Tenebrae/Vitiate/Valkorion VS. Sheev Palpatine/Darth Sidious

LadyKulvax wrote:First I will focus on this quote:

Darth Plagueis wrote:If one accepted the tales handed down in accounts and holocrons, the ancient Sith had known how to accomplish this. But had Sith like Naga Sadow and Exar Kun genuinely been more powerful, or had they benefited from the fact that the dark side had been more prominent in those bygone eras?

Plagueis says that in the Old Sith Wars era, the dark side had been more prominent. Something that he and Sidious rectifies by causing an imbalance in the Force.

Later on it is stated that the legacy era was suffering from an imbalance stronger or as strong as any time prior, which caused farsight to be impossible:





This imbalance was caused by Darth Krayt bending the will of the Force, as stated by Krayt himself in his Holocron:



That Darth Krayt can cause an imbalance in the Force as strong as any other time, specifically noted is Palpatine's era; though naturally that doesn't include the SWTOR media that came about after it was written, then we are already seeing signs. There is, of course, the fact that Krayt was rivalled in his era by the spirit of Karness Muur:

Legacy 31: Vector: Part 12 wrote:But Emperor Krayt might no longer be the most powerful Sith lord in the galaxy.

Karness Muur can be deduced to be vastly inferior to Darth Malak via their usages of the Star Map and Star Forge, respectively, to grow in power significantly:

Ajunta Pall, Knights of the Old Republic wrote:"We were not the first to fall to the dark side. But we had more power than those before us. It came from elsewhere - our oldest secret. Only we would know, we lords. Only we would know where our power came from. It is a secret of so long ago. I no longer remember. So much power, it is blinding. You must find this place, or have you? Or did you? Or will you? Oh, so many images. I see your heart, human Jedi. I see your power, your pride. You, you will find the old place, the dark place, and you will regret it."

This is in clear reference to the Star Map. The Star Forge however was the pinnacle of all creations made by the Rakatans:

Overseer, Knights of the Old Republic wrote:"The Star Forge is the glory of the Builders, the apex of their Infinite Empire."

That Darth Malak dwarfs Muur so thoroughly, already suggests he would be well within the power range of Krayt, even in his most powerful state, if not outright beyond him. There are suggestions that this is not beyond Malak at all:

Bastila Shan, Knights of the Old Republic wrote:"We should have felt a disturbance in the Force when the attack came. The fact that we did not is a bad sign. I fear the dark side is growing stronger, casting shadows our vision cannot pierce."

The dark side of the Force was so strong that Revan and Bastila Shan couldn't feel the disturbance of the Force caused by the desolation of Dantooine and the Jedi Enclave. This dark side shroud was maintained by Darth Malak, as we know Darth Malak had bent the Star Forge to his will and thus was stronger, incredibly impressive because the Star Forge can drain armies of Force-users and even manipulate them into killing each other:

Bastila Shan, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords wrote:"There is no one left with the power to control the Forge, though many have tried. I have watched them be devoured, their life drained from them as they attempt to tap into its power. Knowing what we do of the Builders and their fate, I'm convinced that Revan did not intend us to keep the Star Forge - to use it would mean the end of the Sith... the end of the Force."

Ancient Rakatan Computer, Knights of the Old Republic wrote:"In your terminology, the Star Forge is a tool of the dark side. It corrupts those who use it so that it can generate greater and greater amounts of negative energy to fuel itself. The Builders thought they were strong enough to control this effect, but they were wrong. They became victims of their own creation, and eventually their hatred turned them against each other. Civil war destroyed the Infinite Empire - a lesson to remember. Only one who is immensely strong in mind can harness the power of the Star Forge without suffering a similar fate."

Yet even after Darth Malak's death, the dark side remains just as powerful:

The Conclave At Katarr Codex Entry wrote:Worse, many Jedi sensed a new Sith threat emerging but could not pinpoint the source.

It is even stronger and now harder to see, due to the deaths at Katarr:

Meetra Surik & Kreia, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords wrote:"Do you know why her homeworld was destroyed?"

"Because it was its time? Perhaps you should ask her - it begs many questions. Her people are not prone to violence, war, or hatred - yet their planet is obliterated, scoured from the face of the galaxy, and all that remains is a Sith."

