★ Top Fifteen Tournament #8 - Darth Plagueis

"Wait," he repeated.

Sing fought back, trying to push him from her mind, but Jacen had taken her by surprise. He had the power of his anger and his fear and his hatred behind him, and she simply was not strong enough.

...

Jacen did not reply. Sing was still struggling to free herself of his domination, and all his concentration was focused on keeping the pressure on until he drew close enough to strike.

Lotf - Tempest

Her thumb twitched.

The activation light on the thermal detonator began to blink, and that was enough to shatter Jacen's concentration. He felt Sing slip free, and suddenly he was completely outside her mind, watching in horror as she pitched the detonator toward the refresher where Allana was hid-ing.

Jacen's heart dropped through the bottom of his stom-ach. His arm shot out without conscious thought, and the detonator floated into his hand almost before he realized he had summoned it.

Sing was already whirling, leaping toward him with her crimson blade coming around at neck height. Jacen brought his lightsaber up automatically and blocked, then pulled the detonator's thumb slide back.

He never saw whether the activation light darkened. Suddenly Sing's knee was sinking into his stomach, driving the breath from his lungs and sending him tumbling over a couch. The detonator clattered to the floor somewhere in the galley. He came down on a beverage table, smashing it apart, then Sing was over him, her crimson blade arcing down.

Jacen whipped his lightsaber around to block, catching her blade about halfway up the shaft and filling the air with a sizzling shower of sparks. Sing grabbed her hilt with both hands and began to push, slowly driving the tip of her lightsaber down toward his eye.

The glow was as blinding as the heat was searing, and Jacen's vision blossomed into a fiery red blur. He brought his free hand up to brace his weapon arm and tried not to worry about whether his eyeball would melt, not daring to turn his head or even look away for fear that he would slip.

Sing kicked him in the side. The tip of a small, wedge-shaped blade scraped against his ribs and sent a blazing bolt of pain shooting into his body.

"Never..." She kicked him again, sending another bolt of pain deep into his stomach. "... violate..."

She kicked again.

"... my..." Another kick, more pain. "... mind!"

Sing kicked again, this time catching him near a kidney A wave of fiery anguish rolled through his body, stealinig his breath, so hot he could not even scream. The pain would have paralyzed anyone else, left him on the floor praying to die before he drew his next breath.

But pain was an old friend of Jacen's. He had learned to embrace it during his imprisonment among the Yuuzhan Vong, and now it no longer troubled him. Now it served him.

He turned the palm of his bracing hand toward Sing and pushed with the Force.

The move did not surprise her as much as he had hoped. As she flew away, Sing rolled the tip of her blade over his, and his Hghtsaber went flying. He held his Force shove until he heard her thud into the wall opposite, then sprang to his feet.

A fiery blur continued to blind one eye, and his sight in the other was still splashed with crimson blotches. But he could see clearly enough to be worried. Sing had landed near the refresher where Allana was hiding-close enough to fulfill her contract, if she was willing to risk Jacen attacking her from behind.

Jacen did not give her that chance. He opened himself fully to his fear and anger, using the power of his emotions to bring the Force flooding into him, and his body began to crackle and burn with dark energy. He raised his arms in Sing's direction, hands held level and fingers splayed wide.

That was when the door to the refresher hissed open, and a pair of small gray eyes peered out. They were wide open and locked on Jacen with an expression that might have been awe or fear or both.

"No, Allana!" Jacen could not bring himself to release the Force lightning while she was watching; even if Tenet Ka had not yet taught her that the dark side was evil, his own childhood training remained strongly enough ingrained that he did not want his daughter to see him using it. "Close the ..."

Jacen had to let the order trail off when Sing took advantage of his hesitation to leap at him. Allana screamed from inside the refresher; then Sing was three paces away, lightsaber coming in for a midbody strike. Jacen lifted one foot as though to pivot away, and Sing took the bait and stopped, dropping one leg back as she continued her swing.

Instead of spinning past as he feinted, Jacen cartwheeled over her blade and came down on the other side. Sing reversed her attack so fast he barely had time to grab her wrist, much less turn her own weapon against her as he had intended.

So Jacen kicked her in the knee as hard as he could.

