Servitors

## Overview

The Servitors are a group of races defined by their need to perform a specific purpose. Servitors vary widely in anatomy, with some being close to humanoid, while others are much more alien. However, all Servitors are recognisable by their faces or heads, which all resemble masks of some kind.

Servitors exist all over the world. Some live in isolated, self-sufficient communities, while others co-exist with other races. And some Servitors are dependent on the presence of non-Servitors to fulfil their purpose, and so live with other races out of necessity.

## Purpose

Every individual Servitor is compelled to perform a specific job, task or action, depending on their race. Fieldhands must grow crops, Arborists must tend trees, Librarians mus maintain and operate libraries, Carpenters must make wood products, Runners must run. This compulsion is felt as a need, as motivating as hunger or thirst. Some individuals can resist the need better than others, and some need to perform their function less than others, but all Servitors must serve their purpose eventually. Failure to do so results in an individual experiencing lethargy and depression. Organ failure and death follow in the long-term. Fulfilling their function after a long absence tends to afford a swift recovery, however.

Servitor societies naturally revolve around finding ways for their constituents to serve their functions on a regular basis. Generally speaking, any Servitors whose function involves producing some kind of good tend to devote large amounts of resources and manpower towards securing the means to do so. For instance, the Arborists used to maintain public arboreta, where any individual could go and spend some time tending to trees in-between their other activities. While the Carpenters practise forestry on a large scale, to provide the raw materials for their carpentry.

However, Servitors whose function involves providing some kind of service are forced to interact with other races, as their need is only satisfied when serving non-Servitors. Serving each other does not work. For instance, Librarians maintain stores of written and graven texts, which they regularly sort and inventory. But they must also lend these texts out to non-Servitors, track who has borrowed what, and ensure the texts are returned to their collections in a timely fashion. Meanwhile, the Servants must act on the orders of non-Servitors, performing various menial tasks. As such, they naturally tend to live in the same households as their masters, forming a servile class within the societies that they inhabit.

While many Servitors enjoy having a clear purpose in life, many others resent the obligations of their anatomy. They crave freedom, and try to fulfil their function with the least possible effort. Many search for mental loopholes, that will allow them to fulfil the letter of their purpose, without abiding by its spirit. For instance, many Librarians travel around with a handful of scrolls or books, or even keep their own journals, which they offer to show or read to people they meet. Thereby fulfilling their need to keep a store of texts, and their need to lend out texts to non-Servitors.

And while some Servitors are forced to serve non-Servitors, that does not mean that they automatically like the people they serve. Some do, of course, as any worker can enjoy interacting with certain customers, patrons and masters. But in many cases, engaging with non-Servitors is just a means to an end, with the specific individuals being irrelevant. Indeed, the Servants once fought a bloody revolt to secure legal rights and protections from their masters, while still needing to serve them.

## History

The history of the Servitors is mysterious. All Servitors claim to have been created by a race known as the Masters, though every story differs in the details. It is commonly held that the Masters were a race of great knowledge and power, who created the Servitors to do their bidding. The Masters created a huge diversity of Servitors, to serve every purpose imaginable. They used the flesh of a deceased being called "the Red God" to do so, binding the flesh to masks and assigning it purpose.

At the height of their power, the Masters destroyed themselves in a cataclysmic war. Many Servitors were also killed in the war. Many more succumbed to unfulfilled purpose, as they lacked the means to perform their purpose, or they had no Masters left to serve. In all, very few Servitor races survived the downfall, and those that did were left to find their own way in a ruined world. Most eventually came into contact with non-Servitor races, with mixed results.

How much of the Servitors' history is actually true is a matter of serious debate. The Servitors of the Circle Sea claim the Masters' civilization existed a thousand years prior to the modern day, and covered the entire world. But this would mean the Masters' civilization pre-dated many primordial periods remembered by the other races. And some races and individual immortals claim to have lived through the period the Servitors describe, without ever encountering the Masters

But supporting the Servitors' narrative, there are various ruined cities across the world, that the Servitors claim the Masters once inhabited. There are also corpses of giant armoured warriors littering the world, that the Servitors claim the Masters created and commanded. But neither can be studied in much detail by non-Servitors, as both bear a deadly curse that kills anyone who strays near them. The Servitors are unharmed by this curse, but most nonetheless avoid the ruins and corpses out of respect, or out of fear of spreading the curse to non-Servitors.

## Creation

One detail that all Servitors remember is the means by which they were created.