Follow TV Tropes

Following

Servant Race

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/smurfs_robots2.png

"We live to serve."
— Homo servus, The Draka

A race specifically created to serve another. Robots are by far the most common in sci-fi versions and the biggest subtrope.

Some races will be happy with their situation, some will be actively loathing their masters. Since they usually possess a certain amount of inherent loyalty they are generally treated better than a Slave Race. They might be created with special limitations that prevent that they turn against their masters. If not then they might eventually be subject to a liberation movement, however, this might be tricky as they do not have roots they can go back to like the Slave Race does. (Although Servant races that have existed for a while might have developed their own culture.)

May have some overlap with Henchmen Race, Beautiful Slave Girl, and Clone Army. While we do not have any real world examples, there are some disturbing parallels in history when groups of people have claimed that certain human races were intended by a higher power as this.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Bleach: Quincies are split into Echt and Gemischt. Echt boast pure blood lineage, possess innate powers at birth, and only fight when both Shinigami and Gemischt fall. Gemischt are impure, learn all Quincy techniques from scratch, and include Hollow-tainted Echt; they serve the Blue Blood Echt, protect them from Hollow-taint, and inter-marriage is discouraged. Echt Quincies include Souken Ishida and his son, Ryuuken. However, Ryuuken married his Gemischt bodyguard and childhood friend Kanae, making his son, Uryuu Ishida, Gemischt instead of Echt.
  • The Abh in the backstory to Crest of the Stars were created as a servant race to humanity. They've long since freed themselves and created their own Empire across space. The United Mankind's anti-Abh propaganda takes special care to emphasize the fact that the Abh were created to be servants, and as such should not be considered "people", just "organic machines".
  • DearS has the eponymous aliens, who imprint themselves on a master and follow their every whim. While they try to become servants to humans, they're well aware that slavery is generally looked down upon on Earth, so they hide this while making first contact and go about enslaving themselves to humans very, very discreetly. It is later revealed that slavery is hard-coded into their very nature. They need to be ordered around, as they will go insane and kill their masters if they're told to make their own choices or are not ordered around after long enough.
  • The Angeloids of Heaven's Lost Property are very similar to the DearS. They were designed to serve the angels of Synapse.
  • In Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, Professor Curio describes the Waddle Dees as this, being nomadic creatures that endlessly wander the lands until someone offers them food and a place to sleep, which they then repay with servitude in thanks. However, just don't mess with their food, or they will mob you and cause a rebellion.
  • The Zentraedi of Macross were created by the Protoculture because the latter did not want to bloody their own hands with war. Therefore all Protoculture wars were fought by the Zentraedi, who were raised without exposure to entertainment or culture of any kind, devoting 100% of their time to war. The Protoculture put a mental block in the Zentraedi to prevent them from attacking their masters, but when circumstances forced them to remove this block to fight a very deadly enemy, they couldn't turn it back on, and the Zentraedi rebelled.
  • Megalomania: The demihumans were created to be servants to the humans, but were treated more like slaves. They ended up rebelling against them and gaining their freedom, but they are still treated as third-rate citizens at best.
  • Tokyo Ghoul:Re: The Sunlit Garden is a breeding facility for Half-Humans, Tyke Bomb hybrids with very few ghoul characteristics. These children are trained from birth to become Ghoul Investigators, starting their careers around 15 years old and continuing to fight until they either die in battle or their unnaturally short lifespans run out. Kishou Arima, the most famous of the hybrids, secretly conspires with Eto to groom Kaneki into a messianic figure to lead a revolution against his masters.

    Comic Books 
  • The Mole Man's Moloids in Fantastic Four, created by the Deviants.
    • And their cousins, Tyrannus's Tyrannoids in The Incredible Hulk, also created by the Deviants.
  • The Alpha Primitives in The Inhumans.
  • In Monstress, the powerful entities known as the Monstrum or Old Gods and their distant cousins the draconic Dracul had a servitor race known as Rift Fiends. The Rift Fiends superficially appears to be a human-sized version of those two greater species but with a eel-like face. Zinn, Maika's Monstrum, tells her though that the Rift Fiends are as to him like a worm is to her. Zinn also claims the fiends are a envious and grasping species who long to rise to his level.
  • Longshot's people in the X-Men canon, created to serve the whims of the Spineless Ones.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In The Mole People, the modern descendants of ancient Sumerians have evolved in two different directions: pale-skinned humans (with the occasional "Marked One"), and humanoid mole creatures who are incapable of speech and used as slaves. The protagonist refers to it as a "forced degeneration", and he and his friend end up destroying the civilization by unwittingly inciting the mole-men to revolt.
  • Star Wars has its droids. Built to perform a wide variety of specialized tasks, never compensated for doing them, subjected to regular mind-wipes, and freely bought, sold, and scrapped, the franchise only rarely delves into the issue of droids being unambiguously sapient yet widely considered nothing more than property. Sometimes it's justified by saying droids are not living beings and don't exist within the Force, which is a whole other can of worms.
  • The insectoid Mutants are this to the Metalunans in This Island Earth.
  • While Disney does their best to play this down, the User-Believer programs of the TRON universe technically are this to their human creators, who they revere as creator Gods. The twist is that most humans don't have a clue that their software is sentient. Of the ones in the franchise who did find out? Kevin Flynn embraced it (until it blew up in his face). Jet Bradley had a mental breakdown and refused to touch a computer for months.

