★ Top Fifteen Tournament #8 - Darth Plagueis

THE DARK REVENANT

"There is only Revan. Only he can shape this galaxy as it is meant to be shaped." -- Bastila Shan

A. REBUTTALS

VS Darth Caedus:

Luke broke down after Caedus killed Mara and then Luke wrongfully murdered Lumiya in revenge. He legitimately planned to commit suicide until toward the end of Fury (long after he fought Caedus). When Luke reflected inward, "he could feel nothing but the weight of grief, and the one thing that kept him functioning while carrying that burden-his desire to be reunited with Mara" ("his desire to be reunited with Mara" meaning suicide, as highlighted in the red quotes below). All the meanwhile, Luke had abandoned "the weight of duty. He had carried it throughout his adult life, and at times it had ground him down. But at other times it had sustained him, helped keep him alive. Perhaps that was why he had been so willing to abandon it: it had been keeping him alive at a time when he did not want to live." Prompted by Ben, Luke had to consciously purge his grief and reassert "the weight of his responsibility-to the Order, to his family, to the galaxy" to recover.

Star Wars Legacy of the Force: Fury wrote:
And then he was pacing, running his fingers through his hair, ruffling it as though the sudden untidiness would help the thoughts escape. "You want to be with Mom."

"Of course I do. Don't you?"

"Yes, but for me it's different. I want her to be here, with us." Ben stopped in midstride and whirled to face his father, a graceful move that Luke could appreciate with the Jedi Master portion of his mind. "You want to be with her where she is."

"What do you mean?"

"You want to be dead. At peace. With her. Dead."

"That's ridiculous."

"No, it isn't. When Uncle Han and Aunt Leia told us Alema Rar was dead, you should have said, Now I can get back to work. Instead, you're saying Now I can turn over the Jedi Order to someone who's worthy. You're getting ready to die. Problem is, you don't have an incurable disease or a blaster pressed against your head. So how's it going to happen?" Ben's voice cracked on the final word.

"Ben, that is so, so ... You're just leaping to the wrong conclusion." Luke struggled for the right argument to make his son see that this was a ridiculous notion.

But the argument just wasn't there.

No prominent Force use has ever had a mental state this bad before. With mindset and power so closely linked, especially for the Skywalkers, I don't see how any of Luke's Caedus-era performances can be used reliably, especially in comparison to the clairvoyant Dark Empire Luke that beat Palpatine. 

VS Darth Plagueis:

Offensive midichlorian manipulation is suspect at best, not a thing at worse. Consider these three quotes from Plagueis:

(1) "Midichlorians also appear to possess a single unified consciousness linked via the pneuma and can be influenced by the host's mental state." 

(2) "[One can] impose one's will on the midichlorians already present in the subject through the energy of the pneuma."

(3) "I used my will, amplified through my body's own midichlorians, to override the lesser concentrated midichlorian voices in the test subjects."

So, all the midichlorians share a unified consciousness linked to/reflective of the host's pneuma/"expression of conscious thought"/willpower. If one has sufficient willpower, their midichlorians' unified consciousness should be able to resist the "overriding" of their pneuma. It's a willpower versus willpower deal, not an auto-one shot. 

Seperate from that, offensive midichlorian manipulation is just sever Force: "To sever the Force is to trigger a mass die-off a victim's midichlorians--not enough to kill but enough to take a Jedi's power. It could be that the Jedi of old knew this feat, but if so they did not understand its underpinnings. Severing the Force is the inverse of what I have done when inducing midichlorians to create life." Note Daniel Wallace's Book of Sith endnotes on starwars.com confirm Plagueis' suspicion that it's the same ability the Tales of the Jedi Jedi use: "This removes a Jedi’s ability to use the Force, and was introduced in the Tales of the Jedi comics during the 1990s. Given what we’ve learned of the Force since then, I added the detail that this works by triggering a mass die-off of the subject’s midi-chlorians." That follows as the Jedi tried to kill Kun with the attack, and Droma was permanently severed (him merging with the Force upon his death doesn't preclude that, as that should be hypothetically possible for even non-Force sensitives). The only difference being the ancients didn't "understand its underpinnings," but they didn't need to be in order to defend against it though. Again, willpower's the logical counter, as Plagueis effectively stated earlier, as it's something the ancients could use without needing to understand the midichlorian meta.

This all also explains why Plagueis didn't try to trigger an offensive midichlorian die-off against Palpatine, who he didn't know was that advanced in the practice. 

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As for defensive midichlorian manipulation, it's overhyped. I, like probably most others, was under the belief Plagueis used the ability to tank a prolonged Force lightning attack from an enraged Palpatine. In actuality, Plagueis survived a single burst of Palpatine's lightning.

Star Wars Darth Plagueis wrote:
The question lingered for only a moment, then Sidious unleashed another tangle of lightning, drawing more deeply on the dark side than he ever had. 

"Let's go over the second part of the speech, shall we," he said, smoothing his tousled cloak. "You useless old fool." 

With a snarl, he threw the cloak back behind his shoulders and leaned toward Plagueis, planting his palms on the low table that was now puddled with spilled wine. 

Plagueis' robes weren't even destroyed despite only using midichlorian manipulation, which would have repaired his cells but not his cloth, meaning Palpaitne's attack wasn't trying to incinerate Plagueis but was more similar to what we saw in Return of the Jedi. Vader's flesh and outer armor visibly weren't significantly affected either, but the lightning still "ravaged" his innards and fatally wounded him. Likewise, Luke was outwardly normal but inwardly suffered "sudden and massive calcification of his skeletal structure." The "abrupt drop" in Luke's "blood minerals caused muscular microseiures all over his body" that would have been chronic if not for extensive treatment. So, there's no telling how much Palpatine's single burst affected him anyway. All around, the feat's wholly unquantifiable at best, legitimately unimpressive at worst. 

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And then there's the alleged supremacy quotes. 

I'll dive into Darth Plagueis blurb and Lucasfilm Licensing policy in a follow-up post to The Ellimist tomorrow, but I want to address the DK Readers quotes now. Since the release of Star Wars The Old Republic, Palpatine has only received "most powerful" accolades from the DK Readers series. However, those sources are explicitly written in-universe (link) and from a perspective that is either not omniscient or follows Lucas', not Lucasfilm Licensing's, continuity chronology instead (note: Lucas and Lucasfilm Licensing run two alternate Star Wars continuities). The DK Readers series describes the Sith as a "many centuries old" (link) organization that "fought a war" with the Jedi (link), which matches Lucas' take that the Sith are only a two-thousand year old cut that fought one war with the Jedi. Moveover, DK Readers holds that Plagueis died before Palpatine trained Maul (link), that Boba Fett died in the sarlacc pit (link), and that Palpatine was the "final Sith Master" (link), all of which are also Lucas continuity-specific claims. Again, either the source is not omniscient or it's in-universe perspective is following Lucas' timeline. Either way, it's not usable here. 

B. POWER

I don't want this to be a typical Revan post. Most debaters are already know Revan's feats and accolades. So, quickly, here's a short summary of Revan's best stuff.

(1) Revan repeatedly defeated a Star Forge-empowered Darth Malak. Malak had "powers far greater" than Exar Kun, who was "far more powerful" than any Tales of the Jedi-era Jedi, froze thousands of senators with Sith sorcery, and "blinded every scanning technician" of a planet of 1.3 billion. Revan did this after fighting armies of "highly skilled" dark Jedi and empowered Sith war droids, including an army that Malak believed would have defeated Darth Revan. Revan did this 318 years pre-prime. 

(2) Revan "easily" summoned the energies needed to instantly incinerate Darth Nyriss with Force lightning. Nyriss had defeated Meetra Surik faster than Scourge could recover from a stumble. Meetra had defeated Kreia, amped by a "geyser of dark side energy" at the heart of the Malachor V nexus. Darth Sion also foresaw that Meetra "shall surpass her power." A non-empowered Kreia had dominated and drained three elite Jedi Council masters. Revan did this 312 years pre-prime. 



(3) Revan and Vitiate were rough peers in the Revan novel, Revan resisted and remained in lock-step with Vitiate across their mental war, and the resurrected Revan had greater power and willpower than ever before. Thus, prime Revan should at least be approaching feats that Vitiate did "easily" or significantly "weakened." Notably, a weakened Vitiate consumed all life on, and affected the outer core, magnetic fields, and atmosphere of, a planet. If that's too vague or non-combat applicable, Vitiate also "easily" "dominated" and "crushed the wills" of four Jedi labeled "the galaxy's greatest Jedi," "the galaxy's most powerful Jedi," and, per Tol Braga, "a strike team of the best and brightest Jedi" and "the best strike team in the galaxy." (Note this was done mid-fight, not after the Jedi fell unconscious: “The spirit of Master Orgus explained that during your confrontation with the Emperor, your mind was dominated, and you were temporarily turned to the dark side by his power.”)



(4) Revan died on the Foundry, broke out of Netherworld, essence transferred back into his corpse, and animated it through sheer will. More on this later.

Reminder: The metric to rank characters will be the extent that Darth Malgus would need an amp to defeat them.

I would wager most debaters have Revan's power at least in the ballpark of Caedus' and Plagueis'. If so, it's going to come down to the differentiating characteristics of the three. The rest of this posts highlights Revan's unique advantages and why they make him a relatively far more difficult opponent to defeat. 

Note Leland Chee has stated that gameplay "can serve to provide a scale from which to compare how one character stacks up against another" and to see "what type of Force powers a character may have." Even more generally, gameplay is recognized as C-Canon or "secondary canon," meaning it's still canon but can be overridden by C-Canon sources. Nothing here is, so I'll be using gameplay throughout as our only canonical guide to some of Revan's skillsets. (Credit to Syndicate for scan) 



C. TELEPORTATION

This might be the most underrated ability in the mythos. To preface by addressing a long-standing counter to teleportation, the fact the “Master Force Adept” that oversees “the Emperor’s Imperial Archive” on Coruscant knows how to teleport (link) does not mean it’s a commonplace ability. This adept was in charge of and has unique access to Palpatine’s private vaults. A strike team of the Nightsister Silri, her rancor, and multiple bounty hunters tore through the Imperial Archive defenses but explicitly needed yslamari to counter the adept’s teleportation haxx. The only other known conventional users of teleportation are Soa, Valkorion, the Dread Masters, Revan, Palpatine, Darth Caedus, and Luke Skywalker. The latter two have only shown it on inanimate objects, and (not surprisingly) the others needed large strike teams to defeat them. Luke even identified ‘fold space’ as among the most rare abilities and suggested no prequel trilogy-era Jedi knew it: “They had learned much of what Jacen learned; skills that no other Jedi had known for centuries, if ever.” Plagueis also spoke of teleportation as if it's just a hypothetical ability, and one that he failed at replicating: "A few Dark Lords claimed to have had the ability to . . . transport themselves through space and time. But Plagueis had never succeeded in duplicating any of those phenomena."



