A Thought About the Vorlons

I've been rewatching B5 and Crusade lately and I was wondering about something that was never really addressed in eaither show, but I was wondering regardless as maybe a possibility?

When the Shadows left, any technology they left behind was "inherited" by other races that were sympatheric to their cause, notably the Drakh.

Would it then not be a possibility that the Vorlons left anything behind- perhaps even intentionally should they have wished someone to find it when the time was right?

Thoughts, anyone? Or would the Vorlons have been too secretive and protective to allow any of their technology to fall into anybodies hands?

Lyta said in Season 4, when she and Franklin presented the Shadow egg (remote controls for the Centauri cruisers) to Sheridan and company, that the Vorlon homeworld is off-limits for a million years, 'til we (humans) are ready.

I don't think it's explicitly stated in the show itself, but I've always been under the impression that the Vorlon homeworld is to where the humans are moving when Sol explodes in "The Deconstruction Of Falling Stars".

vacantlook said:

I don't think it's explicitly stated in the show itself, but I've always been under the impression that the Vorlon homeworld is to where the humans are moving when Sol explodes in "The Deconstruction Of Falling Stars".

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Yup, I believe we were intended to infer that.

As far as weapons Tech the Vorlons left behind, they left Lyta. Otherwise, their part of space was locked up, off limits, until we were ready for our Inheritance.

The Vorlons always wanted to appear to be more protective of their tech than they really were. Similarly, they claimed 'We take no interest in the affairs of others,' which was a lie. They had visited alien homeworlds for a very long time, manipulated aliens' DNA and histories, and their project to seed younger races with the telepath gene was going on for, what, thousands of years? Millions? A couple of Vorlons stuck around Earth to monitor the progress of human telepaths (Psi Corps trilogy), but largely left them to their own devices. But that's a lot of meddling. Clearly, they were very interested in making sure the younger races developed the way they wanted them to.

In 'The Nautilus Coil,' during the Telepath War, Kevin Vacit, former director of Psi Corps, is shown living on a Vorlon colony world. The organic tech systems there are regenerating, adapting to serve his needs, and prolong his life. As if it were waiting for him the whole time. It recognizes him as close enough to being a Vorlon that its defenses don't kill him, and it responds to his commands. He seems to have the keys to the kingdom, an unspoken invitation to explore Vorlon space and do whatever he wants.

We were never told who built the Great Machine, though people here and there claim it was built by the Vorlons, or some younger race who worked for them (where does this come from, the Mongoose gaming books? Does anyone know?). Or the unnamed race from 'A Voice in the Wilderness,' but I do not think so. If it was built by Vorlons, and Ivanova (a low level telepath) was able to do things while controlling the Great Machine that Draal said 'A normal mind should not have been able to do,' then it would seem the Machine is waiting to be accessed by telepaths, so they can make it do whatever it was built for. I did say 'if.' If not, then I guess it was built to steal Babylon 4, then inspire yawns across known space for all eternity.

They left a lot of stuff behind, but mainly the telepaths themselves. The Vorlons seem to have had a plan in mind for them, far beyond their use in the Shadow Wars. Lyta was most likely left behind for a reason, a purpose, a destiny. And they gave Vorlon tech to the Rangers to use in their warships, which the Rangers got to keep forever and develop further. They weren't concerned with their tech falling into the hands of younger races, they were counting on it. Same as the Shadows, which is why they left their gear lying all over the galaxy. They left some on Mars because they wanted humans to find it on the first planet they visited. Both races left known space, but continue to shape the future.

Raw Shark

"And that, my friend, is how you win an Opium War."
C. Montgomery Burns

I just made it to the end of Season four- watched Decontruction this morning Still one of my favourite episodes. My imagination's trying to fill in blanks, but Babylon 5 has so many of them, haha!

Really liked your insight, Raw Shark Thanks for the input, it was really interesting to read! I haven't read any of the B5 novels since I can never get my hands on them =_=

Thanks! Yeah, one or two loose ends out there. It's crazy re-watching and realizing just how thick the dialogue is with clues, indications, signs and portents, as it were. I remember going back to 'Infection,' and Garibaldi is telling the story to a reporter, in an off-hand kind of way, about how he and Sinclair met on Mars and went on a disastrous mission and got stranded in the desert and have been friends ever since. It's just so casual, and then they did that story in the comics. And did you see the alien skeleton in the hallway in 'Voice in the Wilderness' is the same as the alien body in 'Ship of Tears'? JMS was just so far ahead of everyone else in the storytelling he did, he thinks so far in advance. A few of the newer tv writers have caught up in some ways, but they just don't get it right, they don't see how a mystery has to have an answer that means something and make sense. Significance, impact, I just haven't see those in a series in a while.