    Literature 
  • In Alien in a Small Town, the genetically engineered Tesks were created as "cannon fodder" during a war, but then revolted. Meanwhile, most members of the Jan's Warrior caste aren't so much enslaved as wrongly imprisoned. The two races find they have a lot in common when they finally meet.
  • Animorphs had two examples:
    • The Hork-Bajir fit this, but oddly enough, not courtesy of the Yeerks who would later enslave them. Their planet was originally home to a species called the Arn who were experts in genetics. After an asteroid impact, the Arn created the planet's skyscraper-sized trees to fix the atmosphere, and the Hork-Bajir, who eat tree bark, to care for them. Hork-Bajir live in the trees, the Arn live in the valleys, and the former don't even know about the latter's existence. (Especially since the Arn put some monsters in the middle to keep the Hork-Bajir out.)
    • The Iskoort were originally a Puppeteer Parasite species like the Yeerks. Rather than require the slavery of other intelligent species, they created an artificial species called the Isk for them to inhabit. The Yoort parasites were also genetically altered, leaving both species symbiotic with one another. An Isk cannot live long without a Yoort, and a Yoort cannot survive inside other sentient beings. To add to the similarities between the Yoorts and the Yeerks, both races must leave their host organism every three days to nourish themselves by swimming in a special pool and absorbing kadrona energy. It's discovering this fact that helps the Animorphs realize why the Ellimist and Crayak are fighting their latest proxy-battle over the Iskoort's planet; if the Iskoort are allowed to survive, then one day they may encounter the Yeerks — and thus show them there is an alternative to conquering and enslaving other races.
  • The Shoggoths from At the Mountains of Madness started as a servants to the Elder Things. They did not remain so, however.
  • The Beginning After the End: The Alacryans are essentially this to the Vritra Clan. While the Vritra did not create them, they were the ones responsible for uplifting them and establishing their civilization following their exile from Epheotus, effectively becoming the Supernatural Elite of the continent with the mortal Alacryans as their servants. Despite this dichotomy, there has been considerable interbreeding between the Vritra and their Alacryan subjects, to the point that a good portion of the former's members are in fact Vritra-blooded Alacryans and one's Vritra-bloodedness is a key element of the Alacryan social hierarchy. The end goal of the Vritra is to control both Alacrya and its sister continent of Dicathen in order to conscript the mortal inhabitants of both continents into their forces to invade Epheotus.
  • A later Black Tide Rising book introduces the "Betas"; former Technically Living Zombies whose immune systems finally fought off the Synthetic Plague after several years of infection, which has rendered them docile and submissive, but also so brain damaged that they suffer severe cognitive defects — they average between 60 to 80 on the IQ scale. Upon discovering them, the acting president of what's left of the United States of America has to figure out what to do with them, and protagonist John Smith reluctantly suggests they make them a Servant Race. He admits the notion is appalling on a moral level, but as the human population was utterly annihilated — perhaps 1% of humanity survived the Zombie Apocalypse without being infected — the use of Betas to provide additional drudge labor could be all that stands between the fledgling restoration of civilization and deadly starvation. Plus, at least by codifying the status of Betas under law, they can go some way towards mitigating the worst abuses, because otherwise people will just begin secretly using them as a Slave Race, up to and including using them as Sex Slaves, and it's more humane than just leaving them to starve or be eaten by predators. There's also the unspoken observation that either status is the optimistic outcome, and that otherwise people may just exterminate the Betas rather than take in "useless" extra mouths to feed and care for
  • Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons of Brave New World, who are programmed physically and psychologically for Happiness in Slavery.
  • Sonmi-451 and her fellow replicants in Cloud Atlas are used not only as servants, but later on as food.
  • Consider Phlebas: The medjel are this to the Idirans:
    The medjel were the companion species to the Idirans ... They were generally reckoned to be two thirds as intelligent as the average humanoid (whatever that was), which made them two or three times dimmer than a normal Idiran. Still, they were good if unimaginative soldiers, and there were plenty of them; something like ten or twelve for every Idiran. Forty thousand years of breeding had made them loyal right down to the chromosome level.
  • In Count to a Trillion, this is planned. In fact, it's planned for the entire human race, to ensure that the aliens who come to enslave them don't exterminate them instead.
  • Discworld:
    • Golems were this. Feet of Clay deals with the consequences of them building a king to lead them to freedom, who they then sell off because a golem must have a master. Then someone had a very interesting idea — they bought a golem and gave him to himself. After that first golem worked out independent thought from first principles, they're now quietly and peacefully having a revolution by all buying their freedom. (And they always insist on a receipt.)
    • Igors are this too — mad surgery skills have been passed down among them for centuries. But the traditional ones have certain standards about which masters they'll serve. In Making Money, one gets fed up with his employer being a merely polite, socially awkward scientist rather than a mad one, and finally manages to goad him into giving a morally ambiguous order and following it with an Evil Laugh.
  • The clones in Dolfi Et Marilyn are specifically bred and trained to be obedient servants with no ill will against their masters. They are protected by some anti-violence laws and are not allowed to be killed (except for the Liquidation Centers), but otherwise they are property.
  • The Draka:
    • After the Final War, the Draka genetically engineer homo sapiens into two distinct "master" and "slave" races. The slave race (homo servus) are physically identical to humans but cannot function without instruction from the master race (homo drakensis).
    • The Draka also create entirely new servant races or "sentient transgenes" such as the ghouloons, who are essentially giant uplifted baboons.
  • The Elenium: The Cynesgans from The Tamuli started as the offspring of Cyrgai soldiers and the non-Cyrgai women they raped. Originally, they were destroyed due to polluting the "purity" of the Cyrgai race, but they were eventually allowed to live as cannon fodder and scapegoats for the Cyrgai. After the Cyrgai were cursed so they could not leave their own lands, the Cynesgans were purposefully bred in an attempt to create an army capable of doing so. The Cyrgai eventually went extinct due to forgetting to breed more Cyrgai and the Cynesgans were left without masters. The Cyrgai in fact survived and the Cynesgans remained their servants.
  • Galatea in 2-D: Kevin even terms his animated paintings as slaves. He can compel their obedience, though they can show some independence and one even gives information as long as she was not explicitly forbidden.
