SS - The Tyrannical Ten - Darth Tenebrous (The Ellimist) vs Exar Kun (Decaf Wizard)

THIS DEBATE HAS FINISHED. THE WINNER, @The Ellimist, WILL ADVANCE TO THE NEXT ROUND.



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This thread is apart of a larger tournament between ten Suspect Insight members. You can read the other debates here:

• Preliminary round - Darth Caedus (DC77) vs Darth Vader (Ethanion) [Finished]
  
• Preliminary round - Darth Krayt (Azronger) vs Darth Tyranus (ArkhamAsylum3) [Finished]
  
• Round one - Arcann (XSupremeSkillzX) vs Darth Maul (ILS) [Finished]
  
• Round one - Darth Caedus (DC77) vs Kyp Durron (SithArchaeologist) [Finished]
  
• Round one - Darth Krayt (Azronger) vs Revan (DarthBane77)
  
• Round one - Darth Tenebrous (The Ellimist) vs Exar Kun (Decaf Wizard) [Finished]
  

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Darth Tenebrous as of Darth Plagueis. Exar Kun as of Tales of the Jedi - The Sith War # 6.

Each introduction can take a maximum of one week to create. Each subsequent post can take a maximum of two weeks to respond. There will be three posts per side. The first post, not including response or sourcing quotes, will have a maximum of 10,000 original characters, the second 17,500, and the third 25,000. Each debater will have a 2,500 finisher. The verdict will be decided by a panel of moderators.

This thread follows all default stipulations listed in the "Guidelines" thread. Additional rules are as follows:

• Feats take precedent over directly and indisputably contradicted statements.
  
• Quotes are binding and have no expiration date unless directly or subtextually contradicted. For the latter, such a case must be made within the debate itself.
  
• All letter or number statistics ascribed to characters from C-Canon sources, including role-playing games and trading cards, are banned.
  

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Elm is going to slaughter. TAEP.

I wouldn't underestimate Decaf.

I mean I know Decaf's alright sure but imo I can't really see myself beating Elm in unless the topic of discussion was extremely one-sided in my favour.

That's exactly what Decaf has here.

"From a certain point of view."
-Obi-Wan Kenobi

This is actually kind of easy from the perspective of characters being represented. Basically objective at this point.

Yeah, this is gonna be really easy.

If this was Tenebrae and the OP was mistaken, then maybe.

Tenebrous is too powerful for Kun tbh, but decaf can make the fight last longer. More than likely though Elm zeroshots (doesn't post)

Wewlad, will transfer post soon

TAEP . I really liked Decaf’s post although i felt there was a bit too much stuff in it.

TAEP

So this opener will cover:

1. Exar Kun <<< SF Malak
2. Re: Exar Kun’s showings
3. The Banite Line
a. Darth Bane
b. Darth Zannah
c. Tenebrous’s Master

More will come later, in the interests of time and character count.

Exar Kun <<< SF Malak

I’m sure you’ve seen the infamous line:



You might not like it, but given the stated rules and the fact that Leland Chee personally edited these entries:



You can’t deny its validity. Seeing as how Malak has mastered the power of something to which maps leading to it granted the original Exiles their power, this is hardly unbelievable. Except it might not even be Malak as he is at the end of KotOR, given that the description implies that you can see him but don’t know how he is so powerful (and therefore haven’t seen him on the Star Forge), and that he is growing stronger and stronger:

"You must go now, Revan. The Star Forge feeds the power of your old apprentice. If you do not stop him soon he will become too powerful for even you to stop."

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic

This places a hard cap on Exar Kun’s power. For one, it makes any claim that he’s near Sidious absurd given this chain:

Exar Kun << Malak < peak Malak << KotOR Revan < Revan Reborn << SoR Revan < Vitiate < Sidious

Seeing as how the rather flimsy Exar Kun anecdotes that people try to use to that effect are either vague (as opposed to this explicit comparison) or in-universe, they fail. Exar Kun is in a lower league.

Re: Exar Kun’s showings

We can’t confuse quantity for quality here. Exar Kun has been in a lot of material, so he’ll rack up lots of generic combat feats. But would any of it actually convince you that he is more powerful than Tenebrous? Do you really care that he can ragdoll a Corran Horn who had a week or so of training, or defeat Vodo? Even something like shattering beskar, while impressive, is something that Savage Oppress has done:

“Apprentice, I wish to tour this facility,” he said.

A moment later, the door to their cell exploded outward, ripped away by a tremendous surge in the Force.

[...]

They lead Satine to a prison cell in her own palace, shutting her in a little room with a cot, desk, and chair, behind a door made of Mandalorian iron.