Raw Shark

"My outlook is that these guys (superheroes) are supposed to be playing the most heavy duty games around, which is basically life and death. And my take was that: you don't always win. And you shouldn't always win."
Jim Starlin

Humans eventually evolve into the same kinda thing as Vorlons don't they? Light energy rather than biological mass... I think we are the Vorlons!

LongLiveTheNarn said:

Humans eventually evolve into the same kinda thing as Vorlons don't they? Light energy rather than biological mass... I think we are the Vorlons!

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It looks like we evolve into Vorlon-like beings.

I wonder if the Vorlons would have left anything for the Minbari, considering out of all the younger races it seemed the Minbari had the most contact with the Vorlons, or at least had more knowledge of them than the other races.

The Minbari eventually reach the same status as humans do, becoming more Vorlon-like, although whether that happens before, after, or around the same time as for humans, that's hard to say. Of course, there are at least two humans who reach that state before the rest of us do, Jason Ironheart and John Sheridan. Ironheart says as much when he goes, "see you in a million years". This seems to mean that humans as energy beings will be effectively immortal.

RW7427 said:

I wonder if the Vorlons would have left anything for the Minbari, considering out of all the younger races it seemed the Minbari had the most contact with the Vorlons, or at least had more knowledge of them than the other races.

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I think Lyta's "we" probably included the Minbari.

If the Lost Tales are Canon, where did the "ISA 1" come from? Sheridan openly stated that it was from Vorlon technology that was "left over". This implies that at some point Humans did get Vorlon tech from either Vorlon Prime or possibly the destroyed listening post or the biggie; that being Lyta wasn't killed during the Teep War but rather went back to Vorlon Prime and is feeding Sheridan or whomever Vorlon tech.

James

The Minbari had access to a fair amount of Vorlon tech. Remember, the White Stars were a combination of Vorlon and Minbari technology. There was also almost certainly a Vorlon ship or two damaged in all of the aggressions before they left for the Rim. Chances are the ISA took some of them and retrofitted them.

Jan

Jan said:

The Minbari had access to a fair amount of Vorlon tech. Remember, the White Stars were a combination of Vorlon and Minbari technology. There was also almost certainly a Vorlon ship or two damaged in all of the aggressions before they left for the Rim. Chances are the ISA took some of them and retrofitted them.

Jan

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Hope none of the Drakh got any of those.

I also wouldn't have been surprised if Kosh had set up some sort of special high tech package to be delivered to humans at some predetermined future point in humanity's advancement. Kosh did tend to act outside of normal Vorlon paterns and expectations.

When the Drakh escaped Z'ha'dum shortly prior to its destruction, they took all the shadowtech they could cary, so there's lots of that around. The Psicorps books tell us that the Technomages themselves are shadowtech (or dependent upon it) and didn't want to be used for evil purposes. We know from the unproduced scripts for Crusade that there was at least one Earthforce secret base using shadowtech (And presumably they made the Shadow Omegas). The Franklin movie was going to involve Shadowtech, so basically the galaxy is lousy with the stuff.

I really think there's probably a ton of Vorlon tech, too. Not counting their homeworld, or the Telepaths, there were an unspecified number of bases and outposts, there are fragments of ships that were destroyed, there was Kosh II (Gezundheit)'s transport, there was something on Venus (Don't recall exactly what), There's the Thirdspace device, or was. As has been pointed out, there's whatever info the Vorlons shared with the Minbari in the construction of the White Stars, and this was obviously useful as they extrapolated it in the construction of the Excalibur.

I don't think there's any less Vorlontech floating around than there is Shadowtech. The differences are these:
1) The Shadows, by their nature, were sloppy, and the Vorlons, by their nature, were fastidious.
2) Shadowtech seems to be deliberately invasive, and hence is probably fairly easy to use. Vorlon tech is probably more discrete, and evasive, and probably doesn't WANT to be used.