Its practical advantages are immediately obvious. Foremost, it makes it far more difficult (the qualifier for ranking characters) for amped Malgus to actually down Revan. Revan has proven capable of teleporting to another battlefield location to reassess/recover six times over, including while losing a fight and having his Force essence “violently stripped” from him by the Machine Core. Unless Malgus gets in a lucky/random strike (which is possible versus anyone), Revan will note he’s being pressed, teleport to a new battlefield location, then approach the fight anew with revised tactics and a better understanding of Malgus’ fighting style. This adaptation will be driven by Revan's nigh-unparalleled tactical aptitude (generally put #1 for Force users), likely mastery of all seven lightsaber forms (having exhausted all of his many Masters' knowledge to the point Kreia claimed he had nothing more to learn from the Order), and insane qualitative and quantitative combat experience, especially against other Force users. Neither Caedus nor Plagueis have this respite luxury. If they are strained, there’s nowhere for them to go and limited opportunity for them to readjust.



Second, Revan consistently uses teleportation simultaneous with other Force attacks. Revan favors the tactic of abruptly teleporting and then Force grappling his opponents from his new position before they can adjust, as shown in the video above. How will amped Malgus know to instantly re-position and block Revan’s attack as Revan suddenly vanishes in front of him? Neither Malgus nor almost any other Force user has any experience versus teleportation. The shock and unexpectedness will almost certainly leave him vulnerable. Revan’s used this exact method to successfully ‘ragdoll’ a strike team including the Hero of Tython, Darth Marr, and Satele Shan, all of whom had "greatly increased" "combat effectiveness” (including Force powers, lightsaber skills, and, of course, the ability to anticipate attacks). The tactics effectiveness is demonstrated well by prime, all-out Luke struggling to break free from a Force choke because he doesn’t know where the attack is coming from:

Star Wars Crucible wrote:What happened next, Luke only felt: the invisible hand of the Force clamping down on his throat. His vision narrowed instantly. The blood to his brain had been choked off. Five seconds, he thought. Five seconds until he lost consciousness.

Maybe less.

He reached out in the Force, trying to find the Qreph who was attacking him—trying to find either Qreph—but he was too dizzy already. His hearing started to fade, his vision narrowed to nothing.

Three seconds. Maybe.

Luke launched himself into a Force leap, whirling his blade through a Jedi attack pattern, whipping his feet back and forth in blind snap kicks and targetless heel strikes. His hearing faded to silence, and he felt himself starting to drop ... then the ground came up beneath his feet and his knees buckled.

Desperate to locate his attacker, Luke reached out in all directions and pulled, grabbing at every being he could sense. He felt a jolt of surprise from Leia and let her loose. He found the Qrephs just ahead, standing well apart, two beings full of fear and anger and hatred. He pulled harder and felt them slide toward him, their fear blazing into panic and their anger deepening to rage.

The Force grasp slipped free, and the blood came roaring back into Luke’s head. His hearing returned first, and he heard Leia a few meters to his right, her lightsaber growling and hissing as she blocked a fork of Force lightning.[hideedit]

Same idea here, except Revan has four lightsabers (two wielded telekinetically) to cut Luke Malgus down before he can even try to break free. It’s also hard to quickly escape from a Force choke/grip anyway, as shown by Kenobi basically resigning to his fate after Dooku grapples him:

Star Wars Revenge of the Sith junior novelization wrote:Count Dooku half-turned and raised a hand. A rush of dark power lifted Obi-Wan off his feet and choked the air from his lungs. He reached for the Force to counter Dooku, but the attack had been too sudden. He saw Dooku twist, kicking out at Anakin with all his weight behind it. Anakin fell backward, and Dooku hurled Obi-Wan over the edge of the balcony.

So, Revan has both a greater proven success rate and greater intuitive likelihood of getting through amp Malgus’ Force barrier compared to the others.

D. FORCE IN BALANCE

Darth Gravid was "driven increasingly mad" by "his attempts to straddle the two realms" of the Force and "introduce Jedi selflessness and compassion" into Sith teachings. Plagueis later reflected that what Gravid sought to achieve was impossible and that no Dark Lord could intermingle with the light side after the dark had "staked a claim." 

Star Wars Darth Plagueis wrote:A human Sith Lord whose short reign had elapsed some five centuries earlier, Gravid had been persuaded to believe that total commitment to the dark side would sentence the Sith Order to eventual defeat, and so had sought to introduce Jedi selflessness and compassion into his teachings and practice, forgetting that there can be no return to the light for an adept who has entered the dark wood; that the dark side will not surrender one to whom, by mutual agreement, it has staked a claim. Driven increasingly mad by his attempts to straddle the two realms, Gravid became convinced that the only way to safeguard the future of the Sith was to hide or destroy the lore that had been amassed through the generations-the texts, holocrons, and treatises - so that the Sith could fashion a new beginning for themselves that would guarantee success.

Revan proved Plagueis wrong.

(1) When Revan recovered his mask, "in an instant, all his lost memories came flooding back to him." These experiences came from when he "wielded tremendous dark side power" with megalomaniac and sociopathic beliefs. However, Revan was able to reconcile and merge his wholly distinct Sith and Jedi ideologies and identities together. Revan then "wielded the dual philosophies of Sith passion and Jedi tranquility" to the point he could "release the Force in its purest form."

(2) Vitiate and the Dread Masters "tried so hard" to "wrench Revan apart," likely along the fault-lines of his Sith and Jedi identities, across three centuries. They partially succeeded, as Revan's consciousness splintered between a personification of his "wisdom" and a personification of his "anger," "rage," "strength," and "focus." These identities operated largely independently within Revan, with distinct ideologies (e.g. the "wisdom"-half embraced Jedi philosophy, the "focus"-half decried it) and activity (e.g. the "wisdom"-half "detached" from the mental war, the "focus"-half double-downed in it). Nevertheless, Revan still had such mastery that his two identities were again able to reconcile and merge to achieve "total balance" in the Foundry fight.



(3) After his resurrection, Revan was still able to simultaneously wield pure light-side and dark-side Force energy while being an animated corpse literally powered by hatred.



So, Revan has repeatedly shown to be able to merge Jedi and Sith ideologies, even across overlapping consciousness (1), literally distinct entities of himself (2), or as a fully-fledged dark-sider (3). Plagueis, per his own admission, either lacks the willpower and/or mastery to do any that. Consider this the Revanite rebuttal to the whole "Plagueis has probed the deepest depths of the Force" shannaegings. Revan has too, just for the Unifying Force instead of the Living Force. And, unlike the midichlorian argument, this actually offers a direct comparison whereas Revan never had the luxury to study midichlorians for a century.

tl;dr:

Star Wars The Old Republic Encyclopedia wrote:Revan wielded the dual philosophies of Sith passion and Jedi tranquility to conquer his enemies

Star Wars Darth Plagueis wrote:[Darth Gravid] had sought to introduce Jedi selflessness and compassion into his teachings and practice, forgetting that there can be no return to the light for an adept who has entered the dark wood; that the dark side will not surrender one to whom, by mutual agreement, it has staked a claim. 

There's also tangible benefits to dual mastery. 

(1) "Releasing the Force in its purest form" packs a bigger punch than just a normal telekinetic push. "The energy unleashed was powerful enough to send Revan staggering." How often do we see attacks so potent that the caster reels backward? Vitiate was also outright rendered limp by it: "He landed in a heap on the floor and Revan raced toward him." Note "in a heap" means "the body completely limp" or "fall heavily and untidy and do not move." While "much" of Vitiate’s power was focused on dominating Revan’s will, Revan likewise likely diverted a significant portion of his power to fend off Vitiate’s telepathic attack. Revan wouldn’t have left his mind simply unguarded, as a mere brush of Vitiate’s mind collapsed Scourge to the floor, and Revan explicitly requires and expends Force power to resist Vitiate.

(2) Revan can "channel" the "twin rushing rivers" of light and dark side throughout his body, mid-fight, to temporarily amp his powerset. Revan did this in the Foundry fight and "became more powerful than any Jedi has ever dreamed of" afterwards. Revan can preface his teleportation juke-out by briefly ramping up his powers, increasing his chance of success with heightened speed and perception. 



E. SPEED, PERCEPTION, & PRECOGNITION 

Revan is surrounded by a strike team consisting of . . .

(1) The leader of the Sith Empire. He can move faster than very powerful Sith can register and was indifferent to another Sith who just "utterly destroyed" a Dark Councillor. 

Star Wars The Old Republic: The Price of Power wrote:Marr approached her with slow, deliberate steps, hands resting on the small of his back. Her master never rushed, always maintained an appearance of control. "I sense a similar hunger for power in you. Do not bother denying it."

"I see no reason to."

In an instant, he was gone. Her nostrils flared slightly as she tried to sense his presence.

"You believe you have earned that power, but you are mistaken," his voice thundered behind her.

(2) The Grand Master of the Jedi Order. She can literally absorb, melt away, and break lightsaber blades. Note Darth Malgus' lightsaber is no longer active when Jace Malcom tackles him, and there's neither a deactivation sound nor reason for Malgus to disarm, indicating Satele shattered the blade.



(3) The most powerful Jedi alive. After being labeled the Jedi's "greatest warrior" and "the Jedi's finest," he stalemated Scourge. He then grew so powerful that a Sith entity that could nigh-instantly break Scourge's mind was "no match" for him. Before fighting Revan, his spirit was even healed and purified. 