Darth Maul: Shadow Conspiracy

Let’s address the feats that might appear noteworthy:

In fact, Fact File puts Exar Kun as the most powerful and dangerous Sith Lord of all time. Nobody else starts getting these quotes until Sheev starts to prominently show up, and later Vitiate

“all Sith Lords” doesn’t necessarily mean “all Sith Lords, dead or alive”. Indeed, it’s pretty rare to use that when you’re talking, like when someone says “he’s the tallest of all students” that usually doesn’t include ones that aren’t students anymore.

Exar Kun, massively pre-prime and in fact even before gaining the mantle of Dark Lord of the Sith, raised a 215 meter sith warship, known for being very heavily armoured from the atmosphere of Yavin IV, akin to the raising of the Ravager by Nihilus

Firstly, Yavin IV is one of the most powerful nexuses in the galaxy, to the point where Satele Shan thought its power was stronger than a nexus described as immeasurable.

Secondly, what does this quote even mean? Where does it say that he raises it from the atmosphere of Yavin IV? It says it was buried, and Exar Kun raised it like “Nihilus raised the Ravager” (which is itself pretty vague, since some sources suggest the Ravager was in orbit when he found it). Why would he need to TK it out of the atmosphere? It says it was buried – so even assuming that he needed to use TK at all, he would raise it some undetermined distance off the ground. If he needed to restart or repair, he wouldn’t need it to be in space to do that. He also does this over an undetermined period of time. All in all, this is hardly some game changing feat. Take a look at what padawan Anakin does in OCW:





…without a nexus, in the middle of battle.

The spirit of Kun's canonically inferior predecessor Marka Ragnos

Canonically inferior? Based on what? “Most powerful of all sith lords”? As I noted, that doesn’t say anything really about Ragnos.

“The Disciples of Ragnos are getting bold. They’ve managed to siphon Force energy from every site that was mentioned in my journal. We still don’t know what it is they’re planning to do with the energy though.”

That doesn’t actually mean Ragnos needed the combined powers of those nexuses because the disciples clearly didn’t grab all of the energy from there – all of those nexuses are still there later, and not noticeably weakened.

The same Ragnos was seen as an existential threat to the New Jedi Order by Luke himself, should he return to life

The quote literally says that Luke doesn’t know what he can do. Which makes sense since he doesn’t know anything about Ragnos.

Lastly for now, his force scream echoed across the galaxy, creating ripples in the force itself

That’s pretty vague and poetic. Creating “ripples in the Force” happens anytime something important happens.

In fact, Darth Plagueis HIMSELF didn't seem to really understand how Kun's abilities worked and only knew about them through word of mouth.

That was Plagueis near the beginning of the novel. There’s little relationship to Tenebrous, given that Tenebrous didn’t really train him:

Instead of actually training his doltish apprentice, Tenebrous had flattered Plagueis' mysticism while pricking his insecurities

The Tenebrous Way

was capable of holding his own with the likes of Darth Krayt

Nah. He blindsided a near-death Krayt.

and was considered by Vader strong enough to be his Master

Among other problems with this argument, that was like 19 BBY Vader not long removed from Mustafar. And you haven’t established any relationship between Karness Muur and Exar Kun.

Exar Kun had full knowledge of the Dark Holocron, containing over a hundred thousand years of force knowledge, outright called the most powerful Sith Holocron in the mythos

Can you give an example of useful knowledge that Tenebrous wouldn’t have access to, given that Tenebrous would have much of the cumulative teachings of the Banite Line, including stuff like time manipulation, all of which he dismissed as simplistic? I mean, here he is offhandedly noting that he created a variation of essence transfer:

And-by the application of his own suitably subtle variation of the ancient Sith brute-force essence transfer-Tenebrous could ensure that his own consciousness would be present at the creation of this being, this savior, this Chosen One. And, at the moment of creation-long before the Chosen One could hope to resist- Tenebrous would seize it. Would become it.

The Tenebrous Way

And to top it all off, Exar Kun was said to have a massive amount of force knowledge that was simply lost after his defeat and not recorded anywhere, which makes sense given that he seems to likely have invented many himself. It was implied that even Darth Vader wouldn't have the amount of Force Knowledge that Exar Kun possessed. So I ask you then? How the hell would Tenebrous? Vader would've had access to Sidious's vast repository of knowledge

That’s pretty vague and goes both ways, since Tenebrous has the knowledge of the Banite Line and stuff thousands of years after Exar Kun. And that quote doesn’t imply Vader doesn’t know what Exar Kun does, just that there’s some stuff Exar Kun knew that died with him, but you’d have to explain what this actually is.