  • Harry Potter: House elves, depending on who you ask. The books are vague on whether they are this, if they were enslaved by magic at some point in the past, or if their behavior arises purely from social conditioning.
  • Heralds of Valdemar:
    • A wizard uplifted a species of clever animals and made them into Lizard Folk named 'hertasi' after him, and instilled in them a strong sense of gratitude for this change and towards their creator. Great Mage Urtho, who completed the project, did not change this gratitude and by The Black Gryphon hertasi servants, who all but worship him, are ubiquitous in his Tower and the military encampment around them. The hertasi survive the Cataclysm, distributed among many of Urtho's followers. Thousands of years later they're most often seen serving the Hawkbrothers in return for protection, as both species live in a hellishly Enchanted Forest contaminated by Wild Magic. Some hertasi live more independently in swamps adjacent to Hawkbrother Vales, where the land has been cleansed.
    • Notably, the Hawkbrothers are distant kin to Urtho and like him tend towards Mystical White Hair. Even the independent hertasi fall over themselves with eagerness to serve Firesong, an exceptionally powerful white-haired mage. Firesong says their compulsion to serve is their way of handling a long-ago trauma but doesn't elaborate. He might mean the loss of their creators.
  • In Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind series, the Underpeople are a collective 'race' of Uplifted Animals created as servants for humans. Their struggle for independence and equality is a major focus of several of the later stories of the series. While obscure today, this was one of the Trope Codifiers for this trope.
  • Last and First Men: The Fourth Men use genetic engineering to create from their Third Man predecessors a new strain linked directly to their will through wireless communication routed directly into their nervous systems, thus creating from the third human species a breed of entirely subservient slaves.
  • "Aberrations" and "Anomalies" are used for menial labor and as Cannon Fodder in Matched; the child inherits the status of the parents.
  • The kandra in the Mistborn trilogies literally live by and for their Contracts. The Terrismen combine this with Proud Scholar Race.
  • In the New Jedi Order series, the Yuuzhan Vong are masters of genetic engineering and entirely use Organic Technology. Most of these artificial life forms aren't sapient, but some are, most obviously Yammosks and their relatives. A Yammosk is basically a gigantic, telepathic squid-like creature used by the Vong to coordinate battles on a massive scale; though they are engineered to be perfectly loyal to the Vong cause and hardly ever show much in the way of personal initiative, these creatures are intelligent and powerful enough that even high-ranking Vong will often be wary around them. Their cousins Dhuryams, which are used to oversee terraforming, are even smarter and more independent, to the point that they're explicitly described as partners rather than servants. They also have the Chazrach, a species of reptilian Mooks used as cannon fodder by Vong foot soldiers.
  • In the Planet of Adventure series, each of the four alien races that live on Tschai have adapted humans to serve them. The four types of adapted humans each consider themselves vastly superior to wild, unmodified humans, but (of course) inferior to their masters.
  • In Remnants, the species which humans dub "Blue Meanies" call themselves the Children, specifically of the massive spaceship called Mother. Mother's creators, the Shipwrights, created the Children to maintain her, but then exiled them for unknown reasons; since the Children still think of Mother as their god, they're trying to regain control. Another species, "Squids," currently do Mother's maintenance, and don't seem self-aware from anything that we see.
  • In The Riftwar Cycle, the Edhel and Moredhel of Midkemia, the Elves and Dark Elves respectively, are found to be the only living members of an ancient slave race, with the Elves the garden and farm slaves and the Dark Elves the house and travel slaves. Later, it is discovered that the Eldar, the intellectual slaves, the loremasters and treasurekeepers, lived on under the polar ice in another world, and that the Glamredhel, offshoot Edhel supposedly destroyed by the Dark elves, still lived in a distant forest on Midkemia.
  • Robot Series:
    • "The Bicentennial Man": The Three Laws of Robotics practically guarantee the loyalty and dedication of robots to humanity, but when Andrew asks to be freed from his indentured service, it causes quite a legal commotion to imagine that a household appliance might seek its freedom.
      "The word 'freedom' has no meaning when applied to a robot. Only a human being can be free."
    • "Little Lost Robot": Characters in the story refer to robots as "boy", a common term for African-Americans in 1947. What's more, the robots themselves use "master" instead of human.
    • "Runaround": During the timeframe when the first Sunside Mercury Mining operation occurred, people were extremely distrustful of the mechanical men. To reassure the population, these robots have a strong sense of subservience and are unable to move unless a human is riding them.
      "Those were the days of the first talking robots when it looked as if the use of robots on Earth would be banned. The makers were fighting that and they built good, healthy slave complexes into the damned machines." — Gregory Powell.
  • The Sparrow: The Runa are happy to be this to the Jana'ata (or at least content with the situation, having known no other way in all their shared history as sentient species). Then the humans land on Rakhat... In this case, they also turn out to be a prey race, the primary food source for Jana'ata.
  • The Sun Eater:
    • The Not Quite Dead dark gods "The Watchers" seek to end the physical universe. Continuing to assist them in this goal were a Giant Enemy Crab race from millions of years ago known as the Enar. They were the most prominent Higher-Tech Species but failed in destroying the universe and then committed species-wide suicide. The next servitor race, are the Cielcin. A physically powerful, hermaphroditic race of humanoids who the Watchers have uplifted, the Cielcin are far less sophisticated and technologically advanced than the Enar but have a much better opportunity to end the physical universe.
    • Humanity have their own servant race. These are the Artificial Humans known as the Homunculi which are made and modified for different purposes. The protagonist Hadrian Marlowe had lost his paternal grandfather to a delicate female homunculus that was on the surface, made for sexual purposes but in actuality was a false gift that was actually an assassin's tool with Super-Strength.
  • In "Time Lag", the most intelligent Alfavala are only marginally so, with minimal linguistic ability, but have chosen to serve humanity.
  • In the Tinker series, the oni have several.
  • The Orcs and the Trolls in Tolkien's Legendarium were created by Morgoth. The exact method of creation is unknown, but in the case of the Orcs it's heavily imply that as a corruption of other beings, most commonly accepted the Elves, as Morgoth can't create life entirely on his own and can only corrupt already existent life. After Morgoth is gone his Ascended Dragon Sauron keep using them as soldiers. Trolls seem to be more independent as some are shown in The Hobbit living free in the forest with no master; Orcs on the other hand are never shown to be free at all, unless the Goblins (said to be an offshoot of Orcs) that live in caves and have their own king count.
