SS - The Tyrannical Ten - Darth Caedus (DC77) vs Darth Tenebrous (The Ellimist)

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



__________________________________________________

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]
  
• Round two - Darth Caedus (DC77) vs Darth Tenebrous (The Ellimist)
  

__________________________________________________

Darth Caedus as of Legacy of the Force - Invincible. Darth Tenebrous as of Darth Plagueis.

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. More information about the finishers will come soon. 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.
  

TAEP

TAEP.

So much hype for this

TAEP

DC for the upset. Go get 'em blood.

TAEP

TAEP.

Deronn_Solo wrote:DC for the upset. Go get 'em blood.

Thanks bro.

I’m rooting for DC here.

Thanks IG.

@DC77 (Reborn) has granted @The Ellimist 5 days from now to make his post. After that, he will receive 100 extra characters per hour.

Will try to post today

Bump.

The Banite Line.

I’m sure you’re all familiar with Banite scaling by this point, so I don’t see the need to go over all the sources again unless if they get called into question. Here are two for the record:

"As they gained knowledge of the dark side of the Force, their powers increased with each generation." - Episode 1: The Phantom Menace Scrapbook

"Ultimately, Bane's plan produced more powerful Sith Lords with each generation." - Force and Destiny

How many? According to Plagueis, thirty up to Sidious:

“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

While we don’t know exactly how large the gaps are, here is what we can say:

1. If the gaps are too small, it becomes less believable that the apprentices are consistently stronger than and able to overthrow their masters, since that would mean that just a small variation from the average gap would prevent the apprentice from surpassing them. You would presume that there’s a comfortable enough margin for it to be stable.
2. A substantial fraction of the apprentices defeated their masters in single combat. This happened with Bane and Zannah and Gravid and Gean – Bane viewed it as a given that this would be the standard way, and Sidious anticipated a confrontation with (pre-suit) Vader.
3. The master seems to try to search for an apprentice that can one day surpass them – since gauging potential isn’t 100% precise, it would be far more likely that they’re waiting for someone, say, 15% greater in potential than each of them successfully guessing a 0.5% power difference.

Even if each gap is only minor, that’s a “scaling chain” of twenty-eight links. Tell me: can you create a scaling chain between twenty-eight different characters where the beginning and end characters are even remotely in the same tier? The only way you can do this is if you create a meme-chain with like “Obi Wan on a Thursday” and “Obi Wan the following Monday”.

Tenebrous comes at the end of a stupendously long chain of iterative power growth – and this isn’t some new age convoluted straw chain, it’s a central theme and narrative of Bane’s Rule of Two.

So let’s start counting links.

The Wrath of Kaan

Here is Lord Kaan’s telepathy:

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.

It was glorious. And then suddenly it was gone.

There was a jarring thump as his body dropped from where it had been hovering five meters above the ground. For several seconds he was completely disoriented, unable to figure out what happened. Then he understood: the connection had been broken.

He rose to his feet slowly, uncertain of his balance. All around him were the forms of the Sith, no longer kneeling in meditation but collapsed or rolling on the ground, their minds reeling from the sudden end to the joining ritual. One by one they also regained their composure and stood, most looking as confused as Bane had been only seconds before.

Then he noticed Lord Kaan standing off to the side, over by the fliers.

"What happened?" Bane demanded angrily. "Why did you stop?"

"Your plan worked," Kaan replied curtly. "The forest is destroyed, the Jedi have fled to open ground. They are exposed, vulnerable. Now we go to finish them off."

Kaan had broken the connection, and somehow he had managed to drag the others out along with him, as if he had some hold over their minds. - Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

Bane suspects that Kaan has some sort of telepathic hold over the Brotherhood’s minds, a view supported by quotes like this:

He had promised them victory, as he had done so many times before. And, as they had always done in the past, the Brotherhood had followed him once again. Followed him here to this cave, though Githany wasn't sure if it was more accurate to say they had been led-or lured. She had followed him along with everyone else, compelled by the passion of his words and the sheer magnitude of his personality and presence. All thoughts that he might be unstable or unfit to lead them had been forgotten in the heady pilgrimage through the night to the shelter of this cave. - Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

And this:

He could sense his Master's summons in the Force, and he could not resist the beckoning much longer. Lord Kaan was calling them all, the entire Brotherhood. - Darkness Shared

Kaan’s telepathic might allows him to telepathically control dozens of Sith Lords in a ritual, telepathically compel thousands, and telepathically call (with a strong tinge of coercion) tens of thousands from across the galaxy.