(4) A Sith Lord that "teems with the Force," "has great strength," and is a powerful practitioner of offensive and healing Sith powers. 

(5) The "quintessential Mandalorian" and soon-to-be Mand'alor that is "utterly dedicated to perfecting her skills in combat." Her arsenal includes blasters, electro darts, flamethrowers, grenades, and micro missiles. Below is the destructive impact of just two micro missiles.



(6) A legendary wookiee smuggler. His arsenal includes blasters, portage shield generators, reactive energy shields, and sticky grenades. 

(7) The greatest Republic SIS agent directing XS stock light freighter strafing runs.



The strike team entered a state of "battle clarity" and had their "combat effectiveness" "greatly increased" by Satele's prodigious battle meditation (link). Note Satele using battle meditation suggests the net effect of her amp was greater than what she could have physically contributed, despite being able to break lightsaber blades. Also, recall how significant Worrow Dowmat’s battle meditation was for the Jedi strike team that fought Darth Bane. 

Star Wars Darth Bane: Rule of Two wrote:It had been many years since Farfalla had fought while empowered by Worror's battle meditation. He had forgotten how much quicker and stronger the Ithorian's amazing talent made him feel. The Force flowed through him with greater power, filling him with its might.

Fueled by Worror's battle meditation, she switched styles seamlessly, and her arms and blades became a blur as they carved figure eights in the air to catch and absorb the bolts of dark side energy.

Johun felt his strength and energy plummet, a wave of exhaustion and fatigue overwhelmed him, the beneficial effects of the battle meditation vanishing as Worror's concentration was broken.

The speed, perceptions, and reflexes needed to not only block and dodge an endless barrage of blaster fire, grenades, missiles, strafing runs, telekinesis, lightning storms, and lightsaber attacks from "greatly" amped galactic champions but also launch counter-offenses (including the teleportation juke-out), all in a closed and small environment, is beyond almost everything seen by Caedus or Plagueis. Revan fought so well that the strike team audibly expressed dismay over how powerful he was. And Revan would have even won if not for spirit Revan (link), who seemingly shielded the Hero of Tython in raw light and dark side energy (link), described as "light side echoes" and "dark side fissures," allowing the Hero to free the rest of the team frozen by Revan’s powers (link).

•  Marr: "He is strong with the Force!"
•  Satele: "Grant me strength! . . . Press the attack!"
•  Lana: "The Force is my servant! . . . Be strong! . . . So much power!"
•  Shae: "Tough sucker! . . . Have some more! . . . Love a good scrap!"
•  Theron: "Don't let up! . . . Let's go, people!"
•  Jakarro: "Hit him with everything!"

(Read all the quotes, but especially note they're all yelling to basically dump their collective arsenals on Revan. Plus the bombing runs. Cue the mini rockets gif.) 



Now, take Revan's dispersed attention across the strike team and solely focus it on a single opponent. That's what we have against amped Malgus. Contrast that with Caedus believing Saba Sebatyne to be a "difficult" fight or Kyle Katarn to be a "challenge." How do you have that and still think Caedus beats Revan?

An obvious and overlooked reason as to how Revan's able to do all this is battle precognition, which anticipates attacks via "gauging an opponent's fighting style, heart rate, and there movements in combat." Revan is perhaps the greatest battle precog master in history, far outstripping "the most advanced among the Echani" in its usage. Brianna states, "Only Revan ever demonstrated such a skill in war. And even as he slaughtered us, the Echani still respected him." While Revan's able to apply battle precog to global theaters, it's far easier to use for one-on-one combat, and lesser practitioners can use battle precog to fight "several minutes in advance." Minutes!

Brianna, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2 wrote:It is the way of the Echani to be able to read their opponents - to know where an opponent is going to strike before it connects, anticipate it, and then strike against them. Echani battles are fought several minutes in advance - in many ways, it is much like the game of dejarik played in the core systems. The most advanced among the Echani are able to predict the course of battles by months, and the most revered are said to be able to predict the path of wars. Only Revan ever demonstrated such a skill in war. And even as he slaughtered us, the Echani still respected him.

Couple that with Revan's natural Force precognition, and his overall precog is easily among the greatest in the mythos. While Caedus' also unique Aing-Tii fighting-sight might match that, no one else has any advantages here. Revan should be anticipating amped Malgus' attacks distinctively faster than Plagueis can.

F. IMMORTALITY

(Note: This section includes writings from my debate with Azronger in Super Fight III, repurposed for a general discussion.) 

Revan died on the Foundry. The strike team confirmed, "I saw you die. I watched you take your last breath and say your last words." Spirit Revan also stated, "I died," and, "The Emperor's follower struck me down," and the resurrected Revan states, "I was dead." However, and this is important, Revan's dual "wisdom" and "focus" consciousness were still tethered together until after his death. This is affirmed by twice over. Spirit/"wisdom" Revan states, “My actions [on the Foundry] were those of a madman, consumed by rage I am glad to have left such evil behind” (link), meaning he was still joined with "focus"/dark Revan and still to blame for the Foundry madness. Spirit/"wisdom" Revan also states, “When I died, I had come to terms. I was ready to become one with the Force, but I soon realized that was only what part of me wanted” (link). This reveals that Revan’s spirit bifurcation did not happen “when [Revan] died” but “soon” thereafter—perhaps longer if there was a time gap between spirit Revan’s “realization” and the split itself. Given the “journey into the Netherworld is instantaneous” after death (link), and the fissure did not happen “instantaneous” with his death, Revan must've went to the Netherworld still whole. Accordingly, for dark Revan to transfer his spirit back into his corpse, he had to escape the Netherworld. Note that Palpatine said, “An ancient Naboo legend speaks of a realm called Chaos, blocked by a sextet of impenetrable barriers. If Chaos exists, then it takes a sufficiently determined mind to overcome and return to life” (link), meaning that dark Revan breaking free from such was an incredible feat replicated only by Palpatine himself and perhaps Darth Krayt. Note that Plagueis, obsessed with immortality, would have almost certainly tried to do this also, but apparently to no avail.

With Revan dying on the Foundry then essence transferring back into his corpsed established, it logically follows that Revan’s sustained existence could not be contingent on the physical wellbeing of a corpse. “Physical wellbeing” and “corpse” are diametrically opposed concepts. Instead, we need just refer to the only other character to essence transfer into their corpse: Darth Andeddu. Instead, we need just refer to the only other character to essence transfer into their corpse: Darth Andeddu. Per Darth Wyyrlok, “You animated your own body after its death. Your mind functioned, your body responded to its commands." (link) / "You transferred your intellect to what we assumed was a holocron. It was more. It was a shell - just as that moldering corpse is a shell. Your mind forces your body to obey even though dead!” (link) In other words, Andeddu animated his decaying corpse through willpower. The same should be true for Revan, and indeed that’s exactly what spirit Revan said: “You've carried on, dragging the remains of a body that should have long since faded to dust.” Revan “dragged” (i.e. exhibited forceful exertion over) “the remains of a body” (i.e. a corpse). It likewise follows that defeating such a being would necessitate snuffing out their will or control over their corpse, not thrusting a lightsaber into their already decaying heart. In fact, Wyyrlok defeated Andeddu exactly this way (link). This explains why after Revan lost the will to live, spirit Revan noted he was now "too weak" and "won't last," further solidifying a direct correlation between Revan’s sustainability and willpower. Recall Darth Sion’s demise in the dark side ending: “You have defeated me - flesh and belief, both cast down.” Meetra eroded Sion’s will to live, and he gave up and died. Likewise, Revan’s reason for resurrecting and existing was to destroy Vitiate (link), so seeing Vitiate trick him and escape into the galaxy as an incorporated entity destroyed him.

Now, I'm not trying to convince you that a group of Force users could grab their lightsabers and wack Revan for five minutes without him dying. There's obviously limits to his damage soak. It would logically be increasingly difficult to animate one's body the more damage it takes, and even Revan's will has limits. Though, neither Vitiate, the Dread Masters, nor even the Netherworld could break him. Revan should definitely have far higher durability and pain tolerance than Caedus or Plagueis, and it's very likely Revan can tank some direct lightsaber strikes. Malgus may need an exorbitant amp to ravage Revan's body enough to render it impossible to animate. And as a proof-of-concept, look no further than his infamous kilometer-radius explosion feat:




Revan channeled the energies of The Machine to devastate all life in a one-kilometer radius, with his pulsations of power during the channel already afflicting all in the radius. The strike team attacked Revan (link), causing the energies “overload” or “backlash” inside of him. Any conventional Force user would die if a kilometer-spanning energies released within them; internal organs aren’t coated with a Force shield. Revan surviving suggests his body is highly tethered to his will, not biological functions.

G. CONCLUSION

Revan's unique defensive advantages:

- Teleportation allows Revan to instantly disengage and adjust to Malgus' combat style whenever pressed. 
- Unparalleled mastery in battle precognition allows Revan to anticipate Malgus' attacks "minutes" in advance.
- Being a will-powered corpse allows Revan to tank Malgus' attacks that would otherwise wound or kill.

Revan's unique offensive advantages:

- Teleportation and telekinetic combos offer Revan a proven greater chance of getting through Malgus' defenses.
- Force in Balance allows Revan to unleash far more powerful TK attacks or gain a temporary amp to his abilities. 

Reminder: The new metric to rank characters will be the extent that Darth Malgus would need an amp to defeat them.

Imagine Malgus fighting Plagueis or Caedus. The amp needed to kill Plagueis probably isn't even higher than Plagueis' power-level. What differentiating characters does he have? Sever Force? Dying? The amp needed to kill Caedus is probably higher than his power-level given his unique Aing-Tii fighting-sight and damage soak. Props to him. Still, is that amp greater than the amp against someone with comparable precog to Caedus, far greater damage soak to the point a lightsaber thrust through the skull might not work, and the ability to teleport away to do ambush attacks or whenever losing, among other things? And even if you think Caedus is more powerful than Revan, are those small differences in augmentation and telekinetic/lightning potency (the latter's relevance mitigated by Force barriers) outweighing all of Revan's goods?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut619Eb2pgQ&t=1m03s

good post.

excellent Post. I vote for Revan

Reiterating my vote for Revan here. @DarthAnt66 Phenomenal post.

