★ Top Fifteen Tournament #8 - Darth Plagueis

Corvinus wrote:I've already made several cases that back up with evidence how Plagueis stacks up to the ROTS titans, so it's pretty ironic of you to accuse me of ad hominems.

This scales Plagueis in TPM to be superior to Maul, who is superior to Qui-Gon, who is mentioned in the same breath as Mace Windu (but is less deadly) who is Yoda's equal.


Now that we have firmly cemented Plagueis to be a TPM titan via feats and scaling, we move onto why that isn't his ceiling. 

Jedi Academy: Training Manual wrote: wrote:
Renowned for his skill with the lightsaber, Jedi Master Anoon Bondara is regarded by many of his peers and all of his apprentices as a role model whose combat prowess is unmatched in the Jedi Order. Bondara would disagree with this assesment. During his tenure at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, he spars with superior lightsaber duelists such as Qui-Gon Jinn and Mace Windu. Although he humbles himself when compared to their skill, Bondara's prowess is nontheless considerable.

Many of the most powerful, terrifying, and notorious Sith Lords through history have been Human or near-Human, including Exar Kun, Darth Malak, Darth Bane, Darth Sidious, Darth Vader, and Darth Krayt.

-- Behind The Threat: Sith

I could not answer; Vastor has power on the scale of Master Yoda, or young Anakin Skywalker. And I had no desire to debate with Depa on Jedi tradition, and the necessary distinction between dark and light.

Shatterpoint

Star Wars Episode I: Jedi Power Battles: Prima's Official Strategy Guide wrote: wrote:
His fighting style is graceful and precise, albeit a bit deadlier than Qui-Gon.

So, to summarise, one year before this Sidious was a level or two behind Plagueis and in that time he has not surpassed him. Claiming to be equal then is something of a reach on Sidious's part. His master was in the worst state he's been in twenty years and raised no Force defences and only a token defensive effort in manipulating his Midichlorians - healing the damage from Sidious's Force Lightning, which worked perfectly, but not healing his lungs, likely due to being hammered at the time. This is a clear case of gloating on Sidious's part, exaggerating  his actual power in a moment of euphoria. 

Sidious knew that his own powers had increased tenfold over the decades, but he couldn’t be certain he had learned all of Plagueis’s secrets—“his sorcerer’s ways,” as the Sun Guards referred to them — including the ability to prevent beings from dying. He sometimes wondered: Was he a level behind? Two levels behind? Such questions were precisely what had driven generations of Sith apprentices ultimately to challenge their Masters. The uncertainty about who was the more powerful. The need to test themselves, to face the definitive trial.

BoD wrote:1) You try to use arbitrary Maul scaling which is completely dependent on scaling between Qui-Gon, Mace and Maul. 

BoD wrote:2) You then use Sidious' uncertainty about who was more powerful (note that this is pre-boost Sheev) to try and prove Plagueis is > him or even >> him.

Darth Plagueis, Pg 4 wrote:A tremor took hold of the planet.


Sprung from death, it unleashed itself in a powerful wave, at once burrowing deep into the world’s core and radiating through its saccharine atmosphere to shake the stars themselves. At the quake’s epicenter stood Sidious, one elegant hand vised on the burnished sill of an expansive translucency, a vessel filled suddenly to bursting, the Force so strong within him that he feared he might disappear into it, never to return. 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.


A welter of voices, near and far, present and from eons past, drowned his thoughts. Raised in praise, the voices proclaimed his reign and cheered the inauguration of a new order. Yellow eyes lifted to the night sky, he saw the trembling stars flare, and in the depth of his being he felt the power of the dark side anoint him.
Slowly, almost reluctantly, he came back to himself, his gaze settling on his manicured hands. Returned to the present, he took note of his rapid breathing, while behind him the room labored to restore order. Air scrubbers hummed—costly wall tapestries undulating in the summoned breeze. Prized carpets sealed their fibers against the spread of spilled fluids. The droid shuffled in obvious confliction. Sidious pivoted to take in the disarray: antique furniture overturned; framed artwork askew. As if a whirlwind had swept through. And facedown on the floor lay a statue of Yanjon, one of four law-giving sages of Dwartii.


A piece Sidious had secretly coveted.


Also sprawled there, Plagueis: his slender limbs splayed and elongated head turned to one side. Dressed in finery, as for a night on the town.


And now dead.


Or was he?


Uncertainty rippled through Sidious, rage returning to his eyes. A tremor of his own making, or one of forewarning? Was it possible that the wily Muun had deceived him? Had Plagueis unlocked the key to immortality, and survived after all? Never mind that it would constitute a petty move for one so wise—for one who had professed to place the Grand Plan above all else. Had Plagueis become ensnared in a self-spun web of jealousy and possessiveness, victim of his own engineering, his own foibles?