Maybe these Sith are just scrubs? Not according to Kyle Katarn:

Kyle was a novice compared to those around him and might have been killed if it hadn't been for LaTor and the other Jedi's strength. For LaTor was strong, very strong, and Kyle was impressed by the power resident in the dark side. The power and the relative ease of access... a temptation for anyone with the necessary talent. https://www.writeurl.com/publish/a873m6tq5zsntebh0sbk

Even one of the strongest, Githany, was a bug next to Kaan:

Lord Kaan radiated power: he could crush her as easily as she crushed the small beetles that sometimes scuttled across the floor of her tent. - Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

And yet when Kaan tries to manipulate Bane:

Bane stayed in the position of supplication until the Dark Lord was well out of sight, then stood up and brushed the dirt from his knees with a grim scowl. He had felt Kaan's efforts to dominate his mind, but they had had no more effect than a rusted knife scraping against the hide plates of a Halurian ice-boar. Yet he had seized on the opportunity and delivered a performance worthy of the greatest dramatist on Alderaan. - Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

It does nothing. Mind you, this is Darth Bane with the equivalent of about a Jedi youngling’s duration of training, far from how powerful he would later become.

Let’s compare this to Caedus:

The dam burst in him, but it found a river channel. Caedus saw what the Fondorians operating the shield fa-cility might see; he had no idea what the actual location looked like, but he didn't need to waste his strength pro-jecting his consciousness to actually observe. Any imagined scene would do to focus him as the torrent of anger and raw nerves of a hundred or more commanders poured back through him. He pictured the shield generator plant, the control room, imagining it much as any other power plant in the industrialized galaxy: a wall covered in readouts and status lights, and rows of consoles around him where other workers kept an eye on the integrity of the shield and en-sured that a constant power level fed it. There would be a message system, possibly an illuminated board updating staff on the security alert level, too. The exact details didn't matter, he knew, as long as he could imagine enough about what was happening in their minds to be able to latch on to some breeze of a thought in the Force, and slip into their world.

…

He was aware of solid, real beings moving around him on the ship, but he was now more aware of the shield gen-erator facility five kilometers east of Oridin and the minds of the control room team.

There were more of them than usual, he could feel that. There was a sense of having strangers around, as if they'd called in extra staff and were running emergency opera-tions, which fitted a facility that probably ran on standby vvith droids and a caretaker crew most of the time.

…

Caedus tried to snap back at the moment the airburst sent a blinding, searing shock wave across the packed city, but he was a fraction too late, and he caught a moment of pure animal terror that took his breath away. He jerked alert in his seat, wanting to complete a scream that wasn't his. He caught it in time. If he'd screamed-well, the crew thought he was crazy anyway.

On the monitor, he could see a fireball spreading and debris billowing up into the atmosphere on a plume of rolling smoke. Now he needed other GA vessels to turn toward the planet and press home their advantage. He wondered if he could even move. He was drained, and for a moment he couldn't even grip the arms of his seat. "Sir..." – Legacy of the Force: Revelation

So Caedus:

1. Is going off an external amp from the rage of his commanders.
2. Does some mental manipulation on a team of non-Force sensitive shield room operators.
3. Is utterly exhausted after doing so, to the point where he could barely even move.

So while it takes all of Caedus’s energy to TP a team of non-Force sensitive shield room operators, Kaan can do this to tens of thousands of Sith across the galaxy, and then even more violently to dozens while in the middle of an intricate ritual, without any apparent fatigue. Yet he is unable to do anything with his TP to a novice Bane.

Darth Ramage

Darth Ramage’s work with time manipulation was so potent that it allowed fodder-tier Jax Pavan to evade and befuddle Darth Vader:

Jax froze for a split second, his weapon raised, then twisted out of the way of the screaming crewman. Anakin knew him too well-knew what he would and would not do.

Maybe.

With a supreme effort of will, the Jedi felt the local time currents around him, stirred them to eddies, then dropped and rolled beneath the fuselage of a small shuttle that lay between him and the Aethersprite.

