The Drazi Freehold
Click HERE to see a picture of a Drazi--in this case, a "Green".
The Drazi are one of the main participants in the League of Non-Aligned worlds. They are a reptillian-looking race (it is unknown, however, whether they have anything else in common with reptiles than their appearance) who are violent, beuracratic, and not terribly bright.
Drazi are hermaphrodites, or so I've heard, having BOTH types of...attributes, male and female, on the same body. Despite the fact that they are all technically "its", they are often referred to as "he", as their large size, bulky, heavy bodies and deep voices make it hard for other humanoids to not think of them as outright male. They have rough, greyish-greenish scaley skin, with ridges on their faces and the tops of their heads. They have white blood.
They do build some pretty cool ships--the Drazi Sunhawk, seen in the episode "Deathwalker", for example, kicks butt. Drazi swords and knives are NASTY-looking things with squiggly, bent, or barbed blades, and to make it even nastier, they often put poison on the tips.
But overall, they are DUMB. Just look at the way they choose their leaders: Every five years, they make up a bunch of sashes of two colours, green and purple, equal to the number of Drazi, for each area that has Drazi in it--on the station, on their colonies, on the homeworld, everywhere--and put them all in a barrel (the sashes not the Drazi, although that wouldn't be a bad idea...). Then every Drazi pulls out a sash and whichever one they get, they are now SWORN to follow the Leader of that colour, and to hurt ANY Drazi wearing a sash of the other colour. The Leaders also get their leader-sashes, which have a star on them to distinguish themselves from the others, simply by pulling it out of a barrel. It is ALL totally, completely, RANDOM and arbitrary! They fight over absolutely NOTHING! The fighting goes on for an entire year or until one side has been completely beaten senseless, whichever comes first. ANYONE who is wearing the Leader's sash becomes the Leader of that colour, including if they are not even Drazi! You see, that particular rule is old, and comes from the days before they had contact with other races, so they never thought to include a provision for what to do if an alien gets the sash. A new rule has been proposed, but it's still in committee...
They do seem to have some redeeming personality traits, though, such as an evident tendency towards self-sacrifice to save another, even if that other is not of their own race. We've seen several examples on the show of Drazi ships taking the fire for someone else. For example, it was a brave Drazi captain who let himself be killed to help Marcus escape in Matters of Honor.
Little is known about the Drazi religious beliefs, except that their main (only?) deity is named Droshalla, and that if a "sacred event" occurs somewhere, then EVERYTHING that was in the area at the time of the event is "blessed", including people, and that to touch any of the "blessed" things is a huge honour/thrill. Of course, the PEOPLE tend to get kinda ticked off when the Drazi go around demanding to touch them...
In the world of Babylon 5, there are races that have all kinds of colours, like the Minbari, the Humans, the Centauri, and, yes, even the Narns; there are races that are meant to be purely mysterious, like the Vorlons; there are races that are meant to be sinister, such as the Drakh, Dilgar, and Shadows--and then, there are races that are just put in to lighten the whole thing up a bit and provide comic relief.
The Drazi DEFINITELY fall into the last category.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
"Vote PURPLE on November 3!"
Click HERE to return to the main Other Races page.
Click HERE to return to Centauri Prime.