In fact, these forbidden sorcery techniques were so powerful that an around Darth Vader level threat using them was so mighty that NJO Luke (significantly stronger than Vader at this point) had no chance of prevailing against them. Nevermind Exar Kun who we have established is significantly more powerful than Kyp at his full power

You haven’t established that:

1. Nexus spirit JA Exar Kun and Kyp Durron combined relates to TotJ Exar Kun.
2. Exar Kun relates to Kyp Durron; “his own feeble exploratory touch” doesn’t really tell us anything about him related to Exar Kun. We have him getting both amped by Exar Kun and the uber-powerful dark temple, and getting a similar result to battle meditation. He has lots of raw power, but little training, so not having much “exploratory touch” doesn’t seem to relate to Exar Kun channeling Kyp’s raw power, which has been compared to Luke Skywalker’s.
3. The fight is pretty sketchy because Exar Kun blindsides Luke while he’s getting attacked by his student, and Luke had no exposure to sorcery at all (which is explicitly noted as a factor), whereas multiple earlier Banites were experienced in it. Indeed, every description of the fight makes it clear that Exar Kun couldn’t actually overpower Luke by himself.

The infamous Dark Tendrils technique was also in the roster of Exar Kun

Darth Zannah, only the second Banite Sith, could do that too except she could actually physically hurt people with it.

Exar Kun was able to channel this power though Kyp Durron

But where does he actually use it by himself in a fair fight without a nexus?

Exar Kun scans the entire planet of Cinnagar and then dominates every scanning technician in the city (and presumably everybody in the immediate vicinity as well) , blanking their minds to the presence of him and his ship, and what they were doing.

Exar Kun’s claim is sketchy – I don’t know why every single scanning technician on half the planet would have seen a single ship.

Anyway, how many scanning technicians are there in Cinnagar? We have no idea, but it’s probably not that many (that seems like a very specific job). We have no idea how he found every scanning technician – on the one hand, you suggest that he “scans the entire planet”, but he could’ve just as easily TP’d someone to get employment records.

Exar Kun was able to survive the Wall of Light, a power summoned by thousands and thousands of jedi, although it stripped him of much of his power and confined him to the nexus to survive. In fact it was implied that combining their power in such a way was the ONLY way the Jedi could have defeated him because his power was that enormous

The Wall of Light was designed to trap him in the planet; it spread across the entire planet, and wasn’t like a focused attack. Do Walls of Light even kill? Also, I don’t see how that’s “implied”.

Its very likely that a Banite Sith or Modern Jedi has even faced a style that remotely resembles that of Exar Kun, in practice or otherwise, although he may have heard about it through offhand experience

Actually, the fact that Exar Kun was basically the first known user of the double bladed saber kinda means that he’s not going to have technical refinery on the level of pre-TPM Darth Maul thousands of years later, let alone a comic-book level smart dueling-fanatic like Tenebrous. He was the guinea pig.

So nothing to see here; a few pretty impressive feats that are nonetheless not late-Banite tier. Tenebrous has only been in one short story and part of a novel, but he has far more quality showings of true power, which we’ll see in forthcoming posts.

The Banite Line

As we all know, Banite Scaling provides one of the most solid cases of really, really long powerscaling that you can find:

As they gained knowledge of the dark side of the Force, their powers increased with each generation.

Episode 1: The Phantom Menace Scrapbook

^ along with several other sources, which can be provided if you want the reinforcement.

A few things to note. This isn’t some haphazard 20-chain scaling line – it’s a thematically crucial chain that’s repeated by multiple sources. Plagueis notes 30 Banites:

“Descended from Darth Bane, we are the select few who refuse to be carried by the Force and who carry it instead - thirty in a millennium rather than the tens of thousands fit to be Jedi.”

Darth Plagueis

Even if some of those are duplicate apprentices and there are only, say, 20, that’s still 20 consecutive generations of power growth. But how big are the gaps? Well, they don’t have to be that large to make this super large, but we know that:

1. A large fraction of apprentices outright defeat their masters in combat. Multiple sources mention it as a given:

The missions to Lianna, Saleucami, and Abraxin were still fresh in his thoughts. On a philosophical level he understood why the generations of Sith Lords that had preceded him had trained apprentices, to whom they had bequeathed their knowledge of the dark side of the Force in anticipation of an eventual challenge for superiority.
Darth Plagueis

Zannah fights Bane, Gean beats Gravid, and masters like Sidious are constantly wary of being surpassed in power by their apprentices, implying they know this is a common outcome. Note that the idea isn’t “get just about as powerful so it’s a toss-up and maybe the apprentice gets lucky”.