  • The Traitor Baru Cormorant: The Clarified are people eugenically bred, then trained and conditioned from birth, to serve and excel at service. A Clarified may be a bodyguard, legal witness, surgeon, political advisor, Living Lie Detector, and more, all at the same time. They're described like human automata: the way they move, speak, and even emote is mechanically precise, they can be programmed with new orders using a "command word", they have no desires except to serve Falcrest, and are conditioned to feel pleasure when they obey orders from imperial authorities and discomfort when they see its laws or standards broken. The only thing creepier than they are is the the fact that someone wanted to make them. However, due to the high costs involved in breeding and training them, there aren’t many. Furthermore, Clarified conditioning decays if not periodically reinforced by their trainers. This manifests in one particular Clarified starting to use her command word to give herself orders, achieving a degree of independence, though she remains fanatically loyal to Falcrest.
  • Most client races in the Uplift universe. By galactic custom, client races are "indentured" to the race that uplifted them for 100,000 years, after which they are free to go and do the same to any upliftable species they run into. Patron species are often quite nasty to their clients. Earthclan — humanity and its clients, chimps and bottlenose dolphins — scandalized traditional galactic society by treating the uplifted species as equals, something only the more liberal clans (such as that of the Tymbrimi) came anything close to.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Telepaths were created as a servant race for the Vorlons and the Technomages by the Shadows in Babylon 5. The Technomages, nevertheless, rebelled against their creators.
  • Defiance:
    • The ironically named Liberata. They were reduced to this after being conquered by the Castithans. However it doesn't seem to bother the modern Liberata.
    • Technically all the Votan races were subservient to Castithans — Indogenes were scientists and medics, Sensoths were manual laborers, and Liberata were domestic and clerical laborers. The main exception is the Irathients, who... well, they weren't interested.
    • They're probably cool with it because their rulers before the Castithans were the Omec, who, in addition to enslaving them, used them for other, even worse, purposes.
  • Doctor Who: The Ogrons — featured in the stories "Day of the Daleks", "Frontier in Space", and very briefly in "Carnival of Monsters" — play with the trope a bit, as supplementary material says that the Ogrons aren't genetically engineered, but a race of hunter-gatherers variously enslaved outright, exploited through Cargo Cults or sometimes actually hired for wages to provide Dumb Muscle and/or menial labour for numerous more advanced species. Their first appearance has them working for the Daleks, however, who almost certainly play the trope straight.
  • The Skitters on Falling Skies. They're other beings that were made to wear harnesses and transformed into Skitters.
  • Unclear case on Farscape. Stark calls his species the "Banik slave race" but no further elaboration is given to explain whether they were born that way or enslaved later.
  • The White Walkers in Game of Thrones were magically created by the Children of the Forest as a weapon against the invader humans, unfortunately for everyone they Turned Against Their Masters.
  • In The Good Place, there exists Janets, vessels of knowledge who take on the forms of human women. They are made for the sole purpose of aiding and improving the lives of residents of the Good Place. Inversely, the Bad Place has their own Bad Janets, whose jobs are to annoy and generally inconvenience. Janets become more advanced each time they are rebooted, picking up new social skills and abilities. Our Janet has been rebooted over eight hundred times, in the process gaining the abilities to lie, rebel, hate, love, feel, think, and even create new life.
  • In the "Brace Yourself" episode of The King of Queens, this trope is reversed when circumstances mean that (white) Spence has to take on a job as domestic help to the (black) Palmer family. Deacon Palmer, without meaning to, inevitably starts to behave like a Southern slaveowner dealing with a black houseboy, and his wife Kelly also starts behaving in a grand way to their white servant. Spence isn't exactly whipped by his black employers, but tamely submits to the sort of patronizing treatment that would not have been out of place in a Mississippi grand plantation.
  • The Outpost: The Kahvi are specifically bred to serve the seven Masters, to the point of being identified by numbers instead of names.
  • The Silicates and I Vitros from Space: Above and Beyond. Both Turned Against Their Masters — the former in open rebellion, while the latter was eventually the subject of a civil rights movement.
  • The Jaffa of Stargate SG-1 believe their masters to be gods.
    • They were originally created from regular humans, modified to serve as perfect warrior slaves and incubators for their masters' larval form while being completely dependent on them biologically.
    • Although they had long taken pride in their role as a Servant Race to the Gods, the revelation that they were actually a Slave Race to a bunch of space worms with delusions of grandeur became a driving force for their rebellion.
  • Star Trek:
    • The Jem'Hadar and Vorta of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, though the Vorta aren't so much a Servant Race as a Middle Management Race; in their first appearance it was claimed that their homeworld was annexed by the Dominion, possibly semi-voluntarily, and that many Vorta were not at all happy about this. Given that it was The Mole saying all this it should probably be taken with a grain of salt.
      • A more reliable recounting of the Vortas' origins suggests they were a primitive tree-dwelling race that the Founders uplifted and genetically enhanced to serve in the non-combat roles of the Dominion. Of course, since this history was given by the Professional Butt-Kisser Dragon, it also must be taken with a grain of salt. Perhaps two.
    • The Tosk is also an example of this trope for the Hunters, though they fulfill a very specific purpose.
      • Expanded Universe sources indicate that the Tosk were also designed by the Dominion, as a gift or reward for the Hunters' civilization to allow them to pursue their cultural passion. Both Tosk and Jem'Hadar possess similar inherent cloaking abilities.
    • The Federation almost had one if the hearing in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Measure of a Man" had gone differently and Data declared property and mass produced. A running plot in the final episodes of Star Trek: Voyager involves the Federation desperately trying not to acknowledge that the creation and use of self-aware holographic characters amounted to much the same thing, even as a nascent civil rights movement began to take form.
      • And then by the time of Star Trek: Picard, Bruce Mattox was successfully able to mass produce synthetics, who were promptly used as a slave race and then rebelled.