Vader's next barrage of ordnance was aimed at where Jax had been, not where he had gone. - The Last Jedi

Jax also used his illusion abilities to confuse Vader:

The Dark Lord swept a hand back at “Yimmon” and “Den”—still standing in the open turbolift—as if to dismiss Jax’s careful mirage. They blurred about the edges, but did not evaporate. That Vader had expected them to do so was evident only in the slightest halting of his step, the sudden tilt of his helmeted head, the twitch of his gloved fingers. - The Last Jedi

Tenebrous would’ve had access to Ramage’s holocron, but he hardly cared:

More than a century before, when Tenebrous had been but a Sith apprentice himself, the magnificent computational power of his Bith brain had led him far beyond the simplistic Force studies imposed on him by his Master. - The Tenebrous Way

Tenebrous’s master

According to Plagueis, the Jedi Order had created a galaxy-spanning light side nexus:

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, - Darth Plagueis

And Tenebrous’s master popped a hole in it:

until Tenebrous’s Master had succeeded in bursting the bubble, or at least shrinking it.

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.

That’s a pretty insane feat – he’s influencing a galaxy-spanning nexus generated over the course of centuries by the collective Jedi Order, and had a tangible effect on the Jedi’s abilities:

The rend that Tenebrous's Twi'lek Master had opened in the fabric of the Force had been felt by the Jedi, and already the Order was beginning to show signs of circumspection and languor. - Darth Plagueis

How does Tenebrous view his master? Meh:

He had exterminated his doddering Master with his customary efficiency – The Tenebrous Way

This being a century before his death.

That’s all for now. Tenebrous scales astronomically above Kaan’s TP, which is already more impressive than Caedus’s, and considerably above Ramage’s time manipulation and Tenebrous’s master’s cosmic feat.

@The Ellimist Great post ! This fight promise to be really interresting

Good post, if somewhat predictable.

I'm going to apologise pre-emptively if this post doesn't live up to the hype, I've been going through a rough stretch in my life, and my heart wasn't really in it. With that being said, let's get to it.

I. Darth Tenebrous - Rebuttals

A) Kaan

Before I move on to the stipulations surrounding the Caedus feat, I'd like to address a couple of factors your analysis has glossed over, without any real consideration for the damage it might cause to this (Rather weak) comparison. First and foremost, telepathy in itself is an inherently poor measure for conventional power, a fact that becomes immediately apparent when deconstructing Revan's infamous fight against the Sith Emperor Vitiate during the character's novel:

The Old Republic: Revan wrote:The Emperor rose to his feet, his robes smoking and singed where the lighting had struck him. His black eyes flashed red, and he raised both hands high above his head.

Revan knew he was gathering his power to unleash a swirling storm of pure dark side energy, just as Nyriss had done. The Jedi quickly calculated his options. Realizing he couldn’t close the gap between them quickly enough to stop the assault, he gathered his own energy and spread his hands before him, ready to catch and absorb the Emperor’s attack.

A dozen bolts of purple lightning arced from the Emperor toward him. Revan tried to draw them in and contain them, but the Emperor was infinitely more powerful than Darth Nyriss had ever been.

Revan’s body was engulfed in agony as the electricity coursed through his body. His skin began to boil and blister, the flesh of his face melting and sticking to the superheated metal of his mask as the Emperor poured more and more power into him.

Through the haze of indescribable pain, he saw T3-M4 rushing in to help him. The droid let loose with his flamethrower, bathing the Emperor in fire. At the last instant the Emperor cocooned himself in the Force to save himself from being incinerated, breaking his focus on Revan.

The Jedi collapsed to the ground, burned but still alive, the hilt of his extinguished lightsaber lying on the floor less than a meter beyond his grasp.

Almost too weak to move, Revan managed to raise his head just in time to see the Emperor turn on the brave little astromech. A tremor rippled through the air as the Emperor unleashed the full power of the Force against the defenseless droid.

T3 never stood a chance. The little droid exploded into a million pieces, internal circuits and external casing obliterated in a single instant.

“No!” Revan screamed from the ground as bits of his friend rained down on him in the form of unrecognizable shrapnel.

He tried to rise, but his injured body refused to respond. Instinctively, he called on the Force to give him strength and heal his wounds.

The Emperor was approaching him with calm, purposeful steps. Once he reached Revan’s side he calmly bent down and picked up the Jedi’s fallen weapon, igniting the blade.

