What if the Grey Council died?(Babylon 5 RAR)

[bilateralrope]

It may have been a case of Valen knowing but not wanting to mess with set events.

The Vorlons not wanting to mess with set events raises the possibility that they provided the poison used on Kosh in the pilot because the Vorlons did not want a paradox occurring.

[Batman]

And that is why I generally don't like time travel stories. Still raises the question of how the hell was the poison administered, and, given it was apparently unusual but definitely chemical, and a counter could be devised, how exactly did either of them affect an allegedly pure energy being?
Unless we assume the whole thing was a sham arranged by the Vorlons from the word go to make it look like they're corporeal beings, of course.

[Borgholio]

There is no reason to believe that the Minbari knew anything else or were shown anything else by the Vorlons.

Why not? 1000 years is a long time. I find it hard to believe that in that amount of time, nobody thought to ask anything of the Vorlons, or be taught anything by them as well.

It is much simpler to assume the Shadows slipped them the poison as opposed to thinking that the Warrior Caste first had reason to scan the angels saving them from the Shadows, save that information for 1000 years, and then use it out of the blue to develop a poison.

Well yeah, slipping them the poison does make sense from the Shadow's MO, but let's look at the reasons why this is not likely to be the case.

1. The Shadows were still in hibernation. They had only begun to stir a year after the events of the pilot. They were not yet ready to reveal themselves openly for another two years after that.
2. The Minbari would never work with the Shadows. They have too much history as pawns of the Vorlons.
3. The poison could be fairly easily cured by Dr Kyle. Shadow tech is way too advanced for that. The bio plague released by the Drakh, for instance, took years of work by millions of minds to crack. If the poison was made by the Shadows, I doubt it would kill him that slowly and be cured that quickly.

[Borgholio]

Still raises the question of how the hell was the poison administered, and, given it was apparently unusual but definitely chemical, and a counter could be devised, how exactly did either of them affect an allegedly pure energy being?

In their angelic form, they are partly physical. They are only pure energy in their pissed off form.

[Batman]

Energy is physical. You're thinking 'matter', and you're still wrong. Magnetic, electromagnetic, and gravitational forces routinely interact with matter in decidedly observable, predictable and verifiable fashions without themselves being matter. That does not require the Vorlon 'Angel' form to be subject to poisoning, leave alone requiring the one that hangs around in the Encounter Suit to be the 'Angel' form.

[Borgholio]

Whatever the semantics, They are still partly made of matter. Here's a quote from JMS himself:

Remember, they do have a certain physicality about them, even in that
form, and the nature of the poison was such that it would affect that kind
of life form using a crystalline base (note in the pilot the screen reads
analyzing crystallne structure, and you filter light or refract or distort
it using a crystalline structure).


jms

[Kojiro]

This is my other issue with Minbari stealth; it doesn't fit the rest of their culture. it's sneaky, creative, devious...downright chaotic, really. As the forces of order they should practically be issuing formal chivalrous challenges, not doing the ninja assassin bit.)

To be fair, it's not really stealth per se. No one has ever had a hard time knowing they were there, it's just locking on at any reasonable range (and they prefer long range) is next to impossible for younger races. It's really just absurdly good EW but does't do much to hinder detection as such.

As for the Vorlons, there was a source book that went into great detail about them. They have a crystalline core which is really little more than a data repository and conduit for their consciousness (don't ask me how this works when they're in someone else). I'll try and dig it up when I get home as the details are sketchy in my head. But it should be noted they do not actually change forms, they always look like the squid thing we see fight the security team. What they do do is change the way they're perceived. It is even said at one point that Kosh is recuperating because of 'the strain of being seen by so many at once' taxed him. In theory though they always have the core and are partly matter.

[fgalkin]

The Vorlons have taken the effort to genetically alter the younger races so they see them as angelic beings. You really think they'll allow them to pierce the illusion that easily? Also, they've only ever revealed even that illusion to just a few select people while obscuring as much as they could about themselves from the rest, like the fact that they don't need enviro-suits or a special atmosphere at all.

Nope, a species as secretive as the Vorlons for sure wouldn't allow the younger races to get a close enough look to conceive of some sort of biological counter-measure.

And yet, Kosh was scanned in the Pilot on his arrival to B5, and yet seemed quite fine with the idea. You're telling me no one ever scanned a Vorlon in a thousand years even when standard EA sensors had no trouble identifying their crystalline nature?

Headcanon ≠ canon.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Kojiro]

And yet, Kosh was scanned in the Pilot on his arrival to B5, and yet seemed quite fine with the idea. You're telling me no one ever scanned a Vorlon in a thousand years even when standard EA sensors had no trouble identifying their crystalline nature?

