Characters / Babylon Five Vorlon Empire

This is a listing for characters associated with the Vorlon Empire that appear in the Science Fiction series Babylon 5. Visit here for the main character index.

The Vorlon Empire

Vorlons in general

"Who are you?"

• Abusive Precursors: Eventually prove to be this. Because of their love of order and obedience and ancient pissing contest with the Shadows, their "mentorship" of the Younger Races has mutated into "go fight and die against the Shadows, because we say so, and don't ask questions."
• Alien Non-Interference Clause:
  • Apparently played straight at first. While they have an embassy on B5, the Vorlons are conspicuous by their absence at council meetings, never offer any aid or support when petitioned to do so and seem almost completely uninterested in what the other races are doing at all, unless one of the other race's ships enter their territory, at which point the ship in question is never seen again...
  The avalanche has already begun. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
  • Ultimately subverted. They are one of the two races of "First Ones" (the other being the Shadows) who took it upon themselves to stay behind and mentor the younger races. They've managed to weave themselves into the mythology of several races including humanity, and appear to such races as a holy figure from their mythology. They also subtly set up their client races as disciples of order and as foot-soldiers/cannon fodder in their endless proxy-wars with the Shadows.
• Ancient Astronauts: Implied. It is unknown if they planted religions to manipulate the younger races or if they took advantage of pre-existing religions.
• Ancient Conspiracy: They have been secretly manipulating the evolution and cultural development of junior sentient species for millions of years.
• Arc Words: "Who are you?" is a question they regularly ask of others.
• The Bad Guy Wins: For a certain value of bad guys, the Vorlons end up getting everything they wanted — their goal to bring the races together eventually leads to the Interstellar Alliance. While its the younger races who of their own come up with it, it's the Vorlons who initially led the ground work (using the Minbari and Rangers). And ultimately humans and Minbari both evolve into Vorlon-like beings. The younger races may have turned against the Vorlons, but ultimately it's the Vorlons' method, not the Shadows' which proves dominant.
• Beneath the Mask: The series references that seeing a Vorlon's true face inspires absolute trust, and Kosh himself says that he avoids showing it since he would be recognized. By who, someone asks? Everyone. The Vorlons look like angels (or other alien cultures' benevolently divine analogs). Later subverted, when we discover this is what they cause the younger races to see them as. Everyone except Londo, that is...
• Benevolent Abomination: Played with at length.
  • The Vorlons claim to be this, guiding races like the Minbari against the Shadows. Subverted when it turns out they are in a long war with the Shadows and only care if the younger races keep fighting on their behalf.
  • Kosh was an exception to the Vorlons — in the words of several characters, he cared about the younger races. But he was "good" by the Blue-and-Orange Morality of the Vorlons. At one point he put two of the main characters in a test of their commitment that nearly killed them.
• Berserk Button: "What do you want?" is a major Armour-Piercing Question to them. The reason for this is ultimately revealed to be that they don't know what they want. They've lost their way and are no longer fit to serve the role of mentor they appointed themselves to.
  Kosh: Never ask that question.
• Catchphrase: "Who are you?"
• Control Freak: They react badly to the younger races not doing as they're told.
• Eldritch Abomination: What they ultimately prove to be as they are beings of pure energy.
• Eminently Enigmatic Race: They don't let anyone see what they look like inside their encounter suits. When an emergency forces one to leave his suit, he still hides behind telepathic projections. Their ambassador to Babylon 5 seldom bothers to attend council meetings, and tends to speak entirely in Koans. He ultimately turns out to be one of the nicer ones in a race of Abusive Precursors.
• Energy Being: They seem to be mostly energy, but Word of God from JMS and the pilot (where Kosh is poisoned) both confirm that Vorlons have not achieved transcendence and are still physical beings.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Murdering a few species to prevent the Shadows from gaining influence among the younger races? The Vorlons find this acceptable. Murdering EVERY other species solely because they are inferior to you, as the Thirdspace aliens do? The Vorlons find that horrifying.
  • In addition, while they claim to be largely indifferent to the affairs of the younger races, the Vorlon Empire filed a formal protest against the Centauri Republic for launching an orbital bombardment of the Narn homeworld. This from a government whose rep usually declines to even show up for B5 Security Council meetings, despite that being the only (official) reason he's on B5 at all.
• Ghostly Glide: While wearing encounter suits, the Vorlons move around with a silent, gliding motion.
• Gone Horribly Right: While the younger races turning against the Vorlons and asking them to leave them alone was never part of the plan, the alliance the Vorlons manipulated Sheridan and Delenn into forming would shape the galaxy for millenias to come, and the humans would eventually ascend as Vorlon-like beings and even move into the Vorlon homeworld. In the end, the Vorlons won their bid against the Shadows, it just didn't take the form they imagined it would.