The healing properties of the Force were powerful, but Revan’s wounds were severe and he needed more time to restore his strength. Helpless, he could only stare up at the Emperor as he raised the lightsaber to deliver the killing blow.

...

Even as she called to Scourge to help, Meetra was already sprinting toward the far end of the throne room. Scourge hesitated before joining her, taking a moment to survey the situation, memories of his vision of their failure still fresh in his mind.

What he saw was not good. Revan was being electrocuted, his body spasming uncontrollably as the Emperor blasted him with dark purple lightning.

Revan’s astromech launched a jet of flame at the Emperor, freeing Revan, who collapsed to the ground. In retaliation, the Emperor disintegrated the offending droid, strode over to where Revan lay, and picked the vanquished Jedi’s lightsaber up off the floor.

It all happened in the space of only a few seconds. Meetra was moving fast, but she was too far away to stop the Emperor from eviscerating the prone Jedi at his feet.

Revan is completely helpless against Vitiate's power, and is roasted on the floor like a Christmas turkey. However, Vitiate in the same fight proves incapable of breaking Revan's mind:

The Old Republic: Revan wrote:The Emperor stood in the exact same position as before; it was as if he hadn't even moved. Revan began to sense the oppressive presence of the dark side weighing down on him. The Emperor was trying to crush his will: to dominate and enslave his mind as he had before. This time, however, Revan was ready.

Instead of charging forward, he opened himself up to the Force, letting both the light and dark side flow through him like twin rushing rivers. But instead of focusing or channelling the Force, he released it in its purest form.

There was a brilliant flash as the air between the two combatants lit up. The energy unleashed was powerful enough to send Revan staggering. The Emperor, unprepared and with much of his strength diverted to his effort to dominate Revan's mind, was sent flying backward.

This shows a fundamental disparity between conventional capability and telepathy, rendering any attempt at comparing the two nothing more than a transparent attempt at mental gymnastics. Note that a clash of lightning against tutaminis is explicitly noted to be an exchange of raw power (Link), in stark contrast to telepathy. However, even if I were to concede that telepathy is a suitable proxy for power, it wouldn't take your comparison any closer to validity. There's an important distinction between what Caedus and Kaan accomplished, something that seems to have escaped your notice. What Kaan did, in essence, was give the brotherhood a light tap, influencing their desperate minds just enough to listen to his rhetoric, and follow his every command without question. Caedus however, made the shield technicians hallucinate the fleet coming towards the shield gate on the verge of destruction, and flooded their minds with worry, to the point where they lowered the Shield despite being unwilling to do so. There's no viable point you can make based off an analysis of these two performances, they're of a totally different nature.

B) Darth Caedus

This isn't even accounting for the circumstances surrounding the feat. In your post you note that Caedus was boosted by an external source. I'm not sure where exactly this bizarre conclusion comes from, the battle link Caedus established with those on board the Anakin Solo did nothing to amplify his capabilities, it only hindered them, and majorly at that:

Legacy Of The Force: Revelation wrote:The adrenaline and pure white rage looping back to him from the individual commanders made his throat tighten. It was almost like a back-pressure effect, that the passion for the battle that he was channelling into them gained power and momentum, and syphoned back into him as a changed and magnified thing that he felt he had to vent from his chest or scream.
He was out of breath. He hoped nobody noticed. It might have looked as if he were panicking…
His lungs demanded air. The cumulative effect of his commanders' heart-pounding aggression needed out now. He could no longer pick out the individual crew and their stations around him in the Anakin Solo, just a complex tapestry of emotions, and that was the state of near blindness that he needed to push his way into the minds of strangers many kilometers away on the planet beneath.

Jacen describes it as a "back-pressure effect" that made his "throat tighten" and his lungs "demand air". The implication appears to be that the rage imbued into his commanders was feeding back into, and completely overwhelming him, and that to recover from that it was a necessity that he discharge the build up of negative emotion into the minds of those on Fondor, hence the reason for his exhaustion.

C) Banite Scaling

The arguments for Ramage aren't flawed so much as they're completely pointless. I'm not sure how an ability that Tenebrous will never use anyway, that allowed Jax to stop time long enough to role is of any importance to the outcome of Jacen versus Tenebrous. Regarding his master however, I feel inclined to point out that we don't have any particular way to quantify his performance. How does it compare to more basic abilities such as TK? How long did it take him? How much effort was involved? Starting to see my point here?

