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Can Servitors sometimes feel emotion? Normally (given the Imperium's posiiton on AI) I'd consider this a daft question but I've read a couple of BL novels where Servitors suddenly start acting in a decidedly non-mindless way. In Ravenor Rogue, a pilot servitor appears controlling a submarine, and when things start going wrong and the submarine has to escape from danger he gets irritated with the main characters, at one point saying something like "do I tell you how to do your job?" In Salvation's Reach a servitor controlling a Caestus assault ram is described as feeling "dismay" when a massive enemy force appears and feeling pain when wounded before sacrificing himself to save some Space Marines. The Ravenor example is particualrly noticeable because at the start of the same book Ravenor psychically examines the minds arou nd him and one belongs to a servitor, and it's clear that there's nothing going on up there.

I can imagine certain servitors being programmed to simulate a particular attitude (for example, servitors serving drinks being designed to appear to show good manners to guests), but what I wonder is, has there ever been any fluff suggesting that servitors can rediscover some trace of emotion in times of stress, or were these examples I mentioned simply errors?

I think that the process of creating servitors is a well known science in the Imperium, but given how many of them are made and the varying levels of "quality" from different forge worlds, factories, etc through the Imperium, there is certainly the possibility of some of a servitor's former personality "slipping through" the process.

The Mechanicus believes that Servitors babble and incoherent nonsense is in fact a representation of a higher level of existence, similar to what Leoben believed with the Hybrids in Battlestar Galactica. I'm more inclined to believe it's just a load of nonsense though...

SilverMK2 wrote:I think that the process of creating servitors is a well known science in the Imperium, but given how many of them are made and the varying levels of "quality" from different forge worlds, factories, etc through the Imperium, there is certainly the possibility of some of a servitor's former personality "slipping through" the process.

There certainly is, it's a big galaxy after all.

Harriticus wrote:The Mechanicus believes that Servitors babble and incoherent nonsense is in fact a representation of a higher level of existence, similar to what Leoben believed with the Hybrids in Battlestar Galactica. I'm more inclined to believe it's just a load of nonsense though...

That could make an interesting hook for a story...the babbling of a servitor revealing some ancient ymystery.

In my Rogue Trader Game i have a Medical/Combat Servitor that has been classified by the name of Cision (like incision) Cision shows disturbing signs of intelligence and witty banter for example in an auto-toned voice it suddenly saws through it's old captain simply stating "A pity... Captain" Cision is by no means a talker and he addresses things perhaps even worse than a veteran space marine would but he is an unknown form of Archotech they found which was appointed as chief Medical officer aboard a mining vessel.

Cision himself is simply a combat servitor that has medical protocols as well, however he is rare indeed and to the point where our Explorator thinks it could possibly have been a older version of the "Men of Iron" which according to lexicanum could possibly be a surviving "Men of Stone" which seems accurate other than the fact he is obviously preserved corpse. I've left them in the dark but they are dangerously close; Cision is indeed a ledging model of the Men of Iron but had been decommissioned well before the uprising. A heretek activated him again uncovering him wishing to unify with such an ancient machine he set his reclamtor facility to make his body a servitor and his mind be uploaded as a redundant cognitor and combined with the mind of this Man of Iron. Cision has for centuries been irregular compared to other servitors but operates very similarly as well.

over all i think it's possible but unlikely to have a servitor with emotions without it having a very special circumstance.

Interesting and creepy (in fact I find the concept of servitors, especially the ones who used to be human, creepy in general). I sounds intriguing tying him in with the history of the Men of Iron as well; in fact ,I had them in mind when writing the orignal post (giving servitors emotions seems like it would be considered by the Imperium to be dangerously close to giving them human-like intelligence, which in turn could lead to inventions like the Men of Iron).

Ghost in the Shell also has some interesting stuff in this regard. The manga says that in that world, no matter how much of a person becomes machine they can maintain some sort of sentience through sheer will power or even an accident. So kinda like where is the line between a tech marine and a servitor?
This might help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_Ghost_in_the_Shell

That's an interesting page, and though I don't know much about Ghost in the Shell as far as I can understand the concept of a "ghost in the machine" is similar to what we're discussing. In a servitor's case the mind is probably going to be damaged beyond repair even if some memories remain; unlike a Techmarine or Techpriest is the servitor will most likely be built with a single purpose in mind and the brain is altered so to become incapable of doing everything else (barring everyday functions like walking about, responding to commands and so on). However, even then there are some cyborg humans who will allow their brains to be heavily altered to become more machine-like.

Something else I just remembered that hints at Servitors retaining some vague memory of their past lives (at least, the ones whose organic components weren't grown in a lab) is a similar mind-scanning scene in the first Ravenor book. When he scans the servitor, he mentions the fact that he had a name once but now can't remember it. If Ravenor is supposed to be stating exactly what he finds and not embellishing it, then it implies that servitors may be able to retain vague memories sometimes.

I notice that all the examples I'm bringing up are from Dan Abnett's books...presumably he realised that this whole area hasn't been explored much (unsurprisingly, given their general portrayal) and so took the opportunity to make something up.

Fezman wrote:Something else I just remembered that hints at Servitors retaining some vague memory of their past lives (at least, the ones whose organic components weren't grown in a lab) is a similar mind-scanning scene in the first Ravenor book. When he scans the servitor, he mentions the fact that he had a name once but now can't remember it. If Ravenor is supposed to be stating exactly what he finds and not embellishing it, then it implies that servitors may be able to retain vague memories sometimes.

A loader servitor only needs to respond to commands about loading stuff and keeping itself working, it doesn't need to have very much brain left for that. But I'd guess that more specialized servitors could retain something from their old personalities. For example, if a criminal pilot is "servitorified" the AdMech would want to leave him all the stuff that makes him such a good pilot that he's allowed to serve in a new "life". Same for a medical servitor, or an expert in some other field. I'm sure they also sometimes manage to damage the servitor-candidate beyond repair by trying to blank out too much of his former self.

Personally, I consider Servitors non-sentient. They are lobotomized biological hulls fitted with cybernetics to control and manage their every body function. Even if a Servitor could feel anything (which might be possible depending on one's interpretation - after all, there's still bodyparts with pain receptors) it would be questionable if they'd have sufficient command over their flesh to give it expression, even by a simple muscle twitch. On the other hand, perhaps there is enough left of the original "wiring" that such responses to pain come automatically and independent of the computerized functions. I wouldn't really consider it an emotion, though, for an emotion requires an "active" mind. It'd be more like prodding a dead frog with electrodes and watch his leg twitch.

That being said, there is no "canon" in 40k and anyone's interpretation of the setting - including that of various novel writers - is quite simply just how they think it works (just read Gav Thorpe's or ADB's blogs here and here on the subject). So ultimately it rests with the reader on how he wants to deal with the subject.