• Good Is Not Nice: The more caring Vorlon characters, like Kosh, are this.
• Hypocrite: Their most valued question is "Who are you". As Sheridan points out, they themselves don't know any more. The Vorlons' lack of an answer is further reinforced by their being hidden behind encounter suits, being willing to use the same names for different individuals, and the fact that they are perceived differently by different races.
  • Threw My Bike on the Roof: The Vorlons start using their planetkillers to blow up planets with Shadow influence. Sherridan points out that they never used them on the Shadows themselves. At one point the Vorlon fleet targets a planet for destruction because only one person under Shadow influence was there.
• Immortal Apathy: The Vorlons, like the Shadows manipulate the younger races but don't seem to care much for their fates.
  • The Kosh does take an interest in the main characters, but is killed for "breaking the rules" of the Vorlon-Shadow conflict. His replacement is this trope at best. He turns on the younger races along with his fellow Vorlons when they unleash their planet killers and has to be put down
• Immortals Fear Death: Lorien mentions that it had been a long time since any Vorlons had died. After Kosh's death (or most of him anyway), the entire rest of his species seems to Jump Off The Slippery Slope.
  Kosh (appearing as Sheridan's father): It's too late for me. I'm sorry for what I did before. I knew what was ahead. I guess... I guess I was afraid. When you've lived as long as I have, you... you kind of get used to it.
• Knight Templar: The worst are this. Nothing is too extreme to stop the advance of the Shadow ideology.
• Light Is Not Good: The Vorlons deliberately cultivate an angelic image of themselves to inspire superstitious awe in less advanced races, but only some of them genuinely care about the younger races' well-being, while most of the others only want to impose their (highly dogmatic) ideology on the younger races and to recruit them into the war with the Shadows that lost its meaning long ago.
• Manipulative Bastard: The Shadows claim this because they manipulated humans and dozens of other species to respond favorably to them and fear the Shadows.
• My Greatest Failure: The creation of the Thirdspace jumpgates. Before they had ascended to beings of light, Vorlons originally discovered that the soul goes somewhere after death, and they developed a full scientific understanding of what the soul was and how to travel to the apparent afterlife where they go. They soon discovered how wrong that was when they unleashed the Thirdspace aliens: a race of telepathic horrors with nigh unstoppable warships that nearly wiped the entire galaxy clean of life. The Vorlons never forgave themselves for their hubris.
• Non-Indicative Name: Their government is referred to as "the Vorlon Empire", but doesn't appear to have any emperor/empress or engage in imperialism.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: They started off conducting themselves as benevolent guides to other cultures, but degenerated into caring only about proving their ideology correct instead of the welfare of others.
• Order Versus Chaos: They are Order. That doesn't really help, though.
• Perfection Is Static: The Vorlons are one of the First Ones, old races that predate most space-faring civilizations. Their rivals the Shadows cast them as "frozen perfection". The Vorlons live up to this by supporting races that blindly follow them and asking "Who Are You?". That diving question is meant to have their followers focus on themselves and the Vorlons' cause. As soon as anyone steps out of line, the Vorlons are quick to punish them. Later the Vorlons take to blowing up whole planets that have any trace of Shadow influence. When confronted by Captain Sherridan in a mental projection, the Vorlons appear as an angelic figure encased in ice.
• Sadist Teacher: Most of them are extremely cruel and ruthless in convincing their "pupils" to follow their ideology and uncritically worship them.
• Starfish Alien: They are the first alien species that humans consider to be virtually incomprehensible.
• Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: They have generally god-like powers.
• The Svengali: Their mentoring of the younger races has become more like outright manipulation.
• Touched by Vorlons: Trope Namer. They are capable of Super-Empowering other races with Psychic Powers via physical contact, which is a major plot point in the series.
• The Unpronounceable: The Vorlon language appears to consist entirely of musical notes and synthesizer sounds.
• Voiceover Translation: They speak in their native language, with a synthesized voice providing simultaneous translation.
• You Cannot Grasp the True Form:
  • Dr. Kyle apparently suffered serious mental trauma from seeing Kosh while treating him. According to Word of God, this was because Kosh was just conscious enough to appear to Kyle in his angelic form.
  • Word of God also inspired the Babylon 5 tabletop sourcebooks on the First ones and describes the Vorlons thusly: The Vorlon encounter suit and their angelic form are both masks they wear to interact with the younger races. A Vorlon's true form isn't even the glowing squid-like creature seen when Sheridan and Kosh took down Ulkesh - that itself is an artificial crystalline body that can phase through matter and contains the Vorlon's soul. The Vorlon soul itself is just a mass of energy that intersects real space and hyperspace. The closest thing to the true form of a Vorlon is a Vorlon ship, as they are living organic extensions of themselves.

