Vorlon
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The Vorlons are an ancient race from the science fiction series Babylon 5. Extremely advanced, enigmatic and extremely reclusive, the Vorlons are more than a little frightening. They maintained the presence of exactly one person, ambassador Kosh, on the station. When in the presence of other races, Vorlons invariably cover themselves entirely with bulky encounter suits.
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Nature
It was common knowledge/speculation that the Vorlons are old, powerful and manipulative. All three points are understatements by orders of magnitude.
The Vorlon race is a member of the First Ones, the earliest beings to gain sentience, and its age and development reflect this. While almost all others of their kind left the galaxy for greener pastures, the Vorlons stayed behind to act as guardians and guides for younger races.
Unfortunately for all concerned, they were not the only one to do so. The Shadows took on the same mantle with a diametrically opposed outlook on how to act on it. For untold amounts of time the histories of these two races have been interwined in a struggle for their protectees. In the conflict, the Vorlons represent strict lawfulness and unquestioned obedience to authority. Their question -- Who are you? -- centers on one's identity. In comparison, the Shadows represent advancement through chaos and strife.
By the time of the series, both sides have long since lost sight of the original goal. The conflict has metamorphosed into a bizarre game for ideological, not military, dominion. The Vorlons would operate among the younger races and on occasion appear to provide beneficial guidance to the main characters, but in the long run treat them as what they are to the Vorlons - pawns.
Appearance
When in the company of aliens, Vorlons wear complex and intimidating encounter suits that completely conceal their physical form. The suits are tall, looming and ornate affairs apparently unique to each Vorlon, with one-'eyed' heads. Their speech is accompanied by an illumination of the suit's front and eerie background sounds, and is extremely terse. Suited Vorlons tend to give a haughty impression, observing rather than participating and saying only what suits them, when it suits them. Casual conversation with a Vorlon is a contradiction in terms.
The stated reason for the use of encounter suits is that they provide the specific enviromental conditions their users need, and is utterly false. The race is perfectly capable of functioning in an oxygen / nitrogen atmosphere and vacuum seems to have no ill effects. The point of the suits is to hide the Vorlons' forms, which are a tool very seldomly used.
When a Vorlon appears outside its encounter suit in the presence of others, which only happens in exceptional circumstances, things get complicated. It will use its considerable telepathic abilities to appear as an angelic being to the younger races. Broadly, the result is a white-clad humanoid with extremely large luminous wings of the observer's race. That many, if not all, of the younger races have a strikingly similar concept of a benevolent being of light suggests some rather obvious conclusions. These projections have not been witnessed speaking.
As an interesting side-note, Ambassador Londo Mollari of the Centauri Republic sighted an unsuited vorlon and didn't see anything at all. This is left unexplained in the series, as is whether this was unique to him or a trait of his race. One obvious possibility is his affiliation with the Shadows, though Peter David's book Out of Darkness indicates that Mollari just saw a very bright ball of energy.
It is only under very exceptional circumstances that a Vorlon abandons its deceit and shows its true form, detailed immediately below.
Physiology
A naked Vorlon is a remarkable and extremely dangerous thing to behold. The race has advanced to the point of abandoning their old bodies and becoming beings of energy. This shape is a bright, semi-translucent being with a number of tendrils. They are very nearly immortal barring violence and laugh at things like gravity.
True Vorlons are seen only once in the series, as the second Vorlon ambassador to Babylon 5 is forcibly ejected from the station and the situation degenerates into a firefight. The specifics are left vague. A poisoning incident involving the first Vorlon ambassador indicates that Vorlons do possess a physical body of some sort or a physical component to their energy form. JMS confirms that the Vorlons are indeed physical beings, capable of physically striking objects with their bodies. Also, two Shadows were able to kill a Vorlon, which suggests that their advantage in space combat is not reflected in meleé. (On the other hand, Centauri energy weapons were effective in killing Shadows, whereas human PPGs were completely ineffective against a Vorlon.)
The episode 4-22, the Deconstruction of Falling Stars, says something for the theory that the race's original forms had only one eye.
Mental capabilities
Vorlons appear to be extremely powerful telepaths and telekinetics, or to possess equivalent abilities. They have at least enough finesse to leave sharp scratch wounds on human skin, and enough strength to ram an adult man against a wall and strangle him. Vorlons have also been known to tap into the minds of sleeping younger beings and communicate with them in this way. Their projected form, whether telepathy, -kinesis or both, is quite a feat and has been known to be taxing for them, especially when presented to multiple races at once; Kosh, who was seen by the majority of races present at Babylon 5, had to recover for weeks.
As can be inferred from above, Vorlons do have emotions. Their intellectual capabilities can only be guessed at. They are capable of breaking off parts of themselves and storing them in other beings. Don't ask.
History
Year 1260
In 1260, the penultimate Shadow War raged between the Shadows and the combined forces of the Vorlons and Minbari. The exact date of the first Shadow War is unclear but it first began roughly one thousand years before the founding of the Babylon 5 station.
