[maje]

Okay, I know this isn't so much a mod related question as a general B5 question, but does anyone know why the Drakh vessels are designed so completely different than Shadow vessels?  I mean, as the most trusted servants of the Shadows, wouldn't it have made more sense for the Drakh design aesthetic to mimic that of their masters, especially with nearly unrestricted access to their technology?

Earth Force while having limited access still produced variants closer in design philosophy to the Shadows than the Drakh (the hybrid vessel from Crusade and the Omega-X just to name a few).

Also, do we know of ship designs from other allies of the Shadows that aren't Drakh.  I know the cancelled Sierra game was going to introduce a new Dark Servant race whose tech I think more closely resembled Shadow ships.

In terms of actual allies, I've heard the Zener (the aliens who were responsible for prepping humanoids to act as the CPUs for the Shadow vessels), the Soldiers of Darkness (dealt with in one episode of Season 2 and never seen again),  the Wurt (mentioned in the Passing of the Technomages trilogy; I have no idea who or what they are), and the Streibs (conjecture: this may be more due to fan retconning as I believe JMS never originally intended for them to be allies of the Shadows, just as an "evil alien of the week" plot device that's never mentioned again.  Also, it should be noted that the Streibs are pitifully weak when fighting on equal footing with an Earth Force Omega-class Destroyer and accompanying Aurora-class Star Furies (and God only knows how bad the Minbari slaughtered them for past intrusions into their space).

So, I'm not too sure about the Streibs having been accepted by the Shadows seeing how they're not all that terribly strong.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Could be as simple as the Shadow ships being organic and possibly even grown.  The drakh being constructed would look more like traditional craft.  I've never researched this but that would be my first guess.  Guess #2 would be that the masters didn't allow it.  Just like the Minbari didn't have full knowledge of the Vorlons.  The masters only give the subjects the toys they feel they are ready for.

[terran_emperor]

THe drakh ships are to Shadow Vessel what the white stars are to vorlon vessels. IMHO

[-Norbert-]

Remember the way of the Shadows.
Do you think Forell would ever have brought Delenn to the Drakh for negotiations (right before the Minbari civil war), if they looked like the Shadow's servants on first glace?
They are more usefull that way.

[terran_emperor]

Well do the Minbari at first glance look like sevents to the vorlons?

The White star is Mixed vorlon/Minbari tech...it looks like neither race's from the outside.

I say Drahk ships are a similar think - a mix between Shadow Tech and original drahk technology

[maje]

The only fault in Minbari-Vorlon analogy is that no Minbari lived on Vorlon Prime.  The Drakh lived on Z'Ha'Dum and also piloted the Shadow spitfires when events necessitated.  The Drakh also helped build many of the weapons that the Shadows employed during the war.  The Minbari never built any of the proper Vorlon ships, nor did they pilot them.  And also, it still doesn't address the question of why Earth-Shadow hybrid vessels had an obvious influence in terms of Shadow design philosophy whereas the most loyal servants, the Drakh, show nothing at all in relation in terms of design philosophy with their masters.

Did JMS ever give reasons for why he opted that the Drakh designs differ so much from the Shadows to be completely unrelated?

[terran_emperor]

I was only talking about the drahk ships..ive never heard anything about drahk in spitfires

[karajorma]

Clark's shadow hybrids were jury-rigged with Shadow tech that was barely understood by the people building them. It's like getting the ancient Romans to build a nuclear bomb using 20th century materials and expecting their version to have white marble columns.

By the time the Warlocks were built they had a better handle on the tech and the Shadow influence is much less marked.


The Drakh on the other hand understood what shadow tech they were granted access to and thus could do the same as the EA did with the Warlock right from the start.

[terran_emperor]

Yes that makes sense

[IPAndrews]

The Drakh lived on Z'Ha'Dum and also piloted the Shadow spitfires when events necessitated.  The Drakh also helped build many of the weapons that the Shadows employed during the war.

Where did you get these two pearls of wisdom from? Can you quote something canon to back this up?

[terran_emperor]

Yes id like to know too

[maje]

The Drakh lived on Z'Ha'Dum and also piloted the Shadow spitfires when events necessitated.  The Drakh also helped build many of the weapons that the Shadows employed during the war.

Where did you get these two pearls of wisdom from? Can you quote something canon to back this up?

The Drakh helped build many of the Shadows' weapons?  I believe that is referenced in Epiphanies when after Sheridan exlaimed up seeing the mass exodus from Z'Ha'dum, "Those aren't Shadow ships, who are they?" to which Delenn responded "The Shadows could not have accomplished all that they did on their own.  Some races were there Dark servants" or something to that extent.  Sure that's infererenced, so then let's go to A Call to Arms where they took about the Shadow Planet Killer, where Sheridan is explaining to Dureena that the Drakh were responsible for the death of her world, "The Shadows gave the orders, but the Drakh were the ones that pulled the trigger, hell they probably helped build the damn thing", which THEN leads us to the Legions of Fire trilogy Book 2: Summoning Light, where the Drakh reactivate massive Shadow base called "Xha'dam" which was buried under K0163 that generated the Shadow death cloud.

