: One thing worth noting is that we seem to encounter more cyborgs than
: actual robots throughout the entirety of the Marathon series - and I'm not
: just thinking of the S'pht here. The Pfhor themselves use all manner of
: cyborgs or cyborg-like beings to implement their will. The most notable
: one is of course the Pfhor controller we kill on Pfhoraphobia, but there
: are others too: most importantly, the Assimilated BoBs and Juggernauts
: both embody a combination of organic and mechanical parts (Juggernauts
: bleed, at least in the first game). I'm not perfectly sure what to make of
: this, but it certainly complicates the picture a bit.
You know, this is a really good point, and with the exception of the Drones from M1/Infinity I can't actually think of a single Pfhor thing that's supposed to be entirely robotic. And those drones do have three eyes, like the Juggernauts, so possibly... there's some kind of Pfhor brain implanted in there? So maybe the Pfhor don't actually have proper robots at all, only some kind of cybernetics technology, and so while they can build effectively robot bodies, they still need organic beings, their brains at least, to operate those bodies. That eliminates the vast majority of the benefits of robots, and at that point unless you need something with a body better or different than organically available, you might as well just use the organic beings in their natural bodies. It also meshes well with the Pfhor's known lack of good AI.
I think that's the best solution to the problem here. The Pfhor DON'T "got robots", so they still DO need slaves.
Which makes me wonder if, in an alternate timeline where Durandal didn't instigate their doom and they managed to steal AI technology from humanity, a robotics revolution might just put a natural end to the Pfhor slave empire, simply by making slavery obsolete.