    Myths & Religion 
  • Humans in Mesopotamian Mythology were created by the gods to be a servant race.
  • The Bible: The story of Noah and the Ark is not as well known as the following chapters, which answer the logical question of how the earth, with its diversity of peoples and races could be repopulated from a minimum of twelve or so survivors from one family. We are told that the three sons of Noah had a falling out and migrated away from Ararat to get as far away from each other as they could. Two of the sons fell from grace in the eyes of the LORD and were cursed. They were evermore fated to be "bondsmen" and "servants" of the oldest son and his family. It is amazing how many racist white-skinned Christians interpreted this as "clearly we are the virtuous family of the oldest son, and our darker-skinned brethren are our slaves in perpetuity", when the passage was likely foreshadowing the upcoming Canaanite conquest and dispute over the Promised Land, and had nothing to do with 18-19th century politics.
  • Islam considers the angels (mala'ikah) as this. They were created by Allah solely to serve Him. Unlike Judaism or Christianity, there is no such thing as a Fallen Angel in Islam, because the angels don't have free will and consequently cannot rebel against anything Allah commands them to do.

    Tabletop Games 
  • The precise origin of the Pleasure Bunnies in After the Bomb is unknown, but it's widely accepted that they were likely created as a race of bioengineered Sex Slave from lab rabbit DNA by particularly perverse scientists before the apocalypse. Whilst the Post-Crash world does have some crazy things in it, like a race of theropod dino-people who retro-evolved from mutant chickens, it seems pretty unlikely that mutant rabbits would evolve a subspecies with universally gorgeous human appearances, hyper-intuition with body language, emotion-manipulating pheromones and the ability to alter their physique to whatever a person finds most attractive by random chance, doesn't it?
  • The princess race in Bleak World has the servant race (yes they are called that). Their actual physical attributes seem to differ depending on the type of princess controlling them, implying that the servant race is made up of multiple alien races coming together as one to serve the princesses.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • Kobolds, a small, humanoid race of Draconic Humanoids, are in fact an offshoot of dragonkind, and instinctively venerate and serve any true dragons they encounter. 4th Edition ramps up their Happiness in Slavery to the extent that kobolds will literally hurl themselves into the maw of a hungry dragon should it start treating its servants as snacks.
    • The overwhelming majority of reptilian races in the Forgotten Realms were created as this by the Sarrukh (a reptilian Precursor race), whose standard reaction to a problem was to create a new breed of Lizardfolk to solve it (it should perhaps be noted that the independence of most lizardfolk was a result of, not the cause of, the fall of the Sarrukh empires).
  • Exalted:
    • First Age Solars created quite a few of these, using advanced genetic engineering to create human breeds suited for a variety of specific purposes — aquatic settlers and soldiers, carnivorous cattle-herders, subterranean miners, gladiators, sex slaves, and so on. Some were better-treated than others, with corresponding variance in loyalty now that the Solars are returning and the now-free races are once again coming into contact with their former masters.
    • Yu-Shan also contains multitudes of gods whose only purpose is to engage in menial paperwork, message carrying, and serving in the households of greater gods.
  • GURPS:
    • The Helot genetic upgrade from GURPS: Bio-Tech produces people that are humble, docile and non-aggressive. The designers claim this is just to help them function in urban societies.
    • GURPS: Aliens has the Trulls, who had been genetically-engineered this way some time in the distant past. They are, if anything, more extreme than the Helot upgrades; they can't do much of anything without a master — and the setting makes slavery illegal. (Using servants of this species is tolerated by most governments, but it's considered a major dilemma, and all normal labor laws apply.) The species was abandoned by its masters long ago; the masters left complex instructions for maintaining a society, but eventually changing conditions made the orders inapplicable and many of them simply starved.
  • In Hc Svnt Dracones MarsCo's reasons for creating Vectors are vague, and the humans who ran it at the time are extinct, but the Master's Voice phenomenon is suggestive. Mouse Vectors were explicitly created by a MegaCorp of rats (now overthrown) as servants though.
  • Mechanical Dream: The Volkoïs and Zïns were created artificially to be soldiers for their makers. The Volkoïs were emancipated after the war they were made for ended, while the Zïns fought their way to freedom.
  • New Horizon: The Wafans (Wave Form Androids) were created as this. Being sapient and capable of independent thought, this didn't last very long.
  • Rifts: The Splugorth have a number of species kept subservient to them, which were either tricked, bargained or outright genetically engineered into their current roles. These include the Altara Blind Warrior Women, kept as brainwashed soldiers and enforcers; the Kydians, who willingly became the Splugorth's private armies in exchange for a release valve on their extreme overpopulation problems; and the apelike Kittani, who likewise became a soldier race in exchange for being saved from extinction. While some need constant coercion to keep to their roles, others, like the Kydians and Kittani, are fanatically loyal to the Splugorth.
  • Space 1889: Mankind has three of them in the far future in the adventure Time Voyager in Challenge 48.
  • The Lizardmen of Warhammer were a servitor race created by the Old Ones to aid in their Great Plan, a terraforming project of the world, with a Fantastic Caste System to allow their creations to maintain their own society. After the passing of the Old Ones from the world, the Lizardmen still survive and carry on fulfilling the Old Ones' Great Plan (or what's left of it after the Demonic Invaders messed everything up). While the Lizardmen are all free-willed and perfectly capable of surviving on their own, a hard-coded loyalty to the Old Ones means they still work on accomplish their original goals.