Excited to discuss this topic with you and others.

This is a preliminary pass-through of some of the specific parts that I find disagreement with w.r.t. Revan being #8. More details may come later.

DarthAnt66 wrote:
VS Darth Caedus:
No prominent Force use has ever had a mental state this bad before. With mindset and power so closely linked, especially for the Skywalkers, I don't see how any of Luke's Caedus-era performances can be used reliably, especially in comparison to the clairvoyant Dark Empire Luke that beat Palpatine. 

Even if that were true, you noted yourself that Luke had released a large amount of that weight by Revelation, the last time in which Caedus noticed a degree of Luke's power and explicitly noted as much, that he thought it was the "limits" of his uncle's powers - which suggests that he thought it was more than he had seen previously (e.g. TUF).

VS Darth Plagueis:

Offensive midichlorian manipulation is suspect at best, not a thing at worse. Consider these three quotes from Plagueis:

(1) "Midichlorians also appear to possess a single unified consciousness linked via the pneuma and can be influenced by the host's mental state." 

(2) "[One can] impose one's will on the midichlorians already present in the subject through the energy of the pneuma."

(3) "I used my will, amplified through my body's own midichlorians, to override the lesser concentrated midichlorian voices in the test subjects."

So, all the midichlorians share a unified consciousness linked to/reflective of the host's pneuma/"expression of conscious thought"/willpower. If one has sufficient willpower, their midichlorians' unified consciousness should be able to resist the "overriding" of their pneuma. It's a willpower versus willpower deal, not an auto-one shot. 

Actually, it says that the midichlorians' consciousness can be influenced by the host's mental state, so they're still separate, which explains why you can't just trivially MM yourself. That doesn't imply a conscious influence either; it can just mean that the functional strength of the midichlorians varies by mental state similar to how the health of your body does too.

Regardless, it doesn't have to be an "auto one-shot" to be potent, given that specific scaling has been given; a drunk, half-asleep Plagueis tanked without a barrier Sidious shooting lightning into him at point blank while drawing more deeply on the dark side than he ever had, and then killing with it is easier than healing.

Seperate from that, offensive midichlorian manipulation is just sever Force: "To sever the Force is to trigger a mass die-off a victim's midichlorians--not enough to kill but enough to take a Jedi's power. It could be that the Jedi of old knew this feat, but if so they did not understand its underpinnings. Severing the Force is the inverse of what I have done when inducing midichlorians to create life." Note Daniel Wallace's Book of Sith endnotes on starwars.com confirm Plagueis' suspicion that it's the same ability the Tales of the Jedi Jedi use: "This removes a Jedi’s ability to use the Force, and was introduced in the Tales of the Jedi comics during the 1990s. Given what we’ve learned of the Force since then, I added the detail that this works by triggering a mass die-off of the subject’s midi-chlorians." That follows as the Jedi tried to kill Kun with the attack, and Droma was permanently severed (him merging with the Force upon his death doesn't preclude that, as that should be hypothetically possible for even non-Force sensitives). The only difference being the ancients didn't "understand its underpinnings," but they didn't need to be in order to defend against it though. Again, willpower's the logical counter, as Plagueis effectively stated earlier, as it's something the ancients could use without needing to understand the midichlorian meta.

That's like saying that the Ancient Egyptians had electricity because they could use pulleys and the matter of pulleys had electrons. It's very clear from the reading of the Plagueis novel that he isn't spending all these decades doing this very specific research just to do a generic sever Force; he's acquiring a very direct source-code access to the midichlorians, not just triggering a die-off through a conventional technique.

This all also explains why Plagueis didn't try to trigger an offensive midichlorian die-off against Palpatine, who he didn't know was that advanced in the practice. 

Source for him not knowing?

As for defensive midichlorian manipulation, it's overhyped. I, like probably most others, was under the belief Plagueis used the ability to tank a prolonged Force lightning attack from an enraged Palpatine. In actuality, Plagueis survived a single burst of Palpatine's lightning.

Star Wars Darth Plagueis wrote:
The question lingered for only a moment, then Sidious unleashed another tangle of lightning, drawing more deeply on the dark side than he ever had. 

"Let's go over the second part of the speech, shall we," he said, smoothing his tousled cloak. "You useless old fool." 

With a snarl, he threw the cloak back behind his shoulders and leaned toward Plagueis, planting his palms on the low table that was now puddled with spilled wine. 

But it says "another"?

That lightning was done while Sidious drew more deeply on the dark side than he ever had. Given that Darth Bane was able to charr lightsaber-proof orbalisks with his lightning (credit to Azronger):

(credit to Azronger):

Zannah felt the gathering dark side power of her Master, but in the instant before he unleashed the storm of deadly purple lightning, the Ithorian reached up from the floor and clutched him by his ankle. A shimmering blue globe surrounded them both as the mortally wounded Jedi released his own power in his final, dying act.

Instead of arcing across the room to destroy the one-armed Jedi, the lightning that flew from Bane's fingers reflected off the inside of the shimmering blue globe encasing him. The bolts ricocheted around wildly inside the globe, creating a storm of energy so intense that Zannah had to shield her eyes and look away. She heard Bane's scream rising above the sharp crackle of electricity, and when she looked back she saw the globe vanish and her Master fall to the ground in a charred and smoking heap.

...

When Zannah first reached Bane's side, she was sure her Master was dead. The lightning had reduced his clothes to ash, and his gloves and boots had melted away. The flesh of his face and hands was charred and burned, covered with blisters that oozed a runny yellow pus. Several of the parasites on his chest and stomach hadn't survived, their brown shells turned black and brittle by the lightning's electrical charge. Wisps of still-smoldering smoke crept out from beneath their shells, bringing with it a sickly stench that made Zannah's stomach churn.

Then she saw Bane's chest rise and fall, his breaths so shallow and faint she had almost missed them. He must have slipped into unconsciousness as his body went into shock from the unbearable pain. She paused, half expecting to see his seared skin and tissue begin to regenerate, but his injuries exceeded even the ability of the orbalisks to heal him, and nothing happened. - Rule of Two

and given that we have multiple examples of far less powerful characters than Sidious (and Sidious himself) turning giant creatures to ash with it, and given that Plagueis didn't even use a barrier, this is indeed extremely impressive. Usually taking lightning unprotected at the very least completely incapacitates you even if the opponent is weaker.

Plagueis' robes weren't even destroyed despite only using midichlorian manipulation, which would have repaired his cells but not his cloth, meaning Palpaitne's attack wasn't trying to incinerate Plagueis but was more similar to what we saw in Return of the Jedi. Vader's flesh and outer armor visibly weren't significantly affected either, but the lightning still "ravaged" his innards and fatally wounded him. Likewise, Luke was outwardly normal but inwardly suffered "sudden and massive calcification of his skeletal structure." The "abrupt drop" in Luke's "blood minerals caused muscular microseiures all over his body" that would have been chronic if not for extensive treatment. So, there's no telling how much Palpatine's single burst affected him anyway. All around, the feat's wholly unquantifiable at best, legitimately unimpressive at worst. 

So what if Sidious was targeting his innards? The point still remains that it didn't put Plagueis down even though Plagueis was half-drunk and asleep with no barrier, and Sidious was explicitly trying very hard. If Sidious could've just vaporized Plagueis, he would have; that he allegedly chose to do another mechanism of lightning doesn't mean that he chose a weaker mechanism.

And then there's the alleged supremacy quotes. 

I'll dive into Darth Plagueis blurb and Lucasfilm Licensing policy in a follow-up post to The Ellimist tomorrow, but I want to address the DK Readers quotes now. Since the release of Star Wars The Old Republic, Palpatine has only received "most powerful" accolades from the DK Readers series. However, those sources are explicitly written in-universe (link)

That link doesn't suggest that at all.

and from a perspective that is either not omniscient or follows Lucas', not Lucasfilm Licensing's, continuity chronology instead (note: Lucas and Lucasfilm Licensing run two alternate Star Wars continuities). The DK Readers series describes the Sith as a "many centuries old" (link) organization that "fought a war" with the Jedi (link), which matches Lucas' take that the Sith are only a two-thousand year old cut that fought one war with the Jedi. Moveover, DK Readers holds that Plagueis died before Palpatine trained Maul (link), that Boba Fett died in the sarlacc pit (link), and that Palpatine was the "final Sith Master" (link), all of which are also Lucas continuity-specific claims. Again, either the source is not omniscient or it's in-universe perspective is following Lucas' timeline. Either way, it's not usable here. 

Uh, you could apply the same reasoning to all sorts of things. The TPM script says that Maul died (thanks to Gideon for confirming); does that make it N-canon to Legends, and instead an alternative universe? The RotJ script IIRC says that Boba died in the Sarlaac pit as well. I guess scripts are in an alternative universe? Let's not even get into Stover's RotS novelization vs. TCW. (And the Sith thing is a common reconciliation problem that lots of sources have)

Chee and the continuity as a whole make it clear that the DK Readers series would call under Legends canon. The notion that a few minor continuity errors (which appear in almost any set of sources) is best resolved by postulating a separate alternative timeline is entirely unwarranted.

B. POWER
Meetra had defeated Kreia, amped by a "geyser of dark side energy" at the heart of the Malachor V nexus.

Interesting that you mention nexuses, because basically all of the feats that you will proceed to use for Revan are accomplished on not only a Yavin IV nexus that is noted by characters to be overwhelmingly powerful, but in the most powerful part of that nexus. This isn't some minor nexus that can be forgotten about - it's both explicitly mentioned in the story and one of the strongest in the entire galaxy.

Where does Revan teleport without a nexus?

(3) Revan and Vitiate were rough peers in the Revan novel,

Funny that you say that because a single lightning attack from Vitiate completely incapacitated Revan through his defenses, while Plagueis took Sidious's lightning bursts while drunk and half-asleep without a barrier.

Revan resisted and remained in lock-step with Vitiate across their mental war,

It's never actually stated that they "remained in lock-step". P.S., Revan had the aid of a Force-ghost Meetra, who replenished him whenever his reserves went low (and this had already happened multiple times within Bastila's lifetime).