To be fair what they scanned was the physical crystalline part which is (if memory serves ) akin at a cyborg body part but not a true part of the vorlon per se. Even if the scan did get a reading on the vorlon itself it's worth noting that the encounter suit was open. I'm absolutely certain every race tried to scan the vorlons at various times but as is pointed out in the show, no one knows a damn thing about them. The idea that their suits are immune to younger races prying scanners is trivially easy to believe.

[mr friendly guy]

Not adding anything productive to the discussion, but did anyone find it amusing that the Minbari open their gunports as a salute, and somehow don't realize that it can be misinterpreted?

What level of unreasoning hidebound tradition can blind them from seeing that an aggressive action might be interpreted as.. an aggressive action?
Especially by cultures unfamiliar with their traditions, that generally means every damn alien species they encounter?

The dialogue indicated the Minbari expected EA ships to be able to see that the gun ports were open but not preparing to fire. Its just that their scanners due to plot device affected EA scanners and jump engines.

Now you might say, wouldn't the gun ports being opened be interpreted as hostility in and off itself even if the weapons aren't charging? Maybe? Or it could be the star ship equivalent of a bunch of armed people drawing their weapons "in case" but not actually using them. In such situations people may end up pointing guns at each other and then putting them all down after negotiations when its "obvious" no one is willing to break the dead lock by firing the first shot. Still quite risky but in the context of what I mentioned, its not completely stupid.

[lord Martiya]

As far I know, Dukhat himself could see it was a bad idea, and, according to the novelization (or the summaries of it I've found around the web) was ordering to close the gunports exactly when Jankowsky ordered to open fire.
Given the same summaries point out the Minbari had detected Soul Hunter ships just before Dukhat ordered to close the gunports, I was wondering: what if the Minbari were charging their weapons to kill the Soul Hunters?

This is my other issue with Minbari stealth; it doesn't fit the rest of their culture. it's sneaky, creative, devious...downright chaotic, really. As the forces of order they should practically be issuing formal chivalrous challenges, not doing the ninja assassin bit.)

It could be something Valen suggested them to do. Given what we know of his character, warships with immense firepower, extreme mobility and a stealth that make them all but impossible to hit at long range would be exactly what he'd consider the ideal warship.

[Batman]

As Kojiro mentioned, they're not doing the ninja assassin bit. The fact that there are Minbari warships around is always painfully obvious (what with them being plainly visible to the naked eye for starters). it's targeting them that's the difficult part.

[Batman]

Ninja Edit: That could actually be exactly what you're talking about-Valen telling them 'how is it sneaking when they can effortlessly detect your warships? You're not hiding, your ships are there for all to see. It's not your fault their targeting sucks.'

[lord Martiya]

About the effortlessly detect part, I have to point out a Minbari fighter managed to land on a Centauri warship, syphon air from it and fly away undetected. Then again it was Rangers doing that, so it may have been a modified version of the stealth technology (or even a setting the Warriors have but never bother using).

[Batman]

A one-man fighter (a pretty small one, at that, even by current real world aircraft standards) is marginally harder to detect than a bigass cruiser. Note that the fighter was still plainly visible to the naked eye. And given that was, if memory serves, one of the remote controlled cruisers from the effectively Drakh-controlled Centauri Republic, I wouldn't be particularly surprised if it wasn't doing much in the way of scanning (leave alone for something that small) and there was nobody on-board to look out the windows.

[NecronLord]

Anyone saying that the stealth is useless needs to actually watch the show some more.

A major part of the shadow wars was young races fighting each other. The ability to kick the arse of other young races is entirely relevant to that type of conflict.

The Minbari under Valen never militarily defeated the entire Shadow war machine, they won in the game the Shadows designed; the Shadows didn't roll out Death Clouds and such in that war, that we know of, for instance. (The Army of Light never militarily defeated the entire Shadow war machine either). Winning a shadow war isn't about beating the Shadows down, no matter what the Minbari's ancient texts might think; it's about coming out on top. Stealth that wins every engagement with say, the Centauri is entirely useful in this flowery-war.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

None of that is a new idea.
Once again, an argument that I thought had already been made,

Repeating and paraphrasing that, the vorlons and shadows can both see straight through Minbari stealth. It's worthless in the existential conflict they actually face. So why do they bother with it? How does it serve their game plan?

It lets them pound on the other younger races, lets them do things like turn the Earth-Minbari War into a rolling execution rather than anything resembling a real fight, and they certainly seem to have done enough of that to terrorise most of the known galaxy if Londo is anything to go by, but how much does bullying the little- League actually help their cause?

Remember the joint solution, the ISA White Star fleet (cobbled together by Vorlon and Minbari renegades) goes in more or less the completely opposite direction from the Minbari battle fleet, and successfully; the Minbari fleet of the EMW period is clearly designed to enact and enable tyranny and oppression, and would be all but irrelevant in the main event- as indeed it was.