2. If the power gap were too small, it would be less believable that it would always be positive, in the same sense that to maintain a lead over someone in a race you can’t just have a miniscule one or else even the slightest random variation would make you fall behind. For example, if the apprentice were only slightly stronger than the master, you’d expect a large fraction of apprentices to lose when they fight, but we literally don’t see a single example of that.
3. At the minimum we have a few known gaps: Gean as an apprentice beating Gravid, Tenebrous casually dispatching his master, etc. So even if 90% of the gaps just happen to be those, it’s still a long chain from Bane.

So it’s fair to say that Tenebrous could ragdoll and/or oneshot Bane or Zannah, and crush Ramage. That may even be an understatement, given how quickly he surpasses his own master.

Darth Bane

Instead of Exar Kun vs. Tenebrous, should we do Exar Kun vs. Darth Bane?

With the equivalent of about a year of training, Bane leads a ritual where he channels the power of hundreds of Sith into his body:

The Brotherhood slipped deeper into the collective trance, barely even aware of the storm now raging about their physical selves. Bane stood at the eye of the storm, drawing the bolts of lightning into himself, feeding on them. He felt his strength surge as he channeled and focused the dark side from the others.

This is how it should be! All the power of the Brotherhood in one body! The only way to unleash the full potential of the dark side!

Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

Which creates a massive, planetary firestorm:

The storm rolled down from the plateau and rumbled across the forest. Hundreds of forks of searing lightning shot down from the sky - and the forest erupted. Trees burst into flames, the blaze racing through the branches and spreading out in all directions. The underbrush smoldered, smoked, and ignited; and a wall of fire swept across the planet's surface.

The inferno consumed everything in its path.

Heat and fire. There was nothing else in Bane's world. It was as if he had become the storm itself: he could see the world before him, swallowed up in red and orange and reduced in seconds to ash and embers by the unchained fury of the dark side.

Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

That’s impressive enough unto itself, of course, seeing as how Bane can channel all that power himself. But ten years later, which still isn’t that much time frankly, Bane gets two orbalisk on him and this happens:

Bane reached inward to call upon the dark side, drawing it not only from himself but also from the orbalisks fastened to his chest and back. Feeling an incredible surge of power beyond any he had known before, he released it in a burst of energy. The hallucinations that had plagued his wounded mind ever since the detonation of the thought bomb vanished, instantly and utterly annihilated by his newfound power. He was stronger now than he ever had been, and he knew the visions of the dead Sith would haunt him no more.

Darth Bane: Rule of Two

He ends up with two hundred of them.

Maybe later, we’ll see more of Bane’s feats.

Can Exar Kun outmatch that even? If you have more feats for Exar Kun that let him defeat Bane, could he dominate Bane?

Darth Zannah

As a child, Zannah shields herself from said planetary firestorm:

The fires had killed most of the other bouncers. The survivors had all gone mad. All except Laa. Somehow Rain saved her. She'd used the Force, shielding them both from the burning death and destruction, though she wasn't quite sure how she'd done it.

Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

Pretty incredible, seeing as how she apparently outperformed most of the Jedi. That would be considered one of Exar Kun’s greatest feats.

Again; if Exar Kun isn’t even above the early Banites, how could he match Tenebrous?

Tenebrous’s Master

Tenebrous’s Master gives us the first true signs of the Banites flexing their cosmic power:

One hundred years earlier, Tenebrous's Twi'lek Master had opened a small rend in the fabric of the Force, allowing the dark side to be felt by the Jedi Order for the first time in more than eight hundred years. That had been the inauguration, the commencement of the revenge of the Sith. And now the time had come to enlarge that rend into a gaping hole, a gaping wound, into which the Republic and the Jedi Order would to their own hazard be drawn.
Darth Plagueis

In a sense, the Jedi Order had done the same on a galactic scale, Plagueis believed, by bathing the galaxy in the energy of the light side of the Force; or more accurately by fashioning a Force bubble that had prevented infiltration by the dark side, until Tenebrous’s Master had succeeded in bursting the bubble, or at least shrinking it.
Darth Plagueis

Bursting the light-side galactic bubble of the collective Jedi Order is significantly beyond anything Exar Kun has done.

Tenebrous really is standing on the shoulder of giants who by themselves could squish Exar Kun.

In coming posts, we’ll look at Tenebrous himself.

oh my god that formatting

Ellimist's images weren't working so I edited them in myself. I did not change the content of the post, however.

Come on Decaf, I am rooting for ya. Make this the upset of the century and take down this elemental menace known as the Ellimist.

Elm ragdolling.

RIP Decaf.

Fabulous post.

This post is awesome... I'm waiting for the response of Decaf. But it seems pretty hard.

Incredible post! I’m really impressed

Not impressed with this at all, so I’m still backing a Decaf win.

That was succinct. Great post.

looking exciting so far