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Vorlons

Compiling B5 movies, Crusades, and of course B5:

  • <LI> At a point in evolution of a race members (all or some) transcend physical flesh and become beings of energy (as seen in the episode where Earth is destroyed 1000 years later and in "The River of Souls" where Soul Hunters make a mistake and capture entire race when it was about to cross that barrier)
    <LI>Energy is neither created nor destroyed, its merely transfered (paraphrasing: I was asleep in HighSchool Physics). If Vorlons could reproduce in energy form (by splitting(also called asexual reproduction)) over infinite millenia they'd become infinitly small
Given that the above is true a conclusion can be derived:
Vorlons reproduced when they were non-energy beings. As Lorien said, in the beginning only a handful was born. Energy state is beyond sex - all energy is same. That is the reason "the Vorlon government took it (Kosh I death) pretty hard. It's beed a while since one of them died"



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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Entil`Zha:
No one knows for sure, maybe the last Vorlon died in the previous Shadow War... I don't think we will ever know. But one thing I'd like to see is a ship from the Alliance going to the Vorlon Homeworld and coming back to tell about it!

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


According to Lyta Alexander (modified version) young races aren't supposed to go near Vorlon Homeworld for a million years...and with Vorlon display of technology you can be certain that they can enforce it even though they left.


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There appears to be a rough progression to the depiction of the First Ones appearances, which might tell a little bit about their behavior and life cycle.

The very First One is Lorien, who is only seen in his true form very briefly. He appears a huge sphere of energy from which pseudopods extend. Lorien is thus very much like a titanic single-celled organism-- perhaps an amoeba. The choice of making Lorien a bit like an amoeba is quite insightful, since the amoeba divides by equal fission and effectively makes every organism billions of years old. There is no way to determine which of any two 'child' amoebas is the original from each split. Trace that back infinite generations and you have an incredibly old _individual_ micro-organism.

The Vorlons in their true form also appear as gigantic energy-based versions of micro-organisms. They appear as giant hydras; tubular organisms with many flailing tentacles. There is a vague evolutionary progression, in terms of complexity and age of origination, between amoebas and hydras. I do recall that hydras can reproduce by budding; Vorlons can do this in the sense of breaking off portions of their consciousness and putting it inside other beings. Budding could also explain the intense and complicated relationship betweek the ancient and wise Kosh and the more tempermental Ulkesh; the latter may have been grown from the former's flesh. It could also explain why Ulkesh insisted upon being referred to as Kosh following his 'parent's' demise. Their personalities and age may have differed, but their identities may have at one point been one single being.

Shadows also appear as 'primitive' lifeforms; they look like a blend between spiders and perhaps crabs or lobsters. This breaks the pattern in part, because at one point during the series, it is mentioned that the Shadows were older than the Vorlons. I guess one can wriggle around that, by considering that the Shadows may have been slightly less evolved than the Vorlons-- it might explain why they were not glowing entities of light like Lorien and the Vorlons. In any case, the Shadows were still beyond being composed of matter-- their ability to vanish from sight may well have been an indication of their partial immaterial nature.

(Tangent: I suspect that if the Shadows had been explored more thoroughly, it would have been revealed that they reproduced by impanting larvae in other beings, much like the xenomorphs of the Alien movies and the Magog of the Andromeda series. This would explain their affection for parasites like Keepers, that burrow into the flesh of a host. Not to mention their indifference to the suffering of individual beings.)

To me, this suggests that JMS saw that the earliest of the First Ones were immortal because though they were intellectually quite advanced, their bodies were relatively uncomplicated. Much like a multi-function gadget, generally the more complicated something is the faster it is probably going to break. The same may apply to living things in the B5 universe.

For this reason, the Vorlons probably lived longer than Shadows simply because their bodies were simple and less prone to fatal injury. It took _many_ Shadows to destroy Kosh, and it did not seem a quick death either.

The Shadows may well have been older than the Vorlons, but few if any had survived from the days when Lorien had charged them with the duty of shepherding the younger races. As a result, the older Shadows which might well have understood their role best were gone, and their impatient and cruel descendants instead obliterated whole worlds quite casually. The ancient Shadow leaders may well have had an enlightened attitude towards their philosophy of Chaos, but the brats only had a taste for blood and a dogmatic love for strife. The ancient Shadows in fact may have had more understanding than the ancient Vorlons, because they held the lair of Lorien with a religious regard that seems totally absent among the Vorlons.

The Vorlons by contrast were apparently longer-lived than the Shadows, because they still had a few patriarchs like Kosh Naranek who did not live by the 'letter of the law' and could remember when Lorien walked among them, perhaps as a teacher. Kosh understood that the role of the Vorlons was to use Order to foster growth among the younger races-- not prove their ideology through genocide, as eventually occured.

Sure, I'm analyzing it to death... but this appears to be an asylum for people who share some of my affliction...
 
There is one person that knows....Lita Alexander.

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Knowledge can be gained from anything,even standing objects themselves.To transfer it to wisdom well....That is the tricky part.
 
You must also understand that maybe Lorien was a Projected image from another Plane,Therefore thinking in 2 planes of existence at the same time therefore combining them into 1 Reality,He works at multiple levels His actual slef must have been in another Place we never actually saw it,the energy was just a way for sheridan to comprehend a little and not waste time Being confused longer then he should....

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Knowledge can be gained from anything,even standing objects themselves.To transfer it to wisdom well....That is the tricky part.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>at one point during the series, it is mentioned that the Shadows were older than the Vorlons.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>That was in In the Shadow of Z'Ha'Dum, part of Kosh's PR package about how the BIG BAD Shadows were terrorizing the poor innocent little Vorlons. I'd say he was lying.
 