The joint dislocated with a sickening pop, and Sing collapsed to the floor shrieking. But she did not release her lightsaber. She did not even stop fighting, rolling into him in an effort to break his grasp and slash him open. Jacen started to pivot out of the way, intending to bring her arm around for a clean break behind her back.

But Allana suddenly appeared on the other side of Sing, charging forward with her dark brows lowered and what looked like a small recording rod clutched in her hands.

mean, that Luke would struggle against Shimra, who has the immense disadvantage of no force sensitivity at all

The short warrior hurried in, his weapon striking at Jacen like a serpent, then stiffening, jabbed him hard in the left forearm, as if to stake the arm to the floor. Jacen twisted out from under the attack, grasping that Luke had again been pressed to the wall. Having killed three of his assailants, he was facing only one opponent, but his energy was beginning to flag. It was not fatigue born of fear of going to the dark side, but simple exhaustion, and Shimrra was moving in. - The Unifying Force

Eager to award the kill to the Supreme Overlord, the slayer closest to Luke turned and ran at Jacen with his amphistaff held overhead like an ax, intent on splitting open his victim's forehead.

Jacen could feel Luke call deeply on the reservoir that was the Force. From Luke's left hand gathered a blinding tangle of energy manipulated into being by the raw power of the Force. As if hitting an invisible wall, the warrior stopped short, then spasmed as green sparks began to coruscate around him. Enveloped, he fell like a tree.

The essential reader’s companion wrote:

Vector prime wrote:Yomin Carr did not relent, pushing down with all his strength - frightening strength to Mara for, indeed, she, even with all of her inner power and determination, could not hold him up. She reached into the Force then, trying another tactic on the man, and then she nearly buckled, for there was ... nothing.
That was the only way she could describe it. Nothing. It was as if the Force was not a part of this warrior, as if he refused to acknowledge its existence in such a profound manner that it did not exist for him.
Mara had to rely strictly on her fighting skills, pitting her speed and precision against this opponent's brute force.

Fury wrote:He got his lightsaber up, caught the first several bolts-and was staggered by their power, which was so much greater than any bolt from any blaster pistol or rifle he had ever encountered. He might be able to intercept every bolt, but stopping them would exhaust him within seconds.” 

Fury wrote:“No, but there’s other bad news. The second vehicle is carrying a YVH combat droid.”
The Yuuzhan Vong Hunter droids, designed at the height of the Yuuzhan Vong War, were formidable. In a one-on-one match between a Jedi Knight and a YVH droid, the odds were about even. If the Jedi was inexperienced, if the battle dragged on long enough for her to tire, she was likely to be the loser…a dead loser.”

Blade_of_Dorin wrote:Switching my vote to Darth Jooj.

• Arguing that OOU chronological dates negate quotes. Of course, this would make sourcebooks completely worthless (it's not enough just to say "out of date if there are new characters" because Vitiate's existence predates the latest supremacy quotes...you have to say that any new information invalidates the quotes), and is clearly contradicted by the policy that published material that isn't like N-canon is canon, not that it's canon to some alternative version of the universe where certain information isn't canon. It would be weird for a source that doesn't acknowledge the existence of the real world to suddenly have that implicitly in its information.
  
• Arguing that some other point supersedes it. This is possible, but the more supremacy quotes across a variety of sources there are, the more overwhelming the evidence would have to be. Arguing for the ignoring of like 12 supremacy quotes based on some particular interpretation of feats that could be accurate is a very tall order. If you're going to discard an entire set of quotes and sources, you need a very strong argument to do so.
  

BoD wrote:Just to clarify: I don't believe for a second that Caedus should be number 8, but he's far more deserving of it than Plagueis.

This post should function as something relatively similar to an extension of Elm's case on the subject, though there will obviously be an overlap on particular points. While it appears the battle is already won I felt it necessary that I contribute something to this pro-Caedus movement given I've probably dedicated the largest portion of time to arguing in favour of the character out of anyone to comment in the thread thus far. While I'm personally of the opinion a force wielder like Revan or Vol is more deserving of this particular place within the list I'd happily take Caedus over Plagueis any day of the week. With that out of the way here are the topics this post shall attempt to cover:

>Frequently used cases against Jacen (e.g the Sing fight and the TP comparisons drawn between other character's feats and Jacen's shenanigans during his attempt to breach Fondor's defences).
>An angle that as of yet remains unexplored (Durron scaling).