Thus, prime Revan should at least be approaching feats that Vitiate did "easily" or significantly "weakened." Notably, a weakened Vitiate consumed all life on, and affected the outer core, magnetic fields, and atmosphere of, a planet.

Then why did Revan on a monstrous dark side nexus have to create a very specific resonance with a superweapon and then charge it for two minutes to cause damage to life within a one kilometer radius, aka less than a millionth of Ziost, and far below the casual feats of the likes of Starkiller?

P.S. the rebuttal that the "damage to life" refers to destroying shielded capital ships makes no grammatical sense and doesn't even work because they weren't less than a kilometer away.

I would wager most debaters have Revan's power at least in the ballpark of Caedus' and Plagueis'.

So far, that would at the minimum require that there's this weird alternative universe that a specific part of Legends inhabits in contradiction to both occam's razer and official policy.

C. TELEPORTATION

In addition to other problems that may be elaborated on in later posts, Revan only does this on a ridiculously powerful dark side nexus.

Darth Gravid was "driven increasingly mad" by "his attempts to straddle the two realms" of the Force and "introduce Jedi selflessness and compassion" into Sith teachings. Plagueis later reflected that what Gravid sought to achieve was impossible and that no Dark Lord could intermingle with the light side after the dark had "staked a claim." 

This was the canonical belief of the Banites given that they are talking about someone who wanted to use the light side, yes. It's pretty obvious why the likes of Plagueis and Sidious would not embrace the light side, and it has nothing to do with combative power.

Revan proved Plagueis wrong.

(1) When Revan recovered his mask, "in an instant, all his lost memories came flooding back to him." These experiences came from when he "wielded tremendous dark side power" with megalomaniac and sociopathic beliefs. However, Revan was able to reconcile and merge his wholly distinct Sith and Jedi ideologies and identities together. Revan then "wielded the dual philosophies of Sith passion and Jedi tranquility" to the point he could "release the Force in its purest form."

For like a few hours/days? Plagueis claims that Gravid was driven increasingly mad over an undetermined period of time, potentially decades.

(2) Vitiate and the Dread Masters "tried so hard" to "wrench Revan apart," likely along the fault-lines of his Sith and Jedi identities, across three centuries. They partially succeeded, as Revan's consciousness splintered between a personification of his "wisdom" and a personification of his "anger," "rage," "strength," and "focus." These identities operated largely independently within Revan, with distinct ideologies (e.g. the "wisdom"-half embraced Jedi philosophy, the "focus"-half decried it) and activity (e.g. the "wisdom"-half "detached" from the mental war, the "focus"-half double-downed in it). Nevertheless, Revan still had such mastery that his two identities were again able to reconcile and merge to achieve "total balance" in the Foundry fight.

They clearly didn't operate individually within Revan before Vitiate and the Dread Masters' machinations. We see Revan's PoV post-reborn and...like, how would that even work? He's clearly operating as one entity. That he has different aspects to him isn't that special.

There's also tangible benefits to dual mastery. 

Like a stronger than usual Force push he uses once or twice? Hardly a game changer compared to manipulating the source code of the Force.

Revan is surrounded by a strike team consisting of . . .

Some non-Force sensitives who came out unscathed, even from his charged TK (as opposed to a near-death Plagueis immediately vaporizing dozens of armored attackers with uncharged TK).

No offense, but this is a lot of words to pretend that it's impressive to handle multiple projectiles or something.

An obvious and overlooked reason as to how Revan's able to do all this is battle precognition, which anticipates attacks via "gauging an opponent's fighting style, heart rate, and there movements in combat." Revan is perhaps the greatest battle precog master in history, far outstripping "the most advanced among the Echani" in its usage. Brianna states, "Only Revan ever demonstrated such a skill in war. And even as he slaughtered us, the Echani still respected him." While Revan's able to apply battle precog to global theaters, it's far easier to use for one-on-one combat, and lesser practitioners can use battle precog to fight "several minutes in advance." Minutes!

Funny that this didn't show up in the Revan Novel at all. But it's not very quantifiable (btw didn't Vader slaughter echani warriors easily?).

F. IMMORTALITY

Let's look at that. Your example of Revan holding his body together happens on an insanely potent dark side nexus. Even then, by the end of his fight his power had subsided and he was on his knees.

Compare that to a heavily hindered Plagueis healing against Sidious drawing more deeply on the dark side than ever with his lightning - this is an actually scalable feat.

As for Revan coming back from the dead (besides the Foundry potentially being a nexus too), this isn't exactly the best measure of raw power if we're using it as a proxy. By that logic, Sion would be supreme too.

Imagine Malgus fighting Plagueis or Caedus. The amp needed to kill Plagueis probably isn't even higher than Plagueis' power-level. What differentiating characters does he have? Sever Force? Dying?

The entire Plagueis novel is centered around a singular ability that is portrayed as one of the most dangerous dark side abilities of all time and that contributed to the creation of the Chosen One as a defense mechanism against the greatest cosmic threat the galaxy has ever faced. Anyway, the midichlorian stuff has been gone into; killing power >>> healing power which can tank Sidious's lightning, while Bane's lightning can fry lightsaber-proof orbalisks.

The amp needed to kill Caedus is probably higher than his power-level given his unique Aing-Tii fighting-sight and damage soak. Props to him. Still, is that amp greater than the amp against someone with comparable precog to Caedus, far greater damage soak to the point a lightsaber thrust through the skull might not work, and the ability to teleport away to do ambush attacks or whenever losing, among other things? And even if you think Caedus is more powerful than Revan, are those small differences in augmentation and telekinetic/lightning potency (the latter's relevance mitigated by Force barriers) outweighing all of Revan's goods?

Caedus may be elaborated on in subsequent posts, but yeah Caedus has actually shown the ability to use his powers against top-tier competition, to the point where a Luke-amped Jaina still thinks her brother is far more powerful than her.

------

So in terms of power:

• Plagueis scales to TPM Sidious, who is the most powerful Sith Lord in galactic history.
  
• Mace Windu w/vaapad (which he can use vs. Malgus) scales to RotS Sidious, who is the most powerful Sith Lord in galactic history.
  
• Caedus contends with Luke, who scales far above DE Sidious, who is the most powerful Sith Lord in galactic history.
  
• Revan can deflect uncharged single bolts of Vitiate's lightning with his lightsaber (which is relatively easy to do), but cannot stop the lightning charged within the time it would take him to cross a fraction of a 40 meter walkway.
  

In special techniques:

• Killing MM >>> healing MM -> (while half-asleep and drunk) tank Sidious's full powered lightning >>>>>>> Bane's lightning which can fry lightsaber proof orbalisks
  
• Caedus grows stronger on pain and is able to fight an amped Jaina who is strong enough to appear to be Luke to Caedus with only one functioning arm, and is winning at the end.
  
• Revan on a dark side super-nexus can teleport and do some other stuff.
  

good post.

Switching my vote to Revan, can anyone update me on the current vote tally?

I'll vote for Revan as well.

Also -

Some people have argued that Satele's BM can offset the dark side super-nexus on which Revan does any of his impressive feats. However:

• Satele finds the super-nexus overwhelming, so it's hard to imagine that she could overpower it.
  
• Satele's BM has to be split between amping the multiple other combatants and hindering Revan, and Jedi BM normally focuses on the former. 
  
• Satele would have to divert resources constantly to defending herself.
  
• The burden of proof is on the side arguing for these techniques; it's up to them to show it's a "wash" rather than just pretending they cancel out out of convenience.
  

Ditto for light-side Revan (who literally wasn't even powerful enough to appear before Revan).

So without any of that, all of Revan's scaling is capped beneath TPM Sidious/Plagueis from a multitude of quotes. If you want to just ignore those, then to still put Revan above Mace Windu you'd need to ignore something like 10 quotes from a multitude of sources.

----

There has not been a serious refutation of Plagueis's ability to tank Sidious's all-out lightning without a barrier, while drunk and half-asleep. The "clothes weren't affected" rebuttal has been debunked - it's still scaling far far far far beyond Revan.

Great post, Elm. Just to add to the bit about Revan and the nexus, Yavin IV's nexus was described as dwarfing Oricon's, which had the power to drive even Force sensitives insane:

https://youtu.be/Ff1W4xq2ZUI?t=2973

Voting for The Prodigal Knight.

Still caedus

CAEDUS DEBUNK:

[[Even if that were true, you noted yourself that Luke had released a large amount of that weight by Revelation, the last time in which Caedus noticed a degree of Luke's power and explicitly noted as much, that he thought it was the "limits" of his uncle's powers - which suggests that he thought it was more than he had seen previously (e.g. TUF).]]

It is true. Luke’s main encounters with Caedus are when he’s suicidal, and you spun the ones afterwards way out-of-context. Let’s revisit your original arguments:

[[Caedus is clearly convinced that Jaina is Luke (his comments on Jaina's fighting style also undermine the potential claim that Jaina's lack of skill was a major hinderance). Even if you think he didn't notice a disparity in the middle of a fight, he had plenty of time to reflect on it afterwards, and never came to the conclusion that Luke was unusually weak. He clearly saw that he was fighting someone of Luke's level (and why wouldn't Luke amp Jaina to that level if the point is to 1) give her the best chance of victory and 2) to convince Caedus that it was Luke?).]]

Caedus is convinced that Jaina is Luke explicitly because he didn’t think there’s any other explanation. He never considered Luke could impose himself and some of his power over Jaina. Caedus “did not waste time being confused” and just decided that “Luke was here, somehow.”

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.

As to why Caedus doesn’t change his mind later, again, he never considers Luke could do this. A constant trend of LOTF is Luke constantly revealing he has more power than Caedus previously believed. Caedus has always seen Luke’s power-levels fluctuate drastically given his mental state across NJO, DN, and even LOTF, so there’s no reason for him to compare the foe he’s facing with Luke with pristine mental clarity anyway. 

As to why Luke “wouldn't amp Jaina to that level,” based on what is Luke able to? We’ve never seen someone able to just transfer their entire power-level into the other. The difficulty of even maintaining that connection and illusion across that distance must waste exorbitant power. Luke in the New Republic books can telekinetically ragdoll fortresses that reach into the clouds yet says making just a brief illusion over his face is beyond his skillset. 