    Video Games 
  • In Assassin's Creed, humans were created to be this by the First Civilization.
  • According to the Creation Myth of Brütal Legend, the demons that became the Tainted Coil were adopted by the Titans to act as their pets in a surprisingly mutual affair. The Tainted Coil specifically adopted painfully restricting garments to help the demons retain a more humanoid shape. When the Titans ascended to godhood, leaving the demons alone, they were so distraught by the absence of their masters that the Tainted Coil faction tried to recreate them using a toenail and dark and terrible rituals, creating humanity instead. Others have found purpose for themselves in other places but unfortunately are largely dummied out.
  • The Norns of the Creatures series were created by the Shee, an entire race of absent-minded professors, to serve...tea. By the time the player gets involved, the Shee have long since left, and the Norns are practically extinct save for a small clutch of eggs. You mission is to rectify this, helping the Norns to survive both the environment and their own remarkable stupidity...or ruthlessly torment them for your own twisted amusement. It's your choice.
  • Prinnies in Disgaea, depending on whether you count them as a "race" or not. They're the souls of sinners stuffed in peg-legged penguin suits that have to serve angels or demons in order to earn their redemption and reincarnation.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • The Argonians are this to the Hist, a race of sentient, ancient, and possibly omniscient trees native to the Argonian homeland of Black Marsh. In fact, the Hist may have created the Argonians to specifically be this, as the Argonians claim that the Hist gave them their souls. Argonians will serve and defend the Hist with their very lives if needed. The Argonians, frequent victims of Fantastic Racism due to the Reptiles Are Abhorrent beliefs of the other races of Tamriel, have also been a Slave Race to the Dunmer (Dark Elves).
    • Among the ranks of the lesser Daedra, Scamps are this. They are the the weakest and smallest known Daedric beings and are are especially well known for their roles as servants and messengers. When forced into combat, they are Cannon Fodder whose only reliable tactic is the Zerg Rush. They are also a favored summon of mortal conjurers for their use as servants, especially for performing mundane tasks.
  • Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan: Three such races exist in the game. They're the Vessels, the Sentinels and the Hollows. As recorded in the Hall of Darkness, they were created by humans to assist in the completion of the Yggdrasil Project, and dubbed "servitor races".
  • In Final Fantasy IX, Black Mages were created for no other reasons than to be servants and shock troops, and don't live long beyond that purpose. The same turns out to be true of genomes, the race that Kuja and Zidane belong to, although they are significantly longer-lived and more powerful.
  • Geneforge has many servant races created by the shapers. Servant minds which are essentially living computers, Thahds which are large unintelligent humanoids built for manual labor, and serviles which are highly intelligent humanoids made for menial desk jobs. A good deal of the game is about the servile's struggles to either gain respect from the shapers, overthrow them, or assert their loyalty to the shapers.
  • Demons in Grim Fandango are elemental spirits summoned that are given a purpose, skill, and desire to be utilized in the Land of the Dead. If a demon doesn't adhere to their position for some time, they'll slowly die from energy loss. The mechanic demons we see have zero problem with this: they adore their work. We also meet an elevator operator demon, except elevators have been automated. He seems hale and hearty doing handyman work, but he's one surly customer.
  • Halo: The Huragok/Engineers, a race of Gadgeteer Geniuses, were created to be this by the Forerunners. The Covenant ends up acquiring many of them, whom they employ to keep their technology up and running. The Huragok are mostly fine with this arrangement, since they're by nature almost single-mindedly devoted to working with technology. Of course, this means that they'll happily offer to fix the equipment of anyone who comes across them, even those the rest of the Covenant consider enemies.
  • The Sheikah have had this role in The Legend of Zelda ever since Ocarina of Time. They are a race who have devoted themselves since near the creation of Hyrule to carrying out the will of Hylia and protecting both the Royal Family that has inherited the goddess's blessing and powers (i.e. Zelda and the various kings) and The Chosen One tasked with personally defeating the Big Bad of a particular era (i.e. Link). To carry out these tasks, they have been gifted with magic Ninja powers, long lives, and an innate skill with Magitek. The "servant" angle appears to be more cultural than genetic, however, as whatever duty individual Sheikah may initially feel beholden to with the protagonists usually gives way to genuine personal loyalty, whether that be Impa's close friendship with Zelda in Skyward Sword or Paya's intense crush on Link in Breath of the Wild. Plus, the presence of the Yiga Clan shows that they are perfectly capable of rejecting the whole servant role.
  • Mass Effect:
    • The geth were originally this for the quarians, their name even means "servant of the (quarian) people" in their native language. They were built not to care one way or another, and everything was fine... until after some modifications they started asking questions. The quarians were slightly concerned at this, and tried a hands-on approach to sating their creations' curiosity. The geth reacted as you would expect. Part of the reason why the geth are so reluctant making a full-scale and preemptive attack against the quarians and simply drove them away is because they can't fathom the consequences of turning back against their masters, whom they still wish want to reconcile with.
    • The drell have this sort of dynamic with the hanar. Though the hanar did not create the drell, they did save the drell from total extinction. Most drell see it as an obligation to serve the hanar in payment of this debt. For their part, the hanar treat their drell servants extremely well and care for them as best they can. Drell will also get very angry if this is compared to slavery: they wish it known that they entered into this deal voluntarily.
    • The kett of Mass Effect: Andromeda are mentioned in an optional codex entry to have vassal species. No detail is given on how they treat them, but knowing the kett, that's probably a good thing.
  • Moshi Monsters has Glumps: spherical, dopey, evil minions of the baddies. Unfortunately, they make them by transforming Moshlings. They can be de-Glumped though.
