Shadow ship

A Shadow warship

Shadow ships are warships that the Shadows employ when instigating conflicts among the Young Races. These ships are superior in almost every way to the warships of the Young Races, but they can still be defeated with clever tactics and/or sufficient numbers.

Attributes

Examples of organic technology, Shadow ships are living things grown to serve their purpose. Their origins aside, Shadow ships are extraordinarily fast, powerful, and durable by the standards of Babylon 5. Features include:

• A beam weapon capable of cutting a Narn heavy cruiser in half in less than a second, suggesting hundreds or thousands of terawatts of firepower. The weapon is accurate enough to easily hit starfighters and is also useful for precision orbital bombardment.
• A pulse weapon capable of causing hyperspace jump points to collapse, destroying any ships attempting to transition through them.
• A launch mechanism capable of rapidly deploying at least one squadron of Shadow starfighters.
• Hyperdrive technology capable of transitioning the ship to hyperspace in less than a second, without forming the vortex typically generated by B5 hyperdrives.
• Hull materials capable of withstanding sustained fire from the weapons of Minbari warcruisers and even Vorlon warships before suffering significant damage, indicating that they can withstand or repel hundreds of terawatts of firepower for a least a short time.

Vulnerabilities

Shadow warships are not sapient entities and are not capable of operating independently. Each Shadow ship requires a sapient being to serve as a pilot and central operating system. Virtually all aspects of the ship's performance can be degraded by subjecting the pilot to telepathic attack, although such an attack is traumatic for the telepath, as well. In the last Shadow War, the Shadows attempted to reduce this vulnerability by acquiring telepaths for use as pilots for their ships.