II. Jacen Solo - Opening Arguments

A) On-Paper Standing - Early LOTF

Jacen has a plethora of feats and accolades that place him at a level beyond that of Tenebrous, or anybody he scales from. I'll start by outlining the basics, that being Jacen's on-paper standing as of early LOTF. By this point in time Jacen has already received a shit ton of experience from the Vong war, which coupled with his Skywalker potential should make him a formidable opponent. In addition, Jacen has learned secrets that have been lost to the Jedi for Centuries:

Fate Of The Jedi: Ascension wrote:They had learned much of what Jacen had learned: skills that no other Jedi had known for centuries, if ever.

This is due to the 5 years Jacen spent studying the most esoteric force abilities possible, a time period in which he grew gradually stronger:

Dark Nest: The Joiner King wrote:During Jacen's five-year journey, she had felt him growing steadily stronger in the Force-but also more distant and isolated, like a hermit retreating to his mountaintop. At times, he had seemed to vanish into the Force entirely, and at other times she had sworn he was floating just above her shoulder.

After he completed his journey Ben stated that he was in possession of more knowledge on the force than anybody:

Legacy Of The Force: Tempest wrote:"Then make Jacen a Master," Ben replied. "He knows more about the Force than anybody."

And during early LOTF Jacen notes that his power is growing daily:

Legacy Of The Force: Bloodlines wrote:And he was growing closer to Luke's strength by the day.

Something Luke picks up on as well:

Legacy Of The Force: Bloodlines wrote:Luke realized Jacen's Force skills seemed to be getting stronger and more subtle every day, and he felt uneasy.

This isn't even accounting for the sacrificial power up Jacen receives at the end of Betrayal:

Legacy Of The Force: Betrayal wrote:They stood together in the large air lock adjacent to the hangar bay where Jacen’s shuttle waited. The docking tube was pressurized and coupled to the shuttle’s side. Ben, unconscious, was aboard, strapped onto a seat with his lightsaber once again hooked to his belt.
“I know this was hurtful,” Lumiya said. “But you have been strengthened by it already.”
Jacen, pained, looked at her. “Words, Lumiya. He will strengthen himself through pain. They don’t diminish the tragedy of what just happened, not at all.”

To summarise - Jacen has a fuck ton of combat experience from the Vong war, 5 years worth of arcane force knowledge, Skywalker potential, and a sacrificial power up as of early LOTF, yet still continues to grow daily. That's honestly a much better position than Tenebrous has on paper, and I haven't even touched the best stuff yet.

B) Scaling - Early LOTF

I've already layed out Jacen's on-paper standing circa early LOTF, so I may as well move onto scaling. Jacen as of this time, muses that he's more powerful than anybody on Luke's council:

Legacy Of The Force: Bloodlines wrote:I'm more powerful than any of you.
It was a boy's expression of anger, but it was true. And, as history repeated itself because it had no other choice, Jacen was more powerful than any of them except Luke.

Who does this quote include again? A familiar face who you might recognize from my last debate, a pretty cool dude called Kyp Durron. Under this quote, Jacen gets access to the long list of environmental feats Kyp has proved capable of performing, which quite frankly shit on anything Tenebrous has to his name. These are listed in my debate with SithArchaeologist (Link), the most notable of them being the shifting of a Dovin Basal. Just to be clear, Jacen's musings aren't inaccurate:

Karen Traviss wrote:How does a clever, morally aware man go down the path that Jacen does? By self-delusion and self- justification. Jacen already has a high opinion of his powers and judgment, and that’s not misplaced: the man is good at his work.

Per Karen Traviss, one of the author's who worked on LOTF, Jacen's confidence in his abilities is well founded. I feel the need to emphasise that this isn't a typical author talking about characters they have no control over, this is Karen clarifying the way in which Jacen was written, and expanding on the fundamental traits of him as an antagonist, as opposed to just throwing out her opinion on a versus matchup or whatever. So, Jacen is already extraordinarily powerful, both on paper and by scaling. And Jacen only advances from here.