Years 2260-2261
The final Shadow War occurred one thousand year later in 2260, in which the Shadows battled the combined forces of Babylon 5, Minbari Federation, Narn Regime, the League of Non-Aligned Worlds, and the Rangers. The Vorlon Empire originally consented to aid this combined force. But following the death of the Vorlon Ambassador Kosh Naranek by the Shadows and Captain John Sheridan's trip to Z'ha'dum, the Vorlons became convinced that the only way to stop the war was to destroy all the planets that had been touched by the Shadows. The Shadows decided to pursue the same policy following the destruction of one of their major cities. As a result, billions of sentients died when the two forces began destroying the planets the other held influence over.
Sheridan brought the two forces into direct contact at Corianna VI, and then launched a suicidal assault on both sides at once. An armada of allied ships and the remaining First Ones managed to stop the Vorlon planet killer, but more importantly demonstrated that the younger races were in open defiance against their "protectors". Faced with either letting them go or exterminating each and every last one, the Vorlons and Shadows finally stepped down and left the galaxy with the remaining First Ones to join the others beyond the rim.
After the Departure
After the Vorlons left the galaxy, their homeworld was left abandoned, but they left their defense systems on the planet operational. As a result, several expeditions to the planet were destroyed. The Vorlons also left a message with Lyta Alexander that the planet was not for the younger races. The Vorlon Homeworld was not to be theirs until they were ready, at least another million years.
Lyta Alexander was also left with other information as well. She was left with a command to activate the self-destruct systems on Z'ha'dum. When she did after the Drakh looted the planet, the planet exploded. In the movie Thirdspace, she was able to give information on a new alien menace that was discovered in hyperspace, and to destroy that menace. When the Drakh used Shadow control pods to operate Centauri vessels during their war with the alliance, Alexander was able to identify the devices as such due to information left with her.
Finally in 2262, it was revealed that the Vorlons had modified her to be a living telepathic superweapon - a doomsday machine to be used against the Shadows if the Vorlons lost the war. They made her into the most powerful human telepath with the possible exception of Jason Ironheart who had already transformed into something similar to a First One and Kevin Vacit, former Director of Psi Corps, who had carried a Vorlon inside himself which, together with the unique abilities he had to begin with, resulted in him becoming even more capable than Lyta (As revealed in The Nautilus Coil).
One million years after the events of Babylon 5, the humans who had become First Ones in their own right left Earth for the last time after artificially causing the sun to explode, thus taking most of the solar system with it. The future humans then left for what was called "New Earth." J. Michael Straczynski indicated that New Earth was in fact the old Vorlon homeworld. These future humans had evolved beyond the need for physical bodies. These humans used encounter suits very similar to the Vorlon encounter suit, and also used organic ships.
Homeworld
Little is known of the Vorlon homeworld. Expeditions to their space don't come back.
Lyta Alexander is one of only two known humans to have visited the planet, and is not only sworn to silence but noted that if she told others what she had seen they wouldn't believe her anyway.
The environment in Ambassador Kosh's quarters may provide some insight into the conditions, or it might just be a part of the front.
Technology
Space vessels
Virtually invincible, Vorlon vessels are not only based on organic technology, but register as life forms and can act on their own without pilots. The ships themselves are almost sentient to a degree and possibly even telepathic, capable of singing to their masters and to others. A Vorlon ship is closely tied to its pilot, the death of whom will cause the ship to be so stricken with grief that it will commit suicide. Furthermore these organic ships are capable of regeneration such as in the case of the ship of Ulkesh Naranek which was able to grow back after being reduced to pieces. Their immense fleet includes "planet killers", several miles wide, that do exactly what their name implies. The Vorlons also possess technology enabling them to "fold" portions of hyperspace in on themselves, creating areas in hyperspace where ships are undetectable to less advanced sensors.
Biotechnology
As usual, very little is known except that the race is horribly advanced. The Vorlons have the ability to alter alien species to breathe in their native atmosphere and serve as receptacles for their spiritual forms. For example, Lyta Alexander had been physically altered to allow gills. On the other hand, gills appear to be something that even the Narn can do.
Later in the series, it is revealed that the Vorlons engineered the creation of telepaths in various alien species, as weapons in the next Shadow War. Some did occur naturally.
Lyta Alexander and Sebastian
Only two non-Vorlons are known to have ever gone into Vorlon Space and return. One is Lyta Alexander, Babylon 5's second commercial telepath and assistant to Ambassador Kosh. After being touched by the Vorlons, she travelled to the borders of Vorlon Space to find them again; when she was almost dead, she was picked up by the first Ambassador Kosh and taken to the Vorlon homeworld, from which she returned alive as the assistant to both of the Vorlon Ambassadors called Kosh.
The second is Sebastian, formerly known as Jack the Ripper, whom the Vorlons took from 19th century Earth in order to employ him as an Inquisitor.