"Well, if her people all see through the Force, then maybe someone wanted to blind them."

"The Mandalorians were right to respect you on the field of battle. The Jedi are gone, vanished, now an entire planet of Force Sensitives wiped clean of life. And now this slice of the galaxy is blind. It is no coincidence, the two events are tied."

"Someone wants this sector of the galaxy blind to the Force. So they can move freely... or strike without warning."

"I fear you are right. And I fear it may prove more than that. War... is a hunger. And there are spirits in the galaxy whose hunger is never satisfied. But there is little to be done about it now. Watch the seer carefully - she may reveal more."

In fact, the Triumvirate's conquer of the slice, caused palpable negative energy across the Republic strong enough that the Sith were feeding on it:

The Essential Atlas wrote:The Sith seemed to have achieved the victory they had long sought. Less than one hundred Jedi, nearly all of them in hiding, survived the Sith's purge. Many citizens took this unimaginable event as proof that the Force had turned malevolent, or that cosmic balance was nothing more than a story for children. Despair was palpable, and many planets offered only halfhearted and ragged defense against Sith attackers. Planets throughout the slice surrendered, and the Sith fed on the psychic misery of a shattered Republic.

This power is more than it seems, as exemplified here:

Decieved wrote:Due to her empathic sense, Aryn felt the dread in the air as a tangible thing, a pall that overhung the entire planet. It wore on her, weighed her down. The towers of duracrete and transparisteel seemed ready to fall in on her. She felt hunched, tensed in anticipation of a blow. The dread was omnipresent, an entire planet of billions of people projecting raw emotion into the air.

She could not wall them out. She did not want to wall them out. The Jedi had failed them. She deserved to feel what they felt.

Fate of the Jedi: Ascension wrote:Luke and Jaina were fighting back-to-back. The Sith attacking them had two advantages. One was the fact that they outnumbered the two Jedi. The second was that they were being reinforced by the emanations of the dark-side nexus within the temple. It surged forth like psychic sewage, clogging the Jedi's reflexes as it fueled their enemies.

This is the state of the dark side in the galaxy during the Dark Wars. Yet Revan is more powerful than Darth Malak, even within the Star Forge itself. Revan himself being inferior to Tenebrae.

Tenebrae himself is stated to be a far greater threat than the Star Forge:

Star Wars The Old Republic: Encyclopedia wrote:He and Malak had found something. He couldn’t remember what it was, or where it was, but he feared it on a deep, primal level. Somehow he knew that whatever the terrible secret might be, it was a threat far greater than the Mandalorians or the Star Forge. And Revan was convinced it was still out there.

Revan by the time he fights Tenebrae is much stronger than he was on the Star Forge as he had regained his memories and wasn't exhausted from fighting two armies on a dark side nexus. Thus the scaling here from what we see from Krayt is getting disgusting. I don't think the rest of the scaling for Tenebrae needs discussion.

So why is this important? Because unbalancing the Force is cheap change for Tenebrae. There are much less powerful beings, who he scales from, who achieve the ability to do so.

Generally this gets argued away by claiming that Sidious and Plagueis achieved their imbalance in spite of a powerful Jedi order and whilst in secrecy.

There are two issues here, first is the fact that the Banite Sith had been generating an imbalance over the course of a thousand years:

Labyrinth of Evil wrote:The current war had been the result of a thousand years of careful planning by the Sith - generations of bequeathing knowledge of the dark side from mentor to apprentice. Rarely more than two in each generation, from Darth Bane forward, Master and apprentice would devote themselves to harnessing the strength that flowed from the dark side, and to making the most of every opportunity to allow darkness to wax. Facilitating war, murder, corruption, injustice, and avarice when - and wherever possible. Analogous to introducing a covert malignancy to the body politic of the Republic, then monitoring its spread from one organ to another until the mass reached such size that it began to disrupt vital systems...

For two hundred years before the coming of Darth Sidious the power of the dark side had been gaining strength, and yet the Jedi had made only minimal efforts to thwart it.

Tenebrous' master had opened a rend to allow the dark side build-up to be felt for the first time in 800 years:

Darth Plagueis wrote: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...

