Best quality servitors?

By NewtonPulsifer, in Rogue Trader Rules Questions

Anybody know if there has ever been any mention of quality grades for servitors?

NewtonPulsifer said:

Anybody know if there has ever been any mention of quality grades for servitors?

Servitors are essentially recipients of poor quality cortex implants. (RTRPG p149)

Otherwise, none I've found.

The fluff has plenty of examples.

In the Eisenhorn books, Maxila (spelling?) his friendly rogue trader has servitors with gilded golden masks that drift around elegantly.

The Janus simulacrum and Praetorian servitors from the inquisitors handbook could be a best and good quality (respectively) servitors.

There used to be an excellent Homebrew rules supplement on Dark Reign which outlined Servitors sort of as a character path with the exception that it took it's Master's Thrones and not exp to "level up".

I can't find it anymore, but it was great and I'm glad I had the foresight to print out a copy.

However, if I'm not too far off, I believe you're talking in abstract terms of multiple servitors and their effect on the Ship and not individual Servitors? Correct?

Gribble_the_Munchkin said:

The fluff has plenty of examples.

In the Eisenhorn books, Maxila (spelling?) his friendly rogue trader has servitors with gilded golden masks that drift around elegantly.

The Janus simulacrum and Praetorian servitors from the inquisitors handbook could be a best and good quality (respectively) servitors.

Indeed. Servitors actually vary a lot by function. In one of the Dan Abnett books a Servitor was permanently installed into some sort of boat/submarine as the pilot. What was interesting about it was it could hold limited conversations and was hesitant to put itself or the boat deliberately in jeopardy.

In 'Mechanicus', there were rogue Servitors. I.E. the Servitors regained enough of their higher brain functions to rebel, repair themselves and form rudimentary communities for survival outside the control of the Mechanicus. If I'm not mistaken, some even regained, retained or redeveloped a sense of personal identity.

Remember, robots and AI are forbidden Dark Tech and therefore all 'robots' in the Imperium have to be some form of Cyborg, thus Servitors skirt a very grey area and allow for a loophole to exist bypassing the Emperor's Mandate on the subject. You may have read that the more metal and less flesh a Tech-Priest is, the more the Ecclesiarchy and some factions of the Cult Mechanicus will consider him/her heretical. That's why.

Also keep in mind that while different, Servo-Skulls, Skittari, Psyber-familiars and Cherubim are all technically "Servitors".

Skittari retain a lot of their "self" and higher functions because it makes them more effective in combat, but they can still be programmed and are for all intents and purposes "intelligent" combat Servitors.

Servo-Skulls biological parts don't normally include any brain tissue, so while fun and handy to have, they don't have any independant non-programmed behavior.

Cherubim (the way 40k and the fluff explain them, not the way DH does) are vat-grown, including the biological bits of their cogitators (brain parts). They have various other mechanical parts like suspensors light-alloy skeletons etc. But the point is, and the fluff mentions it all the time, is that over a period of time they become more independant, sometimes mischievious or even malicious. Supposedly, it has to do with poor maintenance and part of the maintenance seems to be occasionally wiping and reprogramming them, like C-3PO. They must run on Windows ME or something! I really liked the background and INQ rules for Cherubs. I think DH did NOT do them justice at all. I'm highly of the opinion that the writer was biased against them and just made up a quick paragraph about them "for completeness".

Psyber-Familiars are interesting because (originally) the same technology used to make a couple Eagle carcasses into a double-headed Eagle Psyber Familiar are the same technologies used to control Cherubs, Servitors, Servo-Skulls and several other pieces of 40k equipment. I'm referring to the MIU, of course, which (again, originally) used the latent psychic ability in every human (except Nulls, Untouchables etc) to communicate and control a limited number of MIU enabled devices.

For myself, I've decided to take artistic liberties make MIU's more akin to modern "Bluetooth" technology as it makes more sense. They didn't have it in 1987, which makes it kind of amazing they thought of it, but non-psychic MIU's make more sense and are more in keeping with the majority of the more recent fluff.

Maxim C. Gatling said:

Skittari retain a lot of their "self" and higher functions because it makes them more effective in combat, but they can still be programmed and are for all intents and purposes "intelligent" combat Servitors.

This isn't necessarily true. Skitarii simply means soldier of the mechanicus and covers everything from a bunch of PDF types armed with lasguns and flak armour, to armoured divisions of leman russ tanks, to the elite gene-bulked, heavily cyborged stormtroopers that play a big part in the books.

The lesser goons are called techguard and are essentially PDF. Some of these guys might have bionics, depends on the forgeworld and its wealth.

The more elite guys might be programmable, but the novels have shown a bizarre feral culture amongst these more professional warriors, decking them out in fur and feathers. Most are heavily augmented.