I'm fairly certain that the shadows are the oldest of the first ones, but i haven't receiced any confirmation of this

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This short dewd in my pic scares me...
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by solaris5:
I'm fairly certain that the shadows are the oldest of the first ones, but i haven't receiced any confirmation of this

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I thought it was something like the Vorlons and Shadows were the
youngest of the old races, but I might have made that up somewhere along the line. It was in Into the Fire, I think.


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Lorien


Apocalypse Box

Shadows
Vorlons
Walkers Sigma 957


Minbari and so on

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Bus
"Yes, he is handsome in an ugly sort of way."-Homer
 
Perhaps you need organic ships(like vorlons) to penetrate vorlon space as seen when the rangers ship departs earth, on a side note humans and minbari make it(transcend to a higher state) while the centauri and narns don't...

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Emporer Turhan-"How will this end"
Kosh-"In fire"
 
With the Vorlons, who's to really know? Perhaps they are unisex.

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"I welcome you and present this place to you as a gift. I am called Valen, and we have much work ahead of us."
-Valen, War Without End Pt.2
 
I don't know about male and female, perhaps the Vorlons had more than two sexes, but I believe that they had sexes, otherwise, how much fun could the "Hour of Scampering" be?
shocked.gif
laugh.gif
laugh.gif
shocked.gif


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You're speaking treason! Olivia De Havilland as Maid Marian
Fluently! Errol Flynn as Robin Hood
You're talking treason! Olivia De Havilland as Arabella Bishop
I trust I'm not obscure. Errol Flynn as Dr. Peter Blood

Pallindromes of the month: Snug was I, ere I saw guns.
Doom an evil deed, liven a mood.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jade Jaguar:
I don't know about male and female, perhaps the Vorlons had more than two sexes, but I believe that they had sexes, otherwise, how much fun could the "Hour of Scampering" be?
shocked.gif
laugh.gif
laugh.gif
shocked.gif


<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Not very, I suppose. The greater question is 'how often do they scamper'?



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"I welcome you and present this place to you as a gift. I am called Valen, and we have much work ahead of us."
-Valen, War Without End Pt.2
 
When ever they want to.

------------------
You're speaking treason! Olivia De Havilland as Maid Marian
Fluently! Errol Flynn as Robin Hood
You're talking treason! Olivia De Havilland as Arabella Bishop
I trust I'm not obscure. Errol Flynn as Dr. Peter Blood

Pallindromes of the month: Snug was I, ere I saw guns.
Doom an evil deed, liven a mood.
 
We are never told how long the Vorlons actually live or how they actually reproduce. JMS wanted the Vorlons to be a very secretive, mysterious race, so he didn't give us much information about them other than things that lended credence to their power and mystery. But I suppose that we can imagine all kinds of different ways for the them to reproduce, what their homeworld is like, if they even have one as someone here has pointed out as being a possibilty, and reasons why no one except for Lyta was to try and go to Vorlon space and come back alive. It's all a part of the fun of trying to figure out the Vorlons.
smile.gif


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Lorien: Who are you?
RW: The salad man.
Lorien: Why are you here?
RW: To be the salad ambassador.
Lorien: What do you want?
RW: Everyone to know the joys of salad.
Lorien: Do you have anything worth living for?
RW: Yes, my salad bars.
 
Vorlons, vorlons, shine so bright
Give the Shadows awful fright

Live so long, are so old
Bio-tech secrets they withhold

Saying confusing things of note
Like "Avalanche falling, pebbles can't vote."

With their presence they will bless
By answering every question with, "Yes"

Killing Deathwalker, making teeps
For order and discipline to keep

Big square armor and triangle head
Only let Lyta have a bed

When the Rangers were in a rut
Kosh got off his "encounter-suited butt"

They killed some shadows, ah but then
Morden snuck into his den

Kosh had died, but check it out
Kosh part II had come about

Mean an nasty, what a dick
Lyta said he pulls out to quick

Soon they all came to see
"Get the hell out of our galaxy!"

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"You do not make history. You can only hope to survive it."
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Doctor Gonzo:
Lorien
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


<table bgcolor=black><tr><td bgcolor=black><font size=1 color=white>Spoiler:</font></td></tr><tr><td><font size=2 color=black>The Hand... or possibly</font></td></tr></table>


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>

Apocalypse Box
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


<table bgcolor=black><tr><td bgcolor=black><font size=1 color=white>Spoiler:</font></td></tr><tr><td><font size=2 color=black>The Hand?</font></td></tr></table>

And of course, based on the advertisements, lunch money would be somewhere before the Shadows as well...

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>
Shadows
Vorlons
Walkers Sigma 957


Minbari and so on

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>at one point during the series, it is mentioned that the Shadows were older than the Vorlons.
---------------------------------------------
That was in In the Shadow of Z'Ha'Dum, part of Kosh's PR package about how the BIG BAD Shadows were terrorizing the poor innocent little Vorlons. I'd say he was lying.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
JMS says differnet. He mentioned that the Shadows are slightly older than the Walkers...

So, let's do this again (show/JMS info bold, guesses italic):

Lorien

Triad

Hand

Thirdspace Aliens

Shadows

Walkers

Vorlons

Mindriders

Torvalus

Kirishiac

younger ones are considered middle-born...

I'm not sure about the Apo-box... could be anywhere...

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"ShadowScout"
Roman Alexander

"Go on, watch out for Shadows - we'll watch you right back!"

What do you want?
ShadowShips!
 

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