of Iron! (Guants Ghosts, one of their first stories)

indeed from some of the dialog in those cases, it is heavily implied that servitors and constructs are actually easier for stuff from the warp the possess, because of that lack of an active soul.

I guess the whole "feeding on emotions" thing makes sense. I was mainly wondering why a whole bunch of daemons just mass-possess a workforce.. But, also warp-magic stuff, there'd probably have to be a storm or whatnot.
I only heard it second-hand where UR-025 fought another Man of Iron that was chaos-possessed. That would make a whole lot of sense for the men of iron rising up around M23 when warpstorms were high- though, I think the storms were a symptom of excess violence with the "terminators". So it could be the men of iron got possessed.
I mean this was "canon" back in early days:


Then the "chaos androids" became Necrons.
I still think interesting AI robots can be possessed and keep a daemon as a host longer/ more efficiently than a servitor.

Oh dear. Sorry about this, but it has to come out.

We also need to consider what Daemons are.

Some are the merest sliver of the great consciousness that is a Chaos God (major or minor). Calved off for semi-independent existence, but ultimately beholden to its parent god.

Some, like Vashtorr, are completely independent of the larger powers - and kind of border on Gods in their own right. Essentially the line between Really Powerful Daemon and Lesser Chaos God is so fine as to be unknowable (except for those calved off from existing Gods).

So it could be that the Lesser and Greater Daemons we’re familiar with might struggle to possess a machine, because their parent god doesn’t really understand technology, and has more than enough willing or otherwise fleshy targets to get stuffed into. Whereas more independent Daemons, or those spawned from the thoughts and emotions of engineers and that are more inclined toward machinery as a host?

Yes, but for the reasons above(lack of emotions and mental capacity) it's of limited use to a daemon.

It's like possessing an animal or an inanimate object. They can do it, but it's not as fun or useful as a fully sentient being. As for can they possess multiple at the same time, I would say also yes.

Its probably "harder" to possess a servitor than a fully conscious and sentient person due to it being a dumb lump of flesh. No resistance, but nothing to grab hold of either and its less useful once you do get in.

Like, what would be more useful for you to swap your consciousness into? A roomba, a cat, or a human?