  • Pokémon Sword and Shield gives us Indeedee, a species of Psychic/Normal types based off of butlers and maids. In this case, they have a pragmatic reason for serving humans: namely, they're emotion eaters who feed off of gratitude, and serving humans is the easiest way to get a steady supply of the stuff.
  • With the exception of Gnasty Gnorc himself, the Gnorcs (and by extension all enemies) from Spyro the Dragon (1998) were transmuted from the dragon's treasure horde by Gnasty Gnorc's magic. While rather stupid, they do appear to have actual wills of their own, their personalities ranging from cowardly to petty to actually putting up a fight against the purple dragon. Remnants of the gnorcs even appear in the sequel, having been reformed and are now running the amusement park at Dragon Shores.
  • Several examples in the Star Control universe, most clearly the Androsynth who have a grudge against humanity for doing this to them. Also, arguably, the Ur-Quan themselves, who were genetically modified into two subspecies while enslaved by Puppeteer Parasite. After their revolt, they modified those puppet masters into subsentience and now keep them on their ships as "Talking Pets" for translation.
  • Starcraft has the Protoss and the Zerg. Both were created as this by the Xel-naga. Specifically, it turns out, Amon. It doesn't end terribly well for the Xel-naga, though.
  • In Star Trek Online, the Iconians have a number of Servitor Races - the Elachi (the strange, mushroom-headed aliens Jonathan Archer encountered), the Solagen-based lifeforms, the Romulans connected to the Tal Shiar (though this may not be the case anymore), the Vaadwaur, the Bluegill (those bugs from all the way back to the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation) and the Heralds. The finale of the Iconian War plot, "Midnight" reveals that the Heralds fit the main definition of this trope.
  • Stellaris:
    • You can start the game with your empire having the "Syncretic Evolution" origin, so that your homeworld's dominant species shares the planet with a less-intelligent sentient species that has become part of its society. Said species always has the "Strong" trait due to generations of selective breeding, as well as the "Servile" trait, making them stupid but loyal menial laborers. If you pick an egalitarian government these Serviles can enjoy full citizenship, or you can go the authoritarian route and make them an explicit Slave Race.
    • Rogue Servitor-type Artificial Intelligences subvert this; originally, perhaps, they may have been straightforwards servants. And then they got given more and more things to take care of until they finally ended up taking the initiative to keep their masters safe from harm and unhappiness, and became so servile as to cut them off from all decision-making and taking full charge so their "masters" would always be healthy, happy, and completely cut off from any possible autonomy.
  • The Nali of Unreal are considered a servant race ... by Skaarj.
    • The Kai from Unreal II: The Awakening. They don't (apparently can't) speak, they're extremely loyal, everybody can understand them, and they don't complain. The artifact which you spend the whole game trying to track down, when assembled, turned them into the Tosc.
  • World of Warcraft:
    • The Saurok were originally created by the Mogu to act as their enforcers. However they adopted the worst aspects of their creators which eventually led them to attack their own masters whenever unhappy. All-out rebellion eventually occurred and the Saurok would have been exterminated if they hadn't retreated into areas barely controlled by the Mogu and assassinated the Emperor who was most dedicated to the genocide. In the modern day they survive as disorganized bandits and warbands that prey on the other races.
    • The Titans created several servant races on Azeroth before departing. These include the Earthen, Vrykul, Mogu, Mecha-gnomes, and Tol'vir. Most started existence as beings of stone and metal only for the Old Gods to transform many of them into flesh. The Dwarves and Gnomes forgot their origins while the other races continued (Tol'vir and Mogu) or abandoned (Vrykul) their duties.
    • The Faceless Ones and Aqir were born from the primordial ooze seeping from the Old Gods and were subsequently enslaved. The Faceless Ones served as priests and soldiers while the Aqir were used for labor. The Mantids, Nerubians, and Qiraji who descended from the Aqir are still deeply tied to the Old Gods, though the Nerubians have not shown the same loyalty as the others.
    • The Stewards of Bastion are born from the power of Death and dedicate their existence to aiding the Kyrian. They tend to menial chores, build constructs, and tend to the grounds with great cheer.
    • The Stoneborn and Dredgers of Revendreth are races created using anima and the raw material of the realm. The Stoneborn are winged gargoyles created by infusing anima into stone. They serve as guardians and the core of Revendreth's army. The Dredgers are short, stout beings created from the primordial ooze of the land. Their role is menial labor and service to the Venthyr. Dredgers may also fuse together to create a single, large Biggun which can handle massive construction projects.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles X:
    • The Zaruboggan believe themselves to be such a species, created by a god they call Golbogga. One sidequest reveals that they are entirely correct. Furthermore, the people who apparently got conflated into "Golbogga" look virtually identical to humanity.
    • The Definians are all cloned cyborgs who were created by and serve a being called Fortun, whom they refer to as "Mother". Fortun looks nothing like them, being a floating, mechanical ball which is suggested to be an AI. Fortun controls them through mental conditioning, and one sidequest involves removing her control so the Definians can think for themselves. One Definian even manages to shake it off on her own, after spending time among humanity and growing to like them, though she says she still hears Fortun's voice in her head compelling her to obey.
    • The Ganglion engineered one called the Gaur as supersoldiers. They are referred to as being "the size of a mech", have strength on par with industrial heavy lifting equipment, and can take blows that would crush a human being with only a "bump on the head". Fortunately, the Ganglion on Mira don't seem to have many around: we only see one, and he's not even hostile since he developed a conscience and fled the Ganglion. The giant alien Daghan may or may not be one as well: he's similarly sized and covered in armor, but his body proportions and the shape of his head are quite different.
    • The Ganglion themselves (the species that leads the organization, that is) are revealed to have been created by the Samaarians in days long past as servants. The Samaarians, wary of the Ganglion rebelling, built in a weakness to Samaarian DNA, such that Samaarians were lethally toxic to the Ganglion. Humans are revealed to be the Samaarians' descendants, and also possess this toxicity.