As for the Drakh having piloted the spitfires, we again look no further to Legions of Fire, Book 2: Summoning Light, the scenes leading up to the death of Lou Welch.  When he was on assignment as a private security contractor, he had found the remains of a Spitfire that had crashed  From the wreckage he was able to find a cloak, that served as a concealment apparatus that allowed Lou move about unseen, earning him the nick-name "Ghost".  It was not revealed until after his murder, that the Drakh, Shiv'kala, stated that he had somehow been able to get access to a Drakh cloak.  Using this as conjecture, it seems likely that the Drakh piloted Spitfires when times necessitated.

Also, please bare in mind that JMS wrote the outlines for Psi-Corp, Legions of Fire, and Passing of the Technomages trilogies, so everything there is indeed 100% canon.

[IPAndrews]

JMS wrote the outlines for Psi-Corp, Legions of Fire, and Passing of the Technomages trilogies

everything there is indeed 100% canon.

Aren't these two statement mutually exclusive? If JMS only wrote the outlines how can they be 100% canon? Therefore I am choosing to see Drakh flying Spitfires as non-canon tosh .

[-Norbert-]

The only book JMS said to be 100% cannon is "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" and I'm pretty sure he said that only because of who the author was 

Also it was never said that the ship in which Lou Welch found the "cloaking suit" was a spitfire. I don't remember the exact quote, but I remember that the describtion was vague.
Besides even if it was a Spitfire, it is more likely that the Drakh was only a passenger on board, rather than the pilot. Since we know that the big shadow ships function completely independent of any pilot (the being in it's core is just a component like a CPU) we can assume that the fighters work alike.

As for the Drakh having piloted the spitfires, we again look no further to Legions of Fire, Book 2: Summoning Light

Little mixup here. The titles are "Legions of Fire: Armies of Light and Dark" and "The passing of the technomages: Summoning Light". From context it's clear you meant "Armies of Light and Dark" though.

hell they probably helped build the damn thing

"probably" doesn't mean for sure.
And the Drakh didn't build the Deathcloud in the Centauri Trilogy themselfs. When they arrived at the station the cloud was already partially build. So they didn't programm the station to build a cloud, they just restarted the process that was stopped and left unfinished by the Shadows when they left.

[maje]

To Dream In the Cities of Sorrow is 100% canon, just like the trilogies he outlined (yes he actually did say that those were canon), and the Shadow Within is 90% canon (though I'm not sure which 10% isn't).

The passage in Armies of Light and Dark (thanks for clearing that up, I get the titles screwed up occasionally), states that the ship Lou found was similar to the one that had been on ISN during Season 2-3, but far smaller and not exactly the same in design, hence it's a good bet that it's a Spitfire.  We also know from the DC Comic run, the spitfires had pilots (though these aliens didn't appear to be Drakh from what I remember).

Using the Warlock-class Destroyer as an example of 'mastery of shadow tech integration' is a bit misleading.  We have to remember that the Warlocks were supposed to receive Shadow bio-armor which really is what gave the Omega-X it's appearance.  The Warlock itself had some Shadow programming in its computers, though I hardly think that counts.

Still, it doesn't seem to make any sense that the Drakh would not base their tech more on what their masters had.  I mean, is there a reason why Drakh vessels haven't been equipped with the far superior Shadow bio-armor (assuming that Drakh vessesls are sporting bio armor of their own, which I thought they were), like EarthForce tried to during the Clarke Administration and Black Ops dealing with the Shadow Hybrid?

Also, does anyone know of any other races that served the Shadows other than the Drakh, Zener, SODs, and Wurt (whatever the hell they are. mentioned in Technomage trilogy).

[Woolie Wool]

Centauri, until Londo set Morden up the bomb on the island where all the Shadow crabs were.

[-Norbert-]

There are two reasons in my mind why the Shadows would give the Humans more advanced technology than the Drakh.
1) The Drakh are already devoted to the shadows, so they don't need anything more, but the Human must be persuaded to join the Shadows and the bio armor is a kind of bribe.

2) The Shadows saw the Humans as something special (at least Kosh beliefed it and the Shadows most powerfull Servants - Morden and justin - were Humans) and thus gave them more goodies than the Drakh, which were more for the menial tasks.

And then there could also be the theory with the subterfuge, I mentioned earlier. The Shadows wanted to avoid that other races recognize the Drakh as their servants on fist sight and thus asked/persuaded/ordered or whatever the Drakh to design their ships accordingly.


As for the ship.... He said it looked like the ships on ISN. That was a battlecrab with the arms spread to the sides and forward, while the spitfire has the spikes to the backside and in all directions.
With that describtion I would guess even the scoutship that was only shown in "Shadow Dancing" is a more likely candidate than the spitfire.
Or maybe it was just a smaller battlecrab. I don't know how cannon this information is, but I heard (and read) again and again that there are different sized crabs.

[Flipside]

Actually, didn't the Drakh that Londo met say something about Sheridan destroying their Homeworld?

[Vidmaster]

With that describtion I would guess even the scoutship that was only shown in "Shadow Dancing" is a more likely candidate than the spitfire.

also seen in "into the fire"

[terran_emperor]

I never saw them in that episode...Where were they?