If he hadn’t been concerned for his own safety, Sidious might have pitied him. Wary of approaching the corpse of his former Master, he called on the Force to roll the aged Muun over onto his back. From that angle Plagueis looked almost as he had when Sidious first met him, decades earlier: smooth, hairless cranium; humped nose, with its bridge flattened as if from a shock-ball blow and its sharp tip pressed almost to his upper lip; jutting lower jaw; sunken eyes still brimming with menace—a physical characteristic rarely encountered in a Muun. But then Plagueis had never been an ordinary Muun, nor an ordinary being of any sort.


Sidious took care, still reaching out with the Force. On closer inspection, he saw that Plagueis’s already cyanotic flesh was smoothing out, his features relaxing.


Faintly aware of the whir of air scrubbers and sounds of the outside world infiltrating the luxurious suite, he continued the vigil; then, in relief, he pulled himself up to his full height and let out his breath. This was no Sith trick. Not an instance of feigning death, but one of succumbing to its cold embrace. The being who had guided him to power was gone.

Darth Plagueis, Pg 5 wrote:Confident that the will of the dark side had been done, he returned to the suite’s window wall. Two beings in a galaxy of countless trillions, but what had transpired in the suite would affect the lives of all of them. Already the galaxy had been shaped by the birth of one, and henceforth would be reshaped by the death of the other. But had the change been felt and recognized elsewhere? Were his sworn enemies aware that the Force had shifted irrevocably? Would it be enough to rouse them from self-righteousness? He hoped not. For now the work of vengeance could begin in earnest.


His eyes sought and found an ascending constellation of stars, one of power and consequence new to the sky, though soon to be overwhelmed by dawn’s first light. Low in the sky over the flatlands, visible only to those who knew where and how to look, it ushered in a bold future. To some the stars and planets might seem to be moving as ever, destined to align in configurations calculated long before their fiery births. But in fact the heavens had been perturbed, tugged by dark matter into novel alignments. In his mouth, Sidious tasted the tang of blood; in his chest, he felt the monster rising, emerging from shadowy depths and contorting his aspect into something fearsome just short of revealing itself to the world.


The dark side had made him its property, and now he made the dark side his.


Breathless, not from exertion but from the sudden inspiration of power, he let go of the sill and allowed the monster to writhe through his body like an unbroken beast of range or prairie.


Had the Force ever been so strong in anyone?


Sidious had never learned how Plagueis’s own Master had met his end. Had he died at Plagueis’s hand? Had Plagueis, too, experienced a similar exultation on becoming a sole Sith Lord? Had the beast of the end time risen then to peek at the world it was to inhabit, knowing its release was imminent?

BoD wrote:3) You also use the idea of power growth, conveniently ignoring that Force users grow at completely different speeds. Within 3 years, Anakin went from solidly < Dooku to ~ or even < him in power, and that's before his immense growth upon touching the dark side. Likewise, Dooku grew "infinitely" more powerful a short time after touching the dark side. Characters grow at different rates. You can't apply Plagueis' growth to the others because it's simply wrong.

Corvinus wrote:Elm posted on behalf of DC. I said DC was reaching.

Corvinus wrote:I also have and am making arguments.

IG (Exists) wrote:DC's post is far, far better than anything you could come up with. I'd recommend not using ad hominems in regards to another's post unless you can actually do any better.

No, it's pretty simple scaling, especially by some of the more convoluted scaling chains seen on this site.

No, it's pretty simple scaling, especially by some of the more convoluted scaling chains seen on this site.

The "Behind The Threat: Sith" quote is literally just a list of powerful human or near-human Sith Lords lol. 

A young Anakin does have comparable power to Yoda. Mace has personally met both so can legitimately compare the three Force-users, so I'm not sure what you are trying to prove here.

This one is easy. Sidious was uncertain even after the boost:

As we can see, immediately after the boost "uncertainty rippled through Sidious", and he wonders if "the wily Muun had deceived him", Sidious is "concerned for his own safety" and "wary of approaching the corpse", calling on the Force to do so from afar. Even then "Sidious took care" when inspecting Plagueis's body, and "in relief" realised he was actually dead. 

Had Plagueis unlocked the key to immortality, and survived after all? Never mind that it would constitute a petty move for one so wise—for one who had professed to place the Grand Plan above all else. Had Plagueis become ensnared in a self-spun web of jealousy and possessiveness, victim of his own engineering, his own foibles?

"Had Plagueis, too, experienced a similar exultation on becoming a sole Sith Lord? Had the beast of the end time risen then to peek at the world it was to inhabit, knowing its release was imminent?"

He did indeed experience the same thing upon the death of Tenebrous, but we know for a fact he didn't surpass Tenebrous in power until at least Part 2 of the novel, decades later.

Since it took Sidious decades to become somewhat of a peer to Plagueis, we know his growth curve. 

Other ones are irrelevant as we are not talking about them.