Luke did not dare sleep. Only his consciousness could hold the Li Stonn mask in place--there were suggestions in the old records of great Jedi Masters who could cast illusions even when sleeping, but neither Luke nor any Jedi he knew had attained that level of facility with the Force skill known as alter. And Luke could not risk dropping his mask in public---even if he were not recognized as himself, shape-shifters and mentalists were so widely assumed to be thieves, spies, and brigands that he could expect nearly as much commotion.

Black Fleet Crisis II: Shield of Lies

So, Caedus’ confusion over amped Jaina being Luke isn’t due to power, if it was that doesn’t even mean it’s about peak Luke’s powers anyway, and there’s no way Luke funneled even much of his power into Jaina. Next.

[[Sure, though it should be noted that he rips apart Caedus's starfighter; he doesn't ragdoll Caedus directly. While it's true that Caedus couldn't stop him, Luke states that Caedus could've done the reverse too:

"Try-ahh." Caedus struggled to correct the StealthX as the damaged starboard wing cannon broke away. The escaping vapor was speckled with round droplets now. "Did you do that?"

Chunkk. The port cannon ripped free.

"You could retaliate, "said Luke, "and we'll both end up dead. Come about and head back toward Fondor."]]

Actually, Caedus can’t. Luke continued to destroy Caedus’ fighter with TK, and Caedus was unable to mount any feasible counter-attack. When Caedus "tried to block Luke in the Force," "his seat shot forward, sheared off the runners, tipped to one side, and he hit the console at an angle before he could buffer the collision with the Force." If anything Luke's referring to Caedus ramming his starship into his in a suicide crash, since Luke's on top of him. 

[[Didn't Luke stomp Caedus in Inferno?]]

This is the fight my last post mainly addressed. This was a Luke who literally planned to kill himself. Trying to then scale Caedus off Luke’s best feats don’t work. 

Luke >>>>> Caedus.

Moving to the Revan stuff next.

PLAGUEIS SHENANIGANS:

Actually, it says that the midichlorians' consciousness can be influenced by the host's mental state, so they're still separate, which explains why you can't just trivially MM yourself.

What? A host’s mental state is different from their willpower. The collective “unified consciousness” is explicitly “linked” to the “pneuma,” which is explicitly the "expression of conscious thought" of the host. The mental state of the host can fluctuate the "unified consciousness" as well, but that’s independent of the point.

That's like saying that the Ancient Egyptians had electricity because they could use pulleys and the matter of pulleys had electrons. It's very clear from the reading of the Plagueis novel that he isn't spending all these decades doing this very specific research just to do a generic sever Force; he's acquiring a very direct source-code access to the midichlorians, not just triggering a die-off through a conventional technique.

The ability is explicitly the same sever Force we see in TOTJ. That’s stated. The difference is Plagueis’ studies allowed him to understand what’s going on when you use the power at the deepest level. The focus of the Plagueis book, and most of Plagueis’ writings in the Book of Sith, isn’t sever Force but the inverse: creating life.  

Source for him not knowing?

I’m under the impression Plagueis and Palpatine didn’t collaborate much on their studies, especially toward the final decade of their partnership. No?

But it says "another"?

The first specifically targeted just his breathing apparatus and was against a sleeping Plagueis who wasn’t even defending himself via midichlorian manipulation.

That lightning was done while Sidious drew more deeply on the dark side than he ever had. Given that Darth Bane was able to charr lightsaber-proof orbalisks with his lightning (credit to Azronger): 

and given that we have multiple examples of far less powerful characters than Sidious (and Sidious himself) turning giant creatures to ash with it, and given that Plagueis didn't even use a barrier, this is indeed extremely impressive

No. Palpatine's lightning here is qualitatively different from Bane’s. It's not intending to superheat and charr Plagueis. We know that because it seemingly didn't even really damage Plagueis' clothing, which Plagueis isn't protecting whatsoever. Instead, as I stated, the lightning closer matches Palpatine's attacks versus Vader and Luke.

So what if Sidious was targeting his innards? The point still remains that it didn't put Plagueis down even though Plagueis was half-drunk and asleep with no barrier, and Sidious was explicitly trying very hard. If Sidious could've just vaporized Plagueis, he would have; that he allegedly chose to do another mechanism of lightning doesn't mean that he chose a weaker mechanism.

I never said it’s a weaker mechanism. I said the mechanism functions in a way that it’s impossible to gauge its effects. We know Plagueis didn't die by the burst, yes, but there's no commentary on its effects. It still could have devastated his innards. As I stated last post, Vader and Luke's outside appearances remained fines while their innards were ravaged. Plagueis’ bone structure could have been completely calcified like Luke’s for all we know. The text neither makes mention nor suggestion of how well Plagueis fended off the attack. And since it seems that Palpatine was specifically targeting his innards, the feat’s just overall unquantifiable. 

That link doesn't suggest that at all.

In-universe means the source is written in the Star Wars universe. It opens by saying this is within the Star Wars universe, then describes all the characters as if they exist. 

Uh, you could apply the same reasoning to all sorts of things. The TPM script says that Maul died (thanks to Gideon for confirming); does that make it N-canon to Legends, and instead an alternative universe? The RotJ script IIRC says that Boba died in the Sarlaac pit as well. I guess scripts are in an alternative universe? Let's not even get into Stover's RotS novelization vs. TCW. (And the Sith thing is a common reconciliation problem that lots of sources have)

That’s because later sources retconned that. The Sith thing was an issue in the late 90s, early 2000s before LFL reconciled it for future authors. These books came out in the late 2000s and 2010s, after all the events they’re going against.  And that aside, that just means the in-universe source is not omniscient, which still nullifies it.

Hm, good post

DarthAnt66 wrote:Caedus is convinced that Jaina is Luke explicitly because he didn’t think there’s any other explanation.

These are Jacen's musings:

Eager as he was to be rid of Luke, Caedus was also suspicious. His uncle had been using a new fighting style, one that he had never taught his students at the Jedi academy-one that he had never, as far as Caedus knew, used on anyone who had survived to describe it. The style was essentially conservative, brutal, and ruthless, designed to deal damage without suffering it-and not all that tricky.

He seems to have a high opinion of what he thinks it his uncle's new saber style, not a "wow he must be new to it because he feels so clumsy!"

He never considered Luke could impose himself and some of his power over Jaina. Caedus “did not waste time being confused” and just decided that “Luke was here, somehow.”

When the possibility that it was just Jaina came up, Caedus replied:

"There was only one Jedi," Mirta said. "Your sister, Jaina."

"My sister?" Caedus roared despite himself. "You expect me to believe that?" He waved the stump of his arm at her. "That Jaina did this?"

Now Luke just amping Jaina a bit is not at all something that he would refuse to consider - that's just battle meditation. Nor is the idea that Luke could put his face over her - that's a standard illusion trick that Jacen did multiple times throughout the series. The differentiating factor is Jaina's power. If it were less than Luke's, then Caedus would've been much more receptive to the claim that Luke was using an illusion + BM. The fact that Jaina had not only the look, but the power, of Luke, is clearly what befuddled him. Indeed, throughout the fight Caedus is clearly not under any illusion that this not-Luke is somehow weaker than usual.

As to why Luke “wouldn't amp Jaina to that level,” based on what is Luke able to? We’ve never seen someone able to just transfer their entire power-level into the other.

^ good point. Jacen's incredulity is over how powerful "Luke" was, not over the existence of an illusion or minor BM.

The difficulty of even maintaining that connection and illusion across that distance must waste exorbitant power. Luke in the New Republic books can telekinetically ragdoll fortresses that reach into the clouds yet says making just a brief illusion over his face is beyond his skillset.

By LotF, Jacen and Luke can easily do this, and in Revelation Luke just conjured an entire illusory fleet of starships against Jacen, who then mistakenly identified a later one for Luke that also registered to starship sensors.

As to why Caedus doesn’t change his mind later, again, he never considers Luke could do this. A constant trend of LOTF is Luke constantly revealing he has more power than Caedus previously believed. Caedus has always seen Luke’s power-levels fluctuate drastically given his mental state across NJO, DN, and even LOTF, so there’s no reason for him to compare the foe he’s facing with Luke with pristine mental clarity anyway. 

He saw Luke's "full" power in Revelation, explicitly noted that this was his "full" power, and when confronted with the possibility that it wasn't actually Luke in Invincible, pointed to his combative performance as a reason for why it couldn't possibly be BM-amped Jaina.

[[Didn't Luke stomp Caedus in Inferno?]]

This is the fight my last post mainly addressed. This was a Luke who literally planned to kill himself. Trying to then scale Caedus off Luke’s best feats don’t work. 

Here's Jacen's reaction to that fight:

That fight... . Caedus wished he had a holorecording of it. It had gone on for what had felt like forever. It had been brutal, with the advantage being held first by Luke, then by Caedus, in what he knew had been brilliant demonstrations of lightsaber technique, of raw power within the Force, of subtle Jedi and Sith skills. For all his pain, Caedus felt a swelling of pride-not just that he had survived that duel, but that he had waged it so well.

At the end, Caedus had lost a position of advantage-Luke had slipped free of the poison-injecting torture vines with which Caedus had been strangling him-when Ben had driven a vibroblade deep into Caedus's back, punching clean through a shoulder blade, nearly reaching his heart.

That had ended the fight. Caedus should have been killed immediately. For reasons he did not understand, Luke and Ben had spared his life and departed. It was a mistake that would cost Luke. - LotF Fury

Again, using Jacen Reaction Scaling - where is the indication that Jacen thought Luke was hindered? By this point, he had seen TUF Luke, he'd probably seen Luke fighting at a high level multiple other times, he'd seen Luke's chair-pinning in Inferno - yet he doesn't notice any sort of hindrance (despite obsessively planning for any advantage he can get against his uncle). Your claim is that Luke was fighting relative to his TUF self analogous to Yoda fighting at like S6 Obi Wan level, and then someone who is obsessively studying his moves not noticing anything.