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 Sidious's ascension to the role of Dark Lord of the Sith also further effected the balance of the Force:

Darth Plagueis wrote:But the moment didn’t constitute an ending so much as a true beginning, long overdue; it was less a transformation than an intensification - a gravitic shift.

The balance was further disturbed by the clone wars:

Darth Maul & Savage Opress, The Clone Wars Season 6 wrote:"I have missed so much, the Force feels out of balance."

"Yes, there is conflict; the clone wars."

The execution of Order 66 further shifted the balance of the Force:

Force and Destiny: Nexus of Power wrote:Yet, despite the Empire's thorough and systematic attempt to erase the Jedi Order from history, the Force works to restore balance, and the Jedi are now poised to return.

So even if we ignore the Mortis arc, the balance of the Force was tipped due to numerous factors and not merely the meditations of Plagueis and Sidious. But we aren't ignoring the incomparably important Mortis arc, prepare for the nail in the coffin.

The Father confirms outright that Anakin Skywalker will restore the balance to the Force by controlling the Son and the Daughter:

The Father & Anakin Skywalker, Altar of Mortis, The Clone Wars wrote:"Do you feel your destiny? You must see it now. I am dying, and you must replace me."
"Replace you? I can't stay here."
"But this is yours. It has been foretold. The Chosen One will remain to keep my children in balance."
"No."
"I cannot force you to do this. The choice must be yours. But leave and your selfishness shall haunt you and the galaxy."

Star Wars Databank wrote:In the mysterious realm of Mortis there exists a trio of beings able to wield the Force in ways no known mortals of the galaxy can. The Father maintained balance between his Daughter and his Son, who expressed affinity to the light and dark side of the Force, respectively. The Father knew his days were numbered -- facing his impending demise, he needed to find another to keep the balance. His goal was the same described in an ancient Jedi prophecy -- the rise of a Chosen One who will bring balance to the Force.

This is because the Son is growing stronger and causing an imbalance, tipping it toward the dark side:

The Father & the Son, Mortis Arc, The Clone Wars wrote:"You are growing stronger, my son."
"Am I, father?"
"Vanity, however, is getting the better of you."
"How so?"
"You have done what is forbidden. You have chosen the dark side and allowed it to feed your anger and desire for power."

Ghosts of Mortis, The Clone Wars wrote:Stranded! Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker and his Padawan Ahsoka Tano are caught in the middle of a treacherous battle between good and evil. The scales now tip toward the dark side.

In case you need any more reason to doubt how badly the Darth Plagueis novel's imbalance feat has been knocked down the importance ladder, here's a direct statement from the Ghosts of Mortis trivia gallery on starwars.com confirming that George Lucas himself wrote and created everything to do with Mortis and the balance of the Force concepts depicted in the Mortis arc:



What's worse is that Darth Plagueis himself even recognises the Mortis prophecies:

Darth Plagueis wrote:“The Jedi await the coming of a savior, a prophesied Chosen One who will destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force. The Jedi tell of Mortis, a place of impossible geography inside the angles of a gargantuan monolith. The three all-powerful beings of Mortis can assume strange shapes and exemplify the dark side, the light side, and the principle of balance.

“Compelling? It is debatable, but at the very least it is an adequate way to illustrate an allegorical point. Day coexists with night, for example and construction is always followed by ruin. Yet many of the Jedi treat the legend of Mortis as literal truth. They believe that the Chosen One will prevent these gods and demons from tearing the universe asunder—that their champion will be a vessel of pure Force energy.”

Here's the major issue, all of this:

Darth Plagueis wrote:The question of whether he and Sidious had discovered something new or rediscovered something ancient was beside the point. All that mattered was that, almost a decade earlier, they had succeeded in willing the Force to shift and tip irrevocably to the dark side. Not a mere paradigm shift, but a tangible alteration that could be felt by anyone strong in the Force, and whether or not trained in the Sith or Jedi arts.