So, as has been pointed out by Elm in his rebuttal to everybody's favourite SI antagonist (Ziggy) the Sing fight has heavy circumstances involved, and Jacen demonstrates himself to be vastly more powerful than Sing in several instances, which include, but are not limited to his telekinetic manhandling and telepathic domination of her, it's irrefutable that near immediate comparisons can be drawn between Jacen and other candidates for this list, most notably PT stars such as Dooku, who scales above Sing to such an extent that implying there is any position in which Dooku would find himself in danger of losing a brawl against her seems utterly preposterous. Fortunately, we can do away with this by citing the fact that as of TUF Jacen himself notes that his saber abilities are vastly below those of Kyp, Mara and such. Whilst it's worth noting that Jacen's power experiences a notable advancement from this point onwards, and by extension his augmentation improves to a degree that makes him a far more formidable opponent, there's still a certain level of weakness in Jacen's pure saber ability, as can be seen by the fact that despite having vastly superior potency in the force, Jacen finds himself on the losing end of a brawl against his aunt Mara. While it's worth emphasising that Jacen was hindered by the confined conditions I think you'd be reaching to assert that a small space dropped Jacen down a couple tiers, which is what you'd be saying if you believed his force power to be proportionate to his abtitude as a close quarters combatant. Mara dropping a tunnel on him also isn't as relevant as some users have attempted to portray. Mara herself wasn't intending to accomplish damage by use of the attack, but to entrap Jacen for a confirmed kill, and Jacen sends the rubble at her in a fashion similar to a bomb blast soon after, indicating that Mara's probably not in much better shape than Jacen, who's noted as still being capable of extraordinary strength even while in his present condition. This fits well given Jacen never (As far as we know) makes any major effort to enhance his abilities as a duellist, but spends his 5 years away from the NJO studying arcane force techniques and increasing his power. After his boost upon killing Mara though his saber abilities seem to improve drastically, which we can probably attribute to a growing obsession with surpassing his uncle as a blade master. Not soon after the boost Jacen marvels at his own ability, believing himself to be the second greatest swordsman to ever grace the plane of existence. While I think we can safely dismiss Jacen's musings as amusing, innacurate ego stroking, the general portrayal (Likely the intent of the authors as well) is that post boost Jacen is on a different level in sabers. Such can be shown by his performance against Kyle, wherein he's capable of making the battlemaster look like a second rate youngling while ragdolling his allies, despite still recovering from his prior duel with his uncle. This contrasts nicely with his fight against Mara, who's noted to only be better than Corran to a certain degree, not a huge amount. Kyle should be proximate to her based off that given his apparent superiority to Horn (Luke entrusted him with leading the strike team, despite Corran volunteering to do so as well). There's also another verifiable power increase that will be covered later on.

As far as TP comparisons are concerned I think people have a fundamental lack of understanding of how the link Caedus established with his commanders works and why it was created in the first place (Likely because nobody bar a select few actually bothered to read the novel and jumped on the hype train like a band of bandwagoning buffoons desperate to lower the character). The first thing that's important to emphasise is that contrary to the claims of some Caedus doesn't actually create the link with the intent of drawing off it to TP the non force sensitive normies, but actually does it to bolster the natural aggression of the commanders so they'd be more willing to advance his ship towards the shield gate, by which point after getting through Caedus planned to bombard the planet into submission. Caedus then, while his ship is advancing, takes the time to TP the Fondorians so they'd open the gate. Next thing that's up is Caedus's connection with his commanders actually pushes him to a point where he struggles to breathe. That doesn't sound very much like an amp does it. The reason many members have chosen to interpret it this way is because it caused a buildup of energy per Caedus himself, but none of them have actually bothered to explain why that energy can't function as a negative that's overloading Caedus, and he subsequently discharges it onto the Fondorians to get it off him. The energy's absence obviously exhausts Caedus but it was necessary to stop himself from being outright overpowered by it. That's the most logical explanation we have as far as I can tell, and one that actually accounts for the fact that the "amp" is causing Caedus to struggle with basic things like sucking in air.