And;

Trying to mature their stealth technology to the point where it is useful, and choosing to match the shadows in a game of battleships- I can see the logic of that as a strategy for them, but I think they're at least overambitious in trying it- they need more cycles to get it right than they've got- and unfortunate in the policy errors they've made; they are figures of terror, remember.
The Minbari have few friends, very few converts to the cause of order, and almost no allies who could present a united front when the darkness comes again. I'm not sure about losing to the humans even potentially, but I am sure that without the Babylon Project, the League and the White Stars, they would have lost to the Shadows.

Now, to highlight the particularly relevant bits as well-

It lets them pound on the other younger races, lets them do things like turn the Earth-Minbari War into a rolling execution rather than anything resembling a real fight, but how much does bullying the little- League actually help their cause?
The Minbari have few friends, very few converts to the cause of order, and almost no allies who could present a united front when the darkness comes again.

I say the way the Minbari make war does not serve the ends for which they make war, which is to convince the younger races of the rightness of the cause of their masters and mentors. The Minbari method is more than merely useless, it is actively counterproductive- they make order indistinguishable (periodically) from murder. They are the best recruiting agents the Shadows could wish for, and only the Shadows' own mistakes (such as their treatment of the Narn) have kept the war going even this many iterations.

It is essentially a war for hearts and minds, and the vastly improved and partially human enabled Shadow performance in this iteration (Why, Mr. Morden, how good to see you) is a significant factor. The fact that the Minbari do not understand this and the Vorlons have not chosen to set them straight is more than a sidelight, it is a major part of the problem. Are they, in fact, the civilisational equivalent of the brainwashed child- soldier?

Flower war, incidentally, I hope you mean that in the historic specific sense, Aztec wars- for captives, to be used as sacrifices to appease the angry gods. It fits.

[Simon_Jester]

At that point, yes, it becomes a fundamental critique of the Minbari strategy, and that of the Vorlons who back them. Then again, is it not often said of hyper-order, exaggerated-order, that this order becomes tyranny and defeats its own purposes?

[NecronLord]

None of that is a new idea.
Once again, an argument that I thought had already been made,

Repeating and paraphrasing that, the vorlons and shadows can both see straight through Minbari stealth. It's worthless in the existential conflict they actually face.

The Minbari did not face an existential conflict until the Planet Killers rolled out. They had no true conception of what the Shadows were capable of. The Minbari won the previous flowery war (yes it's an Aztec reference) for their Vorlon masters. The Vorlons didn't need them to fight a true war against the Shadows - they ignore the young races when they decide to do so - and didn't truly fight the Shadows ("You could have destroyed Z'ha'dum all along!") until Kosh was killed.

Bullying the little league helps their cause because that is what the actual war was about. The actual Shadow Wars are about the little league fights, and the ability to win them wins the war. A true war between a First One race and a young race is like the Vorlons' planned attack on the Centauri; where no victory is possible for the young race.

Do you think if the Shadows had rolled out a planet killer against Valen, he would have won, without massive First One help? He won by playing the Shadows game, for which the Minbari gear is optimal, because the Shadows mostly want their charges (all young races, to their mind) to fight one another.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Two iterations of the Shadow War ago, I would agree that you're right; but I think things changed more than that with Valen's intervention, and were going to go even further off the normative track with the emergence of the rest of the human race as a major player.

Every new race that emerges onto the galactic stage must become an instant (well, next iteration) bone of contention; existing pawns directed to convert or destroy it- but neither side work in secret. With spies and agents as a tool, yes, but they don't completely fool their operatives. They know which side they're on.

The Narn business- both a thousand years past and at Gorash 7- shows that the Shadows were willing to gamble, in person, for victory- if things were close enough to the tipping point that they could interfere directly and profit by it.

Vorlon efforts to engineer the younger races to see them as mentors, while extremely dirty tactics, imply that for them too the middle of the game board may be a place of non- intervention, the domain of their pawns, but if the chance to take and put their mark on a race comes within reach, they will stretch out and take it.

The state of the Minbari at the time of Valen's emergence gives me a working hypothesis; how do you convert a race from Order to Chaos? Why did they need Babylon 4 so very much? How did he come to permeate their culture so deeply?


I like this (hypothetical) scenario because it squares the circle- the Minbari, at that point, were the Shadows' primary target. They were moving close to the endgame anyway, every new race that emerged added fuel to the fire, the stakes were rising. To the extent of Shadow direct action against the Minbari, or concentration of pawns at least- and the Minbari were losing;

as the physical pieces of their society and the military that was supposed to shield them were coming apart under at least Drakh, I don't think the Centauri were that important then, and probably at selected weak points direct Shadow attack (they never miss, remember?)- their faith was also coming apart.