Babylon 5 Ambassadorial Staff

Kosh Naranek

Ambassador Kosh Naranek

Played by: Ardwight Chamberlain/Jeffrey Wilerth^note voice/body

"I have always been here."

The Vorlon ambassador aboard Babylon 5. Kosh is quiet, highly enigmatic, and only rarely participates in diplomatic meetings. He serves as something of a mentor to Sheridan and is a close associate of Delenn.

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• A Form You Are Comfortable With: While the Vorlons appear as religious deities to all the races they have genetically influenced, Kosh also takes a different approach when communicating with other beings telepathically. He has taken the form of both Sheridan and G'Kar's father while communicating to them in their minds, indicating that Kosh regards himself as a father figure to the younger races.
• Benevolent Abomination: Kosh is an exception to the Vorlons attitude towards the younger races — in the words of several characters, he cares about the younger races. But he's "good" by the Blue-and-Orange Morality of the Vorlons. At one point, he puts two of the main characters in a test of their commitment that nearly kills them.
• Berserk Button: A foreshadowing one. Sheridan asks him (Kosh) what he wants, unwittingly asking the same question the Shadows ask younger races. Kosh immediately flares up and tells Sheridan never to ask that question.
  • When Sheridan starts openly defying him and the Vorlon agenda Kosh is enraged to the point where he not only inflicts physical harm on Sheridan but almost kills him. Ultimately it was a subversion because Kosh was motivated by fear of death just as much by anger at Sheridan's demands
• Creepy Good: Albeit inadvertantly; he was initially unaware that the younger races find the fact that no one knows what he looks like under the encounter suit to be a source of potential fear. He's still a good guy - broadly - but he's still pleased that he causes this reaction.
• Cryptic Conversation: Talks almost exclusively in these.
• Defector from Decadence: Toward the end, he recognises the ruthlessness of the other Vorlons and orders his personal followers to help Sheridan against the Shadows.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Twice. He orders his followers to attack the Shadows in support of Sheridan, knowing that he will be killed by the Shadows as a result (quite probably with the acquiescence of his own government). Then the part of him that survived inside Sheridan sacrifices himself to help kill Ulkesh.
• Koan: known as "Koshisms" in the fandom
• Mathematician's Answer: Kosh is really fond of these, to Sheridan's irritation, and there's even hints that he does it partly just to mess with him.
  Sheridan: How do I know you're the same Vorlon? Inside that encounter suit, you could be anyone.
  Kosh: I have always been here.
  Sheridan: Oh yeah? You said that about me, too.
  Kosh: Yes.
  Sheridan: I really hate it when you do that.
  Kosh: Good.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: He is mostly killed by the Shadows during the third season and completely in the fourth.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: The reason Vorlons have any reputation at all for benevolence is because Kosh actually gives a damn about the younger races.
• No Body Left Behind: When the Shadows killed him, all that was found was the remains of his encounter suit.
• Not Quite Dead: Part of him survived his initial apparent death by using Sheridan as a host.
• Old Master: Acts as enigmatic wise old mentor to Sheridan.
• Pet the Dog: Despite showing indifference to the problems of the Narn and Centauri in the first season, Kosh interupts G'Kar's dust fueled Mind Rape of Londo and grants him a vision leading him to enlightenment, for absolutely no reason.
  • Except, perhaps, to influence G'Kar to bring the Narns into the Alliance so they can be used as pawns against the Shadow-controlled Centauri. Kosh already knows both races are doomed, so he may have been trying to play the rivalry to the Vorlons' advantage.
  • He also came to see the dying Centauri Emperor who had expressed a wish to see a Vorlon before he died. Unlike the above there is no possible ulterior motive for this, Kosh just seems to have decided to grant the heartbroken old man his last wish.
• Soul Fragment: A small piece of Kosh survives his assassination and lives on inside Sheridan for a while.
• Stern Teacher: Does not like being questioned or disobeyed but ultimately a good person with the best interests of the younger races in mind.
• To Be Lawful or Good: Kosh chooses to be Good while the other Vorlon choose merely being Lawful.