As for the pro-Caedus case Elm's covered a lot of the points that I'd have made so I'll draw attention to something that was omitted in his post instead of retreading old ground for the sake of it. As of Bloodlines Jacen states that he's superior to Durron in the force. Some members have decided to arbitrarily dismiss this as a fallible character opinion and whine about how Kyp's mental handicaps mean Jacen is incapable of knowing what Kyp can do. The first counterpoint I'd like to draw attention to is "muh intent". While it's a point many users here refuse to read about for more than 5 seconds before uttering "lalalalalalala" and pretending it has no inherent value, I'm going to go contrary to this notion and say that if we don't care about what authors intended then what is the bloody point of us debating this shit exactly? Sure it has its limits, and I won't start randomly accepting stances contradicted by the wider lore as long as an author believes them, nor will I hop on the author ranking hype train, I will however acknowledge what an author's intent was within the confines of the literature they crafted. In this case I think it'd be reaching to assert that Karen wasn't saying Kyp < Jacen but rather that Jacen's an egotistical douchebag with a stick lodged up his ass and his own dick in his mouth. Consider the context of the scene is drawing parallels between Jacen and Anakin, parallels that are reiterated across the course of the 9 novels in question. One of those parallels is regarding their stance in the pecking order of things. Why would Karen establish a parallel based on a premise that's inherently false? Intuitively that's nonsensical, and doesn't speak to good writing. Moreover, Karen stating that Jacen's opinion of himself isn't misplaced (ie incorrect) doesn't exactly speak to her viewing him as deluded when referencing his own abilities. I also find it difficult to seriously acknowledge with a straight face the idea that Jacen knows nothing about Kyp's power. Kyp's Dovin Basal feat is an extraordinarily impressive display that took place in a well known battle, and is something Jaina is aware of. The idea that Jacen is completely oblivious to it seems a tad nonsensical, to be quite frank. As for the case that has been made by Ziggy and IG about Jacen's excessive amount of appearances with little to no feats of magnitude, I'd like to point out that only in 12 of those novels is Jacen actually portrayed as remotely powerful, and LOTF takes place in a grounded setting with little to know displays of well... anything impressive from anyone (Mediums should be a factor considered here). The point is though is that Jacen's clearly intended to be better than everyone in the NJO, and subsequently benefits from scaling to them. On top of all this, the argument is a clear appeal to intent from somebody who has Caedus below Aayla Secura, a position which is likely not adopted by well... any of the LOTF writers.

As far as Caedus's performance against Luke is concerned, while Elm briefly touched upon it, I think it's worth noting the huge role Caedus's damage soak played in his performance.  Throughout the duel Caedus is getting slapped around by his uncle, consistently being outpaced and smashed within a flew slashes, despite growing gradually stronger due to amping himself off pain, while Luke's growing weaker. While the environment definitely came into play Caedus was definitely punching above his weight class, able to prolong a duel with somebody a borderline blitz tier above him in pure power. On top of that Caedus has parity with this iteration of Luke, later matching amped Jaina. Adding to Elm's points on this topic, I'd like to emphasise that Caedus lands an equal number of blows and is able to subdue her with FL. Jaina only gains the advantage due to the force (Which, as Elm noted, is likely a result of her Mando training) but Caedus proves capable of replicating this against her, disabling her with FL in the second half of the duel. So Caedus, with a fucked arm is better than her (As noted by Jaina herself), disabling her with FL and matching in sabers, Jaina only gaining edges through unpredictability and a second weapon. Basically, Caedus is as good as the iteration of Luke who borderline speed blitzed him in Inferno at base (During a time where he was marvelling at his saber skill and was more powerful than a dude who can shift Dovin Basals), and can punch up higher and last longer via a pain amp. Basically, Malgus has to go vastly beyond Jacen to have a chance, and that's not likely considering Jacen's scaling (You'll struggle to find a character who can match Kyp's environmental feats).

(Credit to @"Emperor Caedus", @The Ellimist, and @MasterCilghal for constructive discussion on the ideas present in both this post and Elm's)

BoD wrote:Just to clarify: I don't believe for a second that Caedus should be number 8, but he's far more deserving of it than Plagueis.