There is a dark side to the Minbari, which their religious caste must be there primarily to hold them back from- they damn' sure don't do much missionary work- and they could have gone the other way. More pounding, more loss, more misery, more defeat and they might have; become so miserable in the cause of order as to defect.

It's hard to gain control of a pawn race, or see how control can be gained, without an active, involved, manipulating subtlety neither elder race really seems capable of. (The Vorlons are too mysterious and cryptic, the Shadows show the blade too soon.) Like the forcible conversion of the Centauri, I expect it is rather a brutal process.

A race on the recieving end of that could easily believe itself to be under existential threat- and what of all the dead worlds IPX goes to? What about the Markab, wiped out by their own medico-religious stupidity and a Shadow virus? Pawns do, sometimes, get taken off the board. Races do die out. A pawn changing sides is actually under threat from both- from its' new masters beating it into submission and from punishment from the old.

Valen's intervention, with a convenient time travelling battle station, threw the Minbari a lifeline in the moment of their deepest need, brought them back from the edge. And, with some pressure from the Vorlons, they worshipped him for it.

That, at any rate, is the theory.

[NecronLord]

Some of what you say is valid - though my perception I must admit is coloured by my having read "EU" material where it's made clear that Shadows don't value their lives if they don't take risks with them, explaining why they put themselves in personal danger and don't spend the resources the Vorlons do in personal protection - but anyway, the point I'm getting at is that the Minbari have no way of knowing that the Shadows can see through their stealth with ease, because they have no real conception of what the Shadows are actually capable of. They've some lore (living central processors, never miss) about how the Shadows work, but they don't actually know that the Shadows are vastly more capable than they can imagine. What they do know, is that a war against the Shadows is a time of general conflict against many less capable races, whom their technology will work on.

In short:

1. Minbari have stealth because it is useful in their general activities (you can't win the next Shadow war if the Centauri have conquered you in the gap between them after all)
2. Minbari (and Vorlons) know that it is also useful in a Shadow War, because the Shadows do not just use their own ships, but act through intermediaries.
3. Minbari are not necessarily certain it's useless against battlecrabs etc.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Hm. The idea that we as viewers know vastly more about what's really happening than the characters in universe- I hadn't though to take that into account. Good point.

Although I still have to point out that to the extent there was any fighting to be done against the Shadows directly, and there would have probably been a lot more of it if we had got the originally planned season 4 and season 5 arcs, it depended a lot on the White Stars- a solution moving in the opposite direction from the battlewagon centric main Minbari fleet.

There's the other side of what I was aiming at, though, which is that what the Minbari think necessary and good, and what they don't think they need- or don't think of at all- gives away, or can be construed into, valuable information as to how they think; what their logic is, what their doctrines and practises are.

It's not a particularly pretty, or happy, picture. They can achieve tactical victory, they can fight and in most cases win (against almost everyone but the Shadows, which I admit they don't know or at least can't be sure of), but for hearts and minds, they're doing nothing.

I mentioned the lack of missionary effort by the religious caste as a joke most of all, but take that idea seriously for a moment; and the lack of disaster relief effort from the worker caste, law enforcement, intervention and policing from the warrior caste- where is the soft power, where are the weapons of peace? The Babylon Project was essentially the first time they resorted to anything other than a direct military solution.

Vir's report on Minbar that Londo takes to pieces, in traditional terms Londo is actually right. Low growth, and mired in the past. They can win the battles, against almost all the younger races, but they don't seem to be able to use those battles to any kind of effect other than surviving to do the same thing over again.

[NecronLord]

You're right, of course, and the Minbari's failure of dynamism is part of the failing of their Vorlon Mentors, their society is over-ordered, the Minbari stand as a cultural monolith, admirable in many respects but utterly inflexible. This is best seen in comparison with their opposite number; there's nothing to admire in Drakh Culture, but they are immensely adaptabe, so much so that they're sometimes completely different from one another. The Drakh can infiltrate another culture, and bring them to their way of thinking (As with the Centauri arc) very well, but you would not want to be a Drakh, likewise, you might want to be a Minbari, but their society lacks dynamism and growth.

[Replicant]

One balancing point, Delenn and the head of the Rangers both noted how much the Warrior Caste was relishing the one sided slaughter that was the Earth-Minbari War.

That coupled with Londo's comment about the Minbari sending an entire fleet over a minor border dispute suggests that the Warrior Caste have been wanting a war and a chance to show their absolute superiority for a very long time.

[Replicant]

Question that I have always wondered about, curious if anyone knows.

Were the Narn the first race for the Vorlons to experiment with giving telepathic powers to use as weapons?

Or were they the first younger race to develop mental powers and before this the Vorlons and their allies had never realized just how vulnerable to telepathy? The success of the Narn telepaths driving out the Shadows in the last war suggested to the Vorlons that telepathic ability should be seeded amongst the other races to create a new line of weapons?