C) Growth And Final Standing - Mid To Late LOTF

During the finale of Sacrifice, Jacen experiences an extraordinary power up after killing his aunt, Mara Jade Skywalker. This was the pivotal moment that completed his ascension to becoming a sith lord, and a moment that was built up to across the first half of the series as something that would bolster Jacen significantly. Considering the boost Jacen received upon murdering Nelani, a sacrifice of far less importance, it follows that Jacen's powers increased astronomically after this act (The below quotes might be incorrectly sourced, sorry if they are, I'll fix it if I get called out):

Essential Reader's Companion wrote:Jacen feels his power in the dark side swell, unlocking new powers, including an unparalleled ability to command and coordinate fighting forces as the former Emperor once did. Fully committed to the Sith path, Jacen assumes the title Darth Caedus.
...
Jacen has reached a threshold in his Sith potential. He has sacrificed a loved one and the bond of trust between himself and Ben. Lumiya senses this shift in power and decides a further sacrifice is needed to cement Jacen’s rule.

After this, Jacen muses that he might be the best duellist to ever live, barring Luke:

Legacy Of The Force: Fury wrote:But he was still the best lightsaber swordsman around-excepting possibly Luke, perhaps the best there ever had been.

In spite of this however, Jacen gets near instantly blitzed by Luke in Inferno, only surviving the opening swing due to pain tolerance. Directly after, Luke finishes him off in a few moves, and Jacen only stays alive through withdrawing from the combat by anchoring himself to a nearby Vong trap:

Legacy Of The Force: Inferno wrote:Luke didn't give Jacen a chance to surrender. He just sprang.
Ben's jaw dropped, and Jacen started to spin, snatching his lightsaber from his belt and igniting it in the same motion, bringing the emerald blade around high to protect his heart and head.
But Luke was attacking low, striking for the kidney to disable in the most painful way possible. Jacen's eyes widened. He flipped his lightsaber down in the same moment Luke's met flesh.
The tip sank a few centimeters, drawing a pained hiss as it touched a kidney, then Jacen's blade made contact and knocked it aside. Even that small wound would have left most humans paralyzed with agony. But Jacen thrived on pain, fed on it to make himself stronger and faster. He simply completed his pivot and landed a rib-crunching roundhouse.
Luke stumbled back, his chest filled with fire. Jacen had caught him on the barely healed scar from his first fight with Lumiya, and now his breath was coming in short painful gasps.
Good, Luke thought. This was supposed to hurt.
Jacen followed the kick with a high slash. Luke blocked and spun inside, landing an elbow smash to the temple that dropped Jacen to his knees. He brought his own knee up under Jacen's chin, hearing teeth crack-and relishing it. He parried a weak slash at his thighs, then drew his blade up diagonally where his nephew's chest should have been.
Except Jacen was sliding backward, one hand extended behind him, using the Force to pull himself toward a tendril-draped rack in the far corner of the torture chamber.

Later however, when Jacen duels against Jaina while she's amplified by Luke's power, he's totally convinced he's fighting the real Luke, and uses their last duel as a reasonable proxy for the outcome of the current one, showing that this version of Jaina is at least on par with Anakin Solo!Luke. Jacen holds his own against this iteration of Jaina, more or less matching her for the duration of the duel in spite of the fact that he has a hole in his shoulder:

Legacy Of The Force: Invincible wrote:Caedus did not hesitate to activate his own blade. His pain would only fuel his power, and if he did not attack the sniper, he knew the sniper would attack him. He Force-leapt up through the hole into the smoky, flashing interior of the booth and pivoted around to block the fan of blue light that came slicing toward his neck even before he could sense who he was fighting.
Whoever it was, the enemy was good.
Caedus felt a boot slam into his ribs-an instant before he saw it coming with his Aing-Tii fighting-sight - and the breath left his lungs. He countered with a head-high backslash and brought his own foot up, landing a Force-enhanced snap-kick between the legs of the brown-robed blur attacking him. The blow drew a pained grunt, but failed to even stagger his foe.
A bony elbow slammed up under his chin, rocking him onto his heels. Then, finally, Caedus felt a familiar tingle in the back of his mind, and he saw the image of a violet blade slashing at his vulnerable side. He swept his own lightsaber down across the front of his body in a desperate reverse block that barely caught the attack in time to prevent it from slicing him in two, then whirled into a spinning back kick that landed squarely in his foe's stomach and drove him back: a mere two steps.
It was enough.
Now Caedus could see who he was fighting, and he could not believe it. A gaunt-faced man with eyes as blue and cold as vardium steel, nostrils flaring red with anger and exertion, a thin-lipped snarl filled with confidence and disdain.
Luke Skywalker.
Just a few minutes earlier, Caedus had sensed his uncle's presence far above Nickel One, in the same blastboat as his mother, father, and Saba Sebatyne. And now here Luke was, inside the asteroid. Even Jedi Grand Masters could not be in two places at once-Caedus knew that-but he did not waste time being confused.
All that mattered was that Luke was here, somehow, and that he was the one swordsman in the galaxy whom Caedus did not dare fight one-armed. Even as Luke leapt forward weaving a basket of lightsaber slashes, Caedus sprang back out of the projection booth, launching himself into a high Force flip designed to put as much distance between himself and his attacker as possible.
Luke flew after him, not even bothering to try for the high position, simply coming up under him with a wild slash combination that was anything but subtle or deft or even tricky; just pure relentless ferocity. Caedus had to stretch himself out belly-down in midair to meet the attack, and even calling on the Force to bolster the strength in his good arm, it was all he could do to keep the powerful strikes from knocking his guard aside and leaving him wide open.
They started to drop, trading a trio of lightning-fast blows that left Caedus's hands stinging and his heart racing. The last time he had fought Luke, he had started with a painful kidney wound but two good arms-and barely managed to survive. Now, with a relatively bearable shoulder wound and a single good arm, he had to do more than survive, he had to prevail-because now there would be no mercy at the last minute. This time, his uncle would not care whether he survived as long as Caedus died, because now Luke knew the truth about who had killed his wife.
After the third exchange, Caedus and Luke came down in the seating area, two rows apart. Both landed on their feet, Luke more lightly than Caedus.
Caedus deactivated his lightsaber and flicked his hand downward, arming the dart thrower he had begun wearing beneath his sleeve after their last fight.
But Luke did something even more unexpected, removing one hand from his lightsaber and pushing the palm forward. An instant later, the unseen hammer of a Force blast caught Caedus in the sternum and drove him not over, but through the seats behind him.
He slammed into the next row and dropped to the floor foot-to-foot with the big Mandalorian he had killed earlier-the one in the black armor and red helmet. Caedus's head was spinning and his chest was more than aching-it was throbbing, burning, clenching so tightly he could hardly breathe.
But he still had his lightsaber-and he needed it. He thumbed the activation switch and brought the weapon up just as Luke's blue blade came slicing down toward him. Caedus caught it on his own crimson blade, then straightened his arm, simultaneously parrying and pointing the dart thrower on his wrist into his attacker's face.
"Release!" he commanded.
A faint puff of air tickled Caedus's forearm as the thrower launched its darts, but Luke was already whirling out of the way. The slivers streaked past in a harmless black flash and vanished; then Luke was spinning into the row where Caedus lay, positioning himself above Caedus's head for the coup de grace.
There was no time to leap up or loose a bolt of Force lightning, and the angle was particularly poor for blocking and parrying. Caedus's only hope lay at his feet, and he seized that hope with the Force, using it to pull the dead Mandalorian up over him, then hurling the corpse headlong into Luke.

III. Conclusion

To summarise the main points:

>Telepathy Is a poor proxy for power, as indicated by comparisons ripped from the lore itself.
>Kaan and Jacen's feats are fundamentally disparate anyway.
>Jacen's exhaustion was contextual.
>Jacen as of early LOTF has a better on-paper position than Tenebrous does, as well as greater power than the likes of Kyp Durron, who's raw power feats shit on anything Tenebrous has or scales to.
>Jacen experiences a sacrificial power up midway through the series, and winds up as a potential candidate for the best duellist in glacatic history, barring Luke himself of course.
>Despite this, Luke more or less blitzes Jacen, and disposes of him without much issue right after in their duel aboard the Anakin Solo.
>Jacen later duels against an opponent equal or superior to that iteration of Luke and holds on pretty well.

The outcome is simple, Jacen butchers him.

@The Ellimist The ball is in your court.

@HellfireUnit @The Apprentice @MasterCilghal @IdrisianGraecus @Deronn_Solo @Xolthol @Shioz Post is up.

“such a bad post DC” quote

NGL, that got a chuckle outta me.

Lmao.

Great post.

Not bad. I like it actually. I hope for further analysis of telepathy argument.

@Shioz @AlexSerp Thanks guys.