There is evidence that Luke was throughout hindered or holding back relative to the full power Luke of Legacy of the Force, but that's not the contention.

In order to conclude that Revan > Caedus without saying something like Revan >>> Yoda/RotS Sidious (which hasn't been argued for), you would need to posit that Luke is operating like an entire tier below his TUF self, and that Jacen just never notices this.

It's also very clear from Jacen's reaction to seeing "Luke" in Invincible:

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.

that he doesn't think Luke would hold back, nor is an evangelist for the Sith/dark side likely to think "hmm maybe not that he's using the dark side (since he had visions of Luke taking his dark throne) he'll be several tiers weaker!"

This claim that Jacen is actually ragdoll-tier to TUF Luke but is just consistently deluded and in convenient situations where one can mental-gymnastic away his performances is quite a stretch.

(That's to include the points about his insane damage soak + UnuThul scaling + Boba Reaction Scaling)

DarthAnt66 wrote:PLAGUEIS SHENANIGANS:

Actually, it says that the midichlorians' consciousness can be influenced by the host's mental state, so they're still separate, which explains why you can't just trivially MM yourself.

What? A host’s mental state is different from their willpower. The collective “unified consciousness” is explicitly “linked” to the “pneuma,” which is explicitly the "expression of conscious thought" of the host. The mental state of the host can fluctuate the "unified consciousness" as well, but that’s independent of the point.

It says that they're "linked" to and "can be influenced" by willpower. Willpower is a subset of mental state; there is no such thing as willpower that is independent of mental state, and so the fact that it only "can" be influenced by willpower means that it's not a 1-1 control. It means that the influence of willpower is diluted.

Without knowing that it's 1-1, it's hard to say what ratio of willpower is needed - but that's OK, because an explicit line of scaling via TPM Sidious with his various feats and accolades was provided.

The ability is explicitly the same sever Force we see in TOTJ. That’s stated. The difference is Plagueis’ studies allowed him to understand what’s going on when you use the power at the deepest level. The focus of the Plagueis book, and most of Plagueis’ writings in the Book of Sith, isn’t sever Force but the inverse: creating life.  

It doesn't say that it's explicitly the same. The triggering of midichlorian deaths can be done in different ways; the way that Plagueis does it is clearly different given the description of him consciously willing midichlorians to die. That ancients could do the feat of killing midichlorians without "understanding its underpinnings" does not mean they are doing the same thing as Plagueis.

Again, it's analogous to the difference between the Romans building a bridge through trial and error and a modern bridge schematic being computationally modeled for stresses/strains/failure points.

Not that this question of the exact mechanism is even critical, at the end of the day, because we had a clear line of scaling from killing with it -> healing with it -> Sidious's lightning.

The first specifically targeted just his breathing apparatus and was against a sleeping Plagueis who wasn’t even defending himself via midichlorian manipulation.

Why would it only affect his breathing apparatus and be magically contained there? Why wouldn't he just vaporize an unguarded drunk guy?

We don't know the extent to which MM was a passive/constant thing; somehow Plagueis was able to defend himself even before he woke up. That would explain why he was so OK with just getting drunk and falling asleep on his apprentice.

No. Palpatine's lightning here is qualitatively different from Bane’s. It's not intending to superheat and charr Plagueis. We know that because it seemingly didn't even really damage Plagueis' clothing, which Plagueis isn't protecting whatsoever. Instead, as I stated, the lightning closer matches Palpatine's attacks versus Vader and Luke.

I never said it’s a weaker mechanism. I said the mechanism functions in a way that it’s impossible to gauge its effects. We know Plagueis didn't die by the burst, yes, but there's no commentary on its effects. It still could have devastated his innards. As I stated last post, Vader and Luke's outside appearances remained fines while their innards were ravaged. Plagueis’ bone structure could have been completely calcified like Luke’s for all we know. The text neither makes mention nor suggestion of how well Plagueis fended off the attack. And since it seems that Palpatine was specifically targeting his innards, the feat’s just overall unquantifiable. 

Except we can gauge how well a half-asleep, drunk, no-barrier Plagueis dealt with it. We know that:

• He didn't die from the lightning.
  
• He was still able to stumble and try to stand - failing because of Sidious's consistent imposition of a failure in oxygen (probably combined with the drunk-asleep stuff), not because he was unable to move.
  
• He was able to conjure a telekinetic storm at Sidious.
  

Without MM and/or insane levels of passive super-power, Plagueis would've been completely incapable of doing anything for the few moments before he died.

And again; if you want to argue that Sidious used a different kind of lightning, that's irrelevant because if it were less effective than the vaporizing-kind at killing him, he would've used the vaporizing-kind. Remember that Sidious was trying really hard with his lightning per the text, harder than he'd ever tried. 

In-universe means the source is written in the Star Wars universe. It opens by saying this is within the Star Wars universe, then describes all the characters as if they exist. 

??? Did you link to the wrong photo? Where does it say it's written within the Star Wars universe?

That’s because later sources retconned that. The Sith thing was an issue in the late 90s, early 2000s before LFL reconciled it for future authors. These books came out in the late 2000s and 2010s, after all the events they’re going against. 

...and you're telling me that the solution to some errata in a source is to dismiss the entire group of sources as a fantasy alternative universe? Where is this mentioned in any of the Legends policy?

And that aside, that just means the in-universe source is not omniscient, which still nullifies it.

No, because you haven't demonstrated that it's in-universe, nor have you dealt with the blurb that explicitly states Plagueis is the most powerful Sith who ever lived.

So let's summarize the state of things so far.

Caedus

• Caedus has seen Luke in TUF, and fought extensively with him (he has fought with Luke perhaps more than any other person has). He does not think Inferno Luke is weakened relative to what he knows (which isn't necessarily LotF Luke).
  
• When Caedus fights Luke-amped Jaina, he is convinced that it is actually Luke and thinks he has a new style (but doesn't find it clumsy or bad). Others bring up the possibility that it wasn't Luke, but Caedus's certainty of that not being the case cannot be that he doesn't think Luke can put his appearance over someone or that he can do minor-BM. Nonetheless, Caedus was actually winning.
  
• Jaina has seen Jacen deflect turbolasers from capital ships.
  

It is not reasonable to conclude that Caedus is so mistaken about Luke's power relative to the TUF Luke he's already seen that it would be like him thinking RotS Yoda = S6 Obi Wan. And would have to happen consistently.

Plagueis

• Bane's lightning can charr lightsaber-proof orbalisks. A half-asleep, drunken, no-barrier Plagueis tanks lightning from a Sidious drawing more deeply on the dark side than ever before. Whether Sidious was using one kind of lightning or another is irrelevant because he'd use the most effective means since he was explicitly trying very hard against him.
  
• The notion that the DK novels are some alternative universe just because of some errors you can find in any source has zero basis in canon policy. Hence, the TPM Sidious supremacy quotes stand.
  
• The Plagueis supremacy quote has not been refuted.
  

Half-asleep, drunk, no-barrier Plagueis can heal in real-time from lightning by the most powerful Sith Lord in galactic history drawing more deeply on the dark side than ever before.

Mace Windu

• He's been ignored, but even if you want to dismiss TPM supremacy quotes, it becomes a little ridiculous to dismiss like the 12 that exist by RotS.
  

Revan

• His teleportation and "invincibility" feats are on a dark side super-nexus that is described by multiple characters as extremely overwhelming.
  
• His "invincibility" doesn't even work because he's clearly sapped of energy at the end.
  
• He can't scale from Ziost, Nathema, or whatever because he needed like 2 minutes of charging through a superweapon to damage life within a one kilometer radius.
  
• He's capped beneath Vitiate, which means he loses for sure to Plagueis and Mace (even if you want to try everything possible to debunk Plagueis, Mace is still there).
  

CAEDUS DEBUNK:

I believe I address everything you wrote. I just wanted to make it more succinct and concise.

Caedus does not conclude amped Jaina is Luke because of power. Caedus has a short scuffle with amped Jaina, looks and sees the face of Luke, and then instantly and unwaveringly concludes it's Luke. As I stated, the reasons given are because "Luke could not be in two places at once." 

He had been fighting Luke one moment, Jaina the next, and then they had both been there-not just illusions of them, but presences real enough to bat blaster bolts back at the stormtroopers attacking them.

Upon a quick re-read of the text, Caedus shoots down the possibility of an illusion because Luke had managed to impose his Force presence in the room as well. Caedus concludes "all that matters is that Luke is here, somehow" because there's literally no known alternative. 

Caedus not noting Luke to be weaker than normal is irrelevant. You openly stated amped Jaina still states Caedus is "much more powerful" than her. Given we both agree Luke is more powerful than Caedus, that means, by definition, amped Jaina is much weaker than Luke too. Therefore, scaling off Caedus noting Luke's power evidently is an incredibly flawed metric. To reiterate why amped Jaina is much weaker than Luke, which is a fact, Luke holds it's more taxing to create an illusionary mask over his face than to ragdoll Vader's fortress. Now imagine the effort needed to cast his Force presence, and an illusion of himself over Jaina from across the space battle. The remaining power to funnel into Jaina's going to be significantly reduced, and Luke obviously has to keep some in reserve so his body doesn't die. 

It goes like this: Caedus is fighting someone with Luke's flesh and Force signature. He has no conception that Luke could cast his Force signature from across the fleet. Caedus doesn't note that Luke's weaker than normal, but we know from Jaina's POV that the "Luke" that Caedus is fighting is much weaker than actual Luke anyway. There's many reasons why Caedus doesn't recognize this. He's occupied, he's arrogant (why wouldn't he want to believe he can match Luke?), he's sort of going insane, and he's seen both Luke's highs and lows. It's easily plausible for Caedus to consider the immense emotional circumstances weighing on Luke and recall how that's affected him in the past. He can be approaching these fights as a given that Luke's not operating at his TUF levels. At the end of the day, though, Caedus' reasoning doesn't matter.  

As for Fury, I'm fine with letting the viewers choose here. I've already shown using Caedus to assess Luke's power is unreliable. I'm willing to back the dozens of sources that affirm a negative mental state will hinder one's ability to use the Force, and then concluding Luke wanting to kill himself and being awash with unprecedented agony will weaken him, over a deranged Caedus not making note of how well Luke is performing here versus in the past either way.