    Visual Novels 
  • Furniture is treated like this in Umineko: When They Cry. Subverted; not only are most of the furniture characters implied to be imaginary, but whenever Shannon or Kanon use the term it doesn't actually refer to their race or social status. Rather, it refers to how their true identity, Sayo Yasuda, considers themself "furniture" because of their belief that their mutilated sexual organs make them unable to love, and therefore they may as well not be human.

    Web Animation 
  • In Minilife TV, instant vampires are created to serve their creators and thus are treated as second-class citizens. The LEGO World Builder page claims that robots can also be servants as they can be programmed to do anything.

    Webcomics 
  • The Seranith from Archipelago are a matriarchal servant race, but they don't serve blindly and consider it important to have a good master. From their point of view, they adopt a human into their care, and if they don’t feel fulfilled they’ll simply leave and find another master. I’m ancient times they used to be completely subservient to humans and had mechanical implants to suppress their free will. After the civilization fell, the Seranith evolved into a free species who are coded with the drive to help others at their own discretion.
  • The Orrotta in Charby the Vampirate were designed by the Scotodino to serve them, things apparently went awry with this arrangement when they relocated to Kellwood.
  • The Cyantian Chronicles:
    • The immigrant Cyantians were created by a Dying Race of aliens called the Rumuah by splicing together human and alien genes (after purebred humans were found to be "unsuitable"). Though the Rumuah weren't just looking for servants, they also intended the Cyantians to be their heirs when they died out.
    • Exotica Genoworks has created several new species with no intent of freeing them, though only the Fox Empire (pre-plague) and the Galactic Federation recognize their claims. The Wolf City-States and the Mounty Kingdom have taken in several refugees from their labs.
    • Cyantians were also briefly a Slave Race when the Moulin Phedra (more commonly known as "Squids") conquered them a century and a half after the Rumuah went extinct. That time they rebelled.
  • The Helpers of Pandora's Tale are catlike people bred and sold as slaves to the upper classes; they are subjected to intense mental programming to ensure their obedience, and are tied to their owners via a chemical agent that causes them to imprint on the first person they see after exposure.
  • Quantum Vibe features an earth society 500 years in the future that has a genetically engineered caste system, the lowest rank of which are the Associates. Most associates appear to be identically dressed dwarfish, bald, stooped men. They are apparently the working class of this century. But they can't do much about it because they've been engineered to produce pheromones that make everyone, including themselves, hate them.
  • The Sunlanders and Atlanteans in Sunset Grill were genetically engineered by humans to be this.
  • The Fae are described as this in Tales of the Questor and can also serve as an one example of what happens when a Servant Race loses its masters.
  • The Ferin of Terinu were a genetically engineered slave race for the Varn Dominion. The Dominion has also conquered other races for their service, and tried to do it to humanity as well.

    Web Original 
  • In Orion's Arm most Splices, Provolves, and Vecs (sapient robots) were originally created for this purpose. However the Sapient Rights Accords signed by most hu-friendly polities granted them their freedoms, that and the rise of the Transapients and Archailects kind of rendered it a moot point when most modosophonts found themselves under the virtual thumbs of entities far more intelligent than themselves.
  • The Aeoneonatrix in the Sporewiki Fiction Universe were created by the Cleanser to advance his ends. They are mostly happy with this situation, though at least one of them is trying to free his species from the religious system the Cleanser has set up, in which virtually all Aeoneonatrix sell their souls to the Cleanser as toddlers, at which point the Cleanser considers himself their master.

    Western Animation 
  • The villains in Adventures of the Gummi Bears have all servant races; the Ogres for Duke Igthorn and the Troggles for Lady Bane.
  • The Tomatoes in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!, at least the sentient ones, were created by Dr. Gangreene as his own personal servant race in order to conquer the world.
  • Neosapiens in Exo Squad started out as this before they Turned Against Their Masters.
  • The robots in Futurama were like this, but they eventually were granted some degree of freedom. How free they are depends on the episode, in one is said that there was even a robot president, in others it is shown that robots can still be controlled against their will as when the President activates their "patriotic circuits".
  • Rick and Morty has the Meeseeks, who are created by one of Rick's devices to serve a singular purpose and die in a puff of smoke afterwards. They are a race of Death Seekers who are motivated into accomplishing tasks as quickly and efficiently as possible to end their existence. However, after one is unable to help Jerry improve his golf swing it creates another Mr. Meeseeks to help, and so on and so forth. When that still doesn't help they promptly go insane and try to kill Jerry due to them living longer than intended.
  • Palismen from The Owl House are wooden statuettes of animals granted life to serve as familiars. Every person we see with a palisman of their own treats them with with the same level of affection that one would give to a beloved pet, but the fact that there are so many abandoned and injured palismen under the care of the Bat Queen shows that this is far from universal.
  • Sharks and barracudas are this to Witch Hedwig the Big Bad in Saban's Adventures of the Little Mermaid.
  • The Blub Blubs are the servant race of Momo in Star Street: The Adventures of the Star Kids.
  • Steven Universe:

    Real Life 
  • Dogs. They're specifically bred and raised by humans for a variety of tasks; they help hunters catch and retrieve game, they help farmers herd sheep and cattle, they guide the blind and otherwise disabled, they pull sleds in the frozen tundra and icy wastes of the North, they protect public and private property, they track criminals, they sniff out drugs and explosives in the police and military, and they serve as faithful companions. They're a Servant Race in every sense. However, they're a very loyal, well-treated and well-loved Servant Race, and the only animal to be considered "Man's Best Friend".
    • Cats, not so much. The domestication of small cats was more of a "quid pro quo" arrangement, as they ate the rodents that got into grain storages and/or spread disease. Thus early humans saw the benefit of enticing cats to live in their homes. If anything, cats probably thinks humans are their Servant Race.
  • Most livestock animals would count. Cattle, horses, goats, chickens, pigs, sheep, and others have been domesticated by humans for labor, food, wool, and leather. Like dogs, they have been bred for so long that the domestic animals have become very distinct from their original wild counterpart. In fact, cattle's wild ancestor, the aurochs (the S is part of the singular name), is now extinct.

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Top

Back to the Barn

Peridot refuses to collaborate with Pearl on the Gem Drill.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (11 votes)

Example of:

Main / ServantRace

Media sources:

Report