Do Serviles Have Souls?

[Chessrook44]

This observation was made in my most recent LP vid And I thought it could prove an interesting topic for discussion.

 

According to the servile in Ellhrah's Tomb in Geneforge 2, there is no known knowledge of any servile ghosts. And thinking about it, you never see the ghosts of any other creations either. No thahds, no battle alphas, no drayks, no gazers, none of them. Nothing but humans. This begs the question... if there are only human ghosts, does that mean that their creations don't have spirits? Don't have souls? What does this say about the creations themselves, or the acts the shapers are doing creating these beings without spirit?

[mouton]

This is an insanely slippery topic, due to "souls" being a very blurry concept irl.

 

Spectres are no proof of souls. They can be just an echo of the person or a personality pattern copied via magical means.

 

And even if they are, in fact, spirits of beings they were in life, it doesn't tell anything about the other creatures - it might be simply a case of humans being more prone to reanimation.

[Triumph]

I've always liked the theory of Learned Clois in G1, that serviles are really just humans who have been warped by magic. However, that idea never comes up again in the series and I kind feel like maybe Jeff rejected it for the later games. If Clois were right, then serviles and humans are the same on this issue.

 

Undead beings are relatively rare on the whole throughout the series, and they only tend to appear under strange magical circumstances. It maybe simply be that no serviles were ever involved in those unusual circumstances over the course of the events the games cover.

[Goldengirl]

Undead beings ARE rare in the entire series, that's true. In fact, where they show up it tends to be in the remnants and remains of proto-Shaper civilizations. Shades (of many variety) are more common, but it's made clear that they are magical constructs, not actual spirits.

 

Religion and theology has always been a bit brushed under the rug in Jeff's games. Avernum has a bunch of churches, but they are all, to the best of my knowledge, concerned with this world and how to act ethically upon it. Some cults in various games worship demons. However, it's demonstrated in this game that there is a separate demonic plane embroiled in constant warfare, and that the cultists are capable of successfully summoning demons from that realm. Interestingly, demons and the lands they come from are more or less the same in each game they appear in. Anyway, though, based on this evidence I think the issue canonically cannot be broached.

 

The issue, then, when there is no satisfying answer from the text is to place the question in the hands of the reader. We are left with the responsibility for deciding whether or not Serviles have souls.

[mouton]

I've always liked the theory of Learned Clois in G1, that serviles are really just humans who have been warped by magic. However, that idea never comes up again in the series and I kind feel like maybe Jeff rejected it for the later games. If Clois were right, then serviles and humans are the same on this issue.

I don't think Jeff rejected the idea, he just never expanded on it. He always stuck to the idea that serviles are sentient beings who deserve freedom and dignity - regardless of their origin.

 

And anyway, the question of serviles being sourced from human stock is irrelevant for the topic at hand due to the existence of drakons, gazers, dryaks etc. For, if we assumed existence of souls in geneforge world and excluded non-humanoid sentient creations from having them, we would be guilty of gross anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism. And we can all agree Jeff does not champion that

 

As to the question of ghosts - I believe Jeff simply treats them as staple foes in his games and never connected their appearance with what we are talking about.

[Alorael at Large]

Ghosts don't look all that much like humans beyond the outlines, often. It seems quite possible that there are servile shades and no one can tell the difference.

 

—Alorael, who thinks there's a much less fraught formulation: do serviles and other creations have whatever property is necessary to cause the spontaneous formation of a shade post-mortem? That could well be as simple as particular genes that are left out of creations because the undead are a menace and not having to deal with them is considered a positive all around.

[Val Ritz]

Soul is kind of hard to define, but given the idea of shades as magical constructs, what if human ghosts, Shaper or otherwise, are the magical power of a given human left behind and given will? Shapers, being crazy powerful, would be more likely to leave them behind. Perhaps magic users with some great purpose or great drive that they had upon their death would produce a shade as their magical power seeks to perform that task. Serviles would thus not produce ghosts because they're specifically engineered not to be able to do magic.

[Goldengirl]

If anyone would have that "great purpose or great drive" though, wouldn't it be the servile cultists? They've got absolute focus and discipline along with a large amount of magic that the Shapers can't explain. Yet, as far as I'm aware, there are no cultist ghosts.

[Val Ritz]

Maybe we just haven't seen any, I don't know. It's a theory.

[Upon Mars.]

Actually the idea that serviles being not magical can't produce ghosts makes sense.

[Valdain the King]

They are not human and they have strange noses or at least holds true in later games. That guy in New York City thats running for mayor has an unnaturally big nose. Does that mean that he is a servile?

[Chessrook44]

They are not human and they have strange noses or at least holds true in later games. That guy in New York City thats running for mayor has an unnaturally big nose. Does that mean that he is a servile?

Actually Serviles are also mentioned as being quite short. One line described a tall servile as ALMOST reaching the chest of a Guardian. Assuming a Guardian is only slightly taller than normal (Let's be generous and say 6 feet) that means serviles probably top out around 5 feet at best. Maybe closer to 4 and a half. That's really dang short.

[Spukrian]

Serviles in GF1, 2 & 3 have red skin and a big nose. In part 4 & 5 they have yellow skin and a "trunk", sort of like an elephant. With that said, I believe that Sage Clois is right, serviles are the descendants of the original inhabitants of Sucia Island, the people who lost the battle against the primal Shapers. Heustess would be the only surviving "proto Servile". The Shapers has since modified the serviles so that they would pose less of a threat but still be useful in different areas (administration, agriculture, mining, tinkering, hazardous materials, etc).

 

Undead are a staple of fantasy fiction, I guess that is why they are included. Just like demons from the infernal realms are included in some of the Geneforge games. Honestly, both undead and demons are things I could do without in Geneforge, I feel those phenomena somehow diminishes the greatness of Shaping.

[MMXPERT-seraph of thermodynamics]

Gotta get my anvils ready.

[deadfisk]

Sorry to necro but we are explicitly sent in 1 on a quest to find the shaping recipe for the first servilles on some tablets, to then listen to a Taker librarian lament being wrong in the theory that they used to be human, no?