Kosh II/Ulkesh Naranek

Ambassador Kosh II/Ulkesh Naranek

Played by: Ardwight Chamberlain

"We are all Kosh."

Kosh's replacement as ambassador to Babylon 5.

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• All There in the Script: he insists on being called "Kosh" throughout, after the character he replaces. His real name, Ulkesh, was only revealed in a spin-off novel (it is also used in UK DVD subtitles). He's also "younger" than Kosh.
• "Ass" in Ambassador: He treats representatives of races that are supposedly the Vorlons' allies with outright contempt.
• Bad Boss: He physically knocks Lyta around whenever anything upsets him, makes no attempt to avoid causing her pain when he enters and leaves her body, and forces her to give up all her possessions because they're "distractions".
• Color-Coded Characters: While Kosh's encounter suit is light-colored, Ulkesh's is dark and his "eye" is red instead of Kosh's green.
• Domestic Abuse: His physical, psychological, and metaphorically sexual ill-treatment of Lyta approach this in implication.
• Evil Counterpart: Kosh's far more ruthless and unpleasant replacement.
• Horns of Villainy: Ulkesh has curved tubes on the shoulders of his encounter suit, that resemble horns.
• Knight Templar: He really cares about nothing but forcing people into obedience and using them to promote his ideology.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: The "eye" light in his encounter suit is red, and he's a very nasty person.
• Vader Breath: His encounter suit's breathing system is much noisier than Kosh's.

Others

Sebastian the Inquisitor

Sebastian the Inquisitor AKA Jack the Ripper: Vorlon Examiner of Chosen One Candidates

Played by: Wayne Alexander

"Remembered not as a messenger, remembered not as a reformer...not as a prophet, not as a hero...not even as Sebastian. Remembered only... as Jack."

Formerly Jack the Ripper, Sebastian was abducted by the Vorlons and promptly transformed into an examiner of their candidates for The Chosen One.

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• Alien Abduction: His career of murder ended when he was abducted and forcibly recruited by the Vorlons.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Inverted. He became an alien tool after achieving his historical notoriety, and as a result of it.
• Break the Haughty: What the Vorlons did to him, and what they have him do now on their behalf.
• Death Seeker: "They showed me the terrible depth of my mistake, my crimes, my... presumption. I have done four hundred years of penance and service, a job for which they said I was ideally suited. Now, perhaps, they will finally let me die."
• Driven by Envy: Delenn eventually comes to the conclusion that he's driven by jealousy of people who have genuine moral principles.
• Exalted Torturer: He was recruited by the Vorlons purely to physically and psychologically torture people to see if they were strong enough to be useful tools, and also possibly to manipulate them into believing the Vorlon's ideology.
• Icy Blue Eyes: His blue gaze is chilling.
• Ironic Hell: Sebastian wanted to purify the world of sin. Now, as his "penance," that's all he's allowed to do.
• Knight Templar: He brutally murdered women to try to make the world less sinful, and now tortures people in what he believes to be a righteous cause.
• Male Gaze: A blink-and-you'll-miss-it invocation that serves as an early hint to his identity. Just as he laments that "nothing changes", the camera lingers on some of the more-revealingly-dressed women milling about the Zocalo.
• Screw You Delenn: He continually says this to her during the session.
• Secret Test of Character: Delenn and Sheridan pass his test by being willing to die for one another.
• Serial Killer: He was actually Jack the Ripper, the first notorious serial killer.
• Small Role, Big Impact: He only appears in a single episode, but what he does reveals a lot about his Vorlon masters.
• Stay with the Aliens: Not that anyone wanted him back...
• Touched by Vorlons: He received some vague superpowers from the Vorlons, in particular extended lifespan.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: It's never revealed what happens to him after he leaves Babylon 5. Whether or not the Vorlons finally allowed him to die, as he hoped, or if they put him back in stasis for the next Shadow War, and if so, what they did with him when Sheridan convinced them to "get the hell out of our galaxy."
• What You Are in the Dark: Invoked. He is only satisfied when Delenn and Sheridan are both willing to die for a single other person in a situation where the wider universe will never know.