The shift had been the outcome of months of intense meditation, during which Plagueis and Sidious had sought to challenge the Force for sovereignty and suffuse the galaxy with the power of the dark side. Brazen and shameless, and at their own mortal peril, they had waged etheric war, anticipating that their own midi-chlorians, the Force’s proxy army, might marshal to boil their blood or stop the beating of their hearts. Risen out of themselves, discorporate and as a single entity, they had brought the power of their will to bear, asserting their sovereignty over the Force. No counterforce had risen against them. In what amounted to a state of rapture they knew that the Force had yielded, as if some deity had been tipped from its throne. On the fulcrum they had fashioned, the light side had dipped and the dark side had ascended.

Darth Plagueis wrote:In what amounted to a state of rapture they knew that the Force had yielded, as if some deity had been tipped from its throne. On the fulcrum they had fashioned, the light side had dipped and the dark side had ascended.

On the same day they had allowed Venamis to die. Then, by manipulating the Bith’s midi-chlorians, which should have been inert and unresponsive, Plagueis had resurrected him. The enormity of the event had stunned Sidious into silence and overwhelmed and addled 11-4D’s processors, but Plagueis had carried on without assistance, again and again allowing Venamis to die and be returned to life, until the Bith’s organs had given out and Plagueis had finally granted him everlasting death.

[...]

Yoda and the rest of the Council members will double their meditation sessions in an effort to peer into the future, only to discover it clouded and unknowable. Only to discover that complacency has opened the door to catastrophe.

Is from the biased point of view of the character Darth Plagueis, and cannot hope to stand up to scrutiny  against the litany of sources that contradict the idea that the imbalance caused in the Rise of the Empire era was solely down to the Sith meditation.

What is worse is the fact that the claim Sidious' presence was maintaining the imbalance is simply false, as we know that Sidious in by far his most powerful form died and returned multiple times throughout Dark Empire I & II, yet no such major effect on the balance of the Force is noted at all.

It's emphatically clear, that the meditation underwent by Sidious and Plagueis is not at all as cosmically important as it has been claimed to be, is overshadowed by the Son's rise in power, and is something Sith Lords far inferior to Tenebrae have replicated by themselves.

Just one of many points I'm going to make in this thread.

KingofBlades wrote:@azronger Eh if we take the change in the Sun's coloration as an actual physical change then I don't see what's wrong with the above interpretation. However I could easily see how one would argue that the change was merely artistic and the writers payed no mind to the implications of what they depicted.

Gideon/Tempest wrote:

KingofBlades wrote:@azronger Eh if we take the change in the Sun's coloration as an actual physical change then I don't see what's wrong with the above interpretation. However I could easily see how one would argue that the change was merely artistic and the writers payed no mind to the implications of what they depicted.

For whatever it's worth, some moron went to Twitter and waterboarded SWTOR writer Hall Hood with this very notion a few years back, only for Hood to respond with "it's probably just a stylized filter on the cinematic."

ILS wrote:

Gideon/Tempest wrote:

KingofBlades wrote:@azronger Eh if we take the change in the Sun's coloration as an actual physical change then I don't see what's wrong with the above interpretation. However I could easily see how one would argue that the change was merely artistic and the writers payed no mind to the implications of what they depicted.

For whatever it's worth, some moron went to Twitter and waterboarded SWTOR writer Hall Hood with this very notion a few years back, only for Hood to respond with "it's probably just a stylized filter on the cinematic."

When you bypass the primary material and directly badger the author and even they tell you that your argument is wrong, it's probably a good time to give it up.

But I guess some creatures are more persistent than others. 

MOVE ALONG THERES NOTHING TO SEE HERE 

HellfireUnit wrote:Bioware couldn't even design animations properly, let alone think about this lmao. And Ziost is still far from being the best feat in the series, let alone in TOR.

Unleashing the full power of his hatred, he conjures a Force Storm that threatens to consume all of space, including the New Republic fleet.
--The Comics Companion

ILS wrote:Vitiate's best feat isn't surface wiping Ziost, but applying an instagram filter to the scene.

Unleashing the full power of his hatred, he conjures a Force Storm that threatens to consume all of space, including the New Republic fleet.
--The Comics Companion

Whatever will Sheev be able to do in the face of such autistic artistic expression?

HellfireUnit wrote:You don't even have an actual arguement lmao.

Azronger wrote:Okay, how many people here are actually convinced by that?

Praxis wrote:Also if he altered the sun in anyway then it would've taken the light from the sun some time to reach our POV instead of instantly changing like in the gif.