Peak Luke is more powerful than Caedus, and Caedus' powers are "much greater" than amped Jaina's. If peak Luke's a tier 10, amped Jaina could be a tier 8, yes.

It should be noted that it is actually Jacen that had started trying to encourage Luke to use more of his true power as early as TUF. He was clearly well aware of the general idea that his uncle had vast Force reserves, and attributed not using it to a fear of a dark side - but then in Invincible he's convinced that Luke is on full-vengeance mode and has visions of him replacing him as the Dark Lord of the Sith.

DarthAnt66 wrote: Upon a quick re-read of the text, Caedus shoots down the possibility of an illusion because Luke had managed to impose his Force presence in the room as well. Caedus concludes "all that matters is that Luke is here, somehow" because there's literally no known alternative. 

Caedus had come to that conclusion long before he saw "Luke" bat back blaster bolts, and to Mirta points to his lost arm as evidence that it wasn't Jaina. Clearly the fact that he deflected blaster bolts isn't the wow-factor for Caedus here.

Caedus not noting Luke to be weaker than normal is irrelevant. You openly stated amped Jaina still states Caedus is "much more powerful" than her. Given we both agree Luke is more powerful than Caedus, that means, by definition, amped Jaina is much weaker than Luke too.

Or it's because Caedus's damage soak lets him punch above his weight class, since Jaina's observation was based on Caedus's tanking of damage. Jaina attributed that to her brother's power (which she is used to believing is much greater than her own) - but that's just a major component of it.

Also, the argument isn't that amped Jaina = LotF Luke, but rather that she has parity to earlier incarnations of Luke that nonetheless scale above EoDE Luke by a significant margin.

Therefore, scaling off Caedus noting Luke's power evidently is an incredibly flawed metric. To reiterate why amped Jaina is much weaker than Luke, which is a fact, Luke holds it's more taxing to create an illusionary mask over his face than to ragdoll Vader's fortress. Now imagine the effort needed to cast his Force presence, and an illusion of himself over Jaina from across the space battle. The remaining power to funnel into Jaina's going to be significantly reduced, and Luke obviously has to keep some in reserve so his body doesn't die. 

But you yourself argued that Luke might not have been able to put his full power into Jaina, which suggests that the power-amp is indeed more difficult than just casting the illusion, and that therefore it makes sense for Caedus to see the power-amp as the limiting factor in believing that it's Luke and not the face-illusion.

Luke's difficulty in doing so decades earlier doesn't matter; he and Jacen can easily do it by LotF, and by Revelation Luke makes Jacen see an entire imaginary fleet.

He's occupied,

He doesn't notice it later and he doesn't notice it in times during the fight when he's clearly analyzing the situation.

he's arrogant (why wouldn't he want to believe he can match Luke?),

Jacen does not seem to believe that he is more powerful than Luke. I don't think he's ever claimed as much. He is pretty intensely analytical about his uncle's abilities - he talks about it quite a bit, and has a lot of data to draw from.

(it's also ironic to try to make arguments like this while using crazy-dark SoR Revan as a valid authority)

he's sort of going insane,

Is he? Based on what? He's being fooled and manipulated by Luke's powers, but he still pulls off several tactical and strategic maneuvers during Invincible, including out-maneuvering amped Jaina and using a nightsister blood trail to find the Jedi base.

and he's seen both Luke's highs and lows. It's easily plausible for Caedus to consider the immense emotional circumstances weighing on Luke and recall how that's affected him in the past. He can be approaching these fights as a given that Luke's not operating at his TUF levels. At the end of the day, though, Caedus' reasoning doesn't matter.  

I mean, theories can be constructed around why Luke was actually super-weak, but those are not at all the most reasonable or straightforward unless if the goal is to just dismiss Jacen.

As for Fury, I'm fine with letting the viewers choose here. I've already shown using Caedus to assess Luke's power is unreliable. I'm willing to back the dozens of sources that affirm a negative mental state will hinder one's ability to use the Force, and then concluding Luke wanting to kill himself and being awash with unprecedented agony will weaken him, over a deranged Caedus not making note of how well Luke is performing here versus in the past either way.

Since when is Fury Caedus "deranged"? He's fought alongside Luke more than any other person has, and is consistently depicted as extremely intelligent. He also knows that Luke defeated UnuThul.

Peak Luke is more powerful than Caedus, and Caedus' powers are "much greater" than amped Jaina's. If peak Luke's a tier 10, amped Jaina could be a tier 8, yes.

Jacen mistaking Luke for a tier 8 would be like Mace Windu mistaking Yoda for AotC Shaak Ti.

It's also the case that a vastly pre-prime Plagueis - with the help of a significantly weaker apprentice Palpatine (who even many years later said that Plagueis seemed omniscient) - unbalanced the entire cosmic Force by meditating for a few months on an island. They literally subsumed the entire galaxy (possibly universe?) in what could be described as a galaxy-wide dark side nexus. This is an unprecedented feat in the Star Wars lore that has absolutely staggering implications for the level of power they wielded, power that was vastly before Plagueis's prime.

Some common questions:

• Was it just due to politics or something else? - no, since it explicitly happened following their exertions in the Force - no rituals, no political shenanigans. Sidious's death in RotJ ends up restoring the balance, meaning that it was directly tied to him (and presumably both him and Plagueis before).
  
• Was it because of Mortis? - no, because it explicitly happened with their exertions, unless that happens to be a massive coincidence. Further, after Anakin restores balance to Mortis, the unbalance in the galaxy is still as dark as ever.
  
• Didn't the Force get unbalanced other times? - there are no times outside of Plagueis/Sidious that the Force is unbalanced directly due to raw power, with perhaps the exception of Soresu Taalon after dipping in the Pool of Knowledge.
  
• Did the Force just let them do it without a fight? - no; the Force didn't try to boil their blood or actively kill them as Plagueis and Sidious feared, but there was clearly the inertia of creating a galaxy-wide nexus or else they wouldn't have had to exert much at all.
  

PLAGUEIS SHENANIGANS

It doesn't say that it's explicitly the same. The triggering of midichlorian deaths can be done in different ways; the way that Plagueis does it is clearly different given the description of him consciously willing midichlorians to die. That ancients could do the feat of killing midichlorians without "understanding its underpinnings" does not mean they are doing the same thing as Plagueis.

Again, it's analogous to the difference between the Romans building a bridge through trial and error and a modern bridge schematic being computationally modeled for stresses/strains/failure points.

Not that this question of the exact mechanism is even critical, at the end of the day, because we had a clear line of scaling from killing with it -> healing with it -> Sidious's lightning.

The mental gymnastics, lol. 

"This removes a Jedi’s ability to use the Force, and was introduced in the Tales of the Jedi comics during the 1990s. Given what we’ve learned of the Force since then, I added the detail that this works by triggering a mass die-off of the subject’s midi-chlorians."

Wallace, citing the specific page Plagueis discusses sever Force, says this ability "was "introduced in the Tales of the Jedi comics" and that he "added the detail that this works by triggering a mass die-off of the subject's midi-chlorians." Note that "this" refers to what "was introduced in the Tales of the Jedi comics," meaning that's what they do too. That is, unless you want to say the "this" exclusively refers to the general description (i.e. "removes a Jedi's ability to use the Force) and not the "introduced in the Tales of the Jedi comics" part, but his description that he "added the detail" means he's still referring to other usages of the ability besides Plagueis'.

Some sources refer to willpower different from mental state altogether (e.g. JATM), but I won't dive into that. Even going along the idea that the counter-influence of willpower is diluted, my point that the attack can be resisted through sufficient willpower stands. Also note that the threshold needed to compel them all to die likely isn't just 0.01% above the willpower defense. However the mechanics work, apparently the ancients defended against it sufficiently enough for it not to be the end-all, be-all. 

Why would it only affect his breathing apparatus and be magically contained there? Why wouldn't he just vaporize an unguarded drunk guy?

Because it says so? "Crackling from his fingertips, a web of blue lightning ground itself on the Muun's breathing device." How are you posing Plagueis defended this attack otherwise? He's asleep, so he's not using MM or a Force barrier. Palpatine didn't want to just kill Plagueis in his sleep--he wanted to torture and gloat beforehand. Palpatine is right next to a sleeping Plagueis, and Plagueis doesn't awake until the lightning strikes him. Palpatine could have easily sliced his throat instead. He choose not. Later, Palpatine didn't follow up his second lightning burst with a sustained attack; instead, he let Plagueis try to repair his midichlorians and suffocate out. 

Except we can gauge how well a half-asleep, drunk, no-barrier Plagueis dealt with it. We know that:

Let's see.

He didn't die from the lightning.

And? That doesn't mean he wasn't significantly affected. If this was a fight, the attack could still have still gravely damaged or altogether naturalized Plagueis.

He was still able to stumble and try to stand - failing because of Sidious's consistent imposition of a failure in oxygen (probably combined with the drunk-asleep stuff), not because he was unable to move.

And? Vader lived for minutes after Palpatine "mortally wounded" him. Hell, it's entirely possible Palpatine's lightning "mortally wounded" Plagueis anyway. 

He was able to conjure a telekinetic storm at Sidious.

A failed telekinetic storm that did basically nothing. Force users have used the Force while gravely damaged / mortally wounded before.

And again; if you want to argue that Sidious used a different kind of lightning, that's irrelevant because if it were less effective than the vaporizing-kind at killing him, he would've used the vaporizing-kind. Remember that Sidious was trying really hard with his lightning per the text, harder than he'd ever tried.

As outlined earlier, Palpatine didn't want to insta-kill Plagueis. That's consistent with Palpatine tailoring his Force lightning to not incinerate Plagueis (which we know, based on his clothes), indicating he's focusing it's electrical attributes. The attack drew on his full power, but that doesn't preclude it's intent to cripple / ravage his innards / mortally wound Plagueis, all of which could have actually happened. Palpatine also allowed Plagueis the opportunity to try to repair the damage anyway, which he may have done to some success despite the suffocating, though that opportunity wouldn't be available in combat. 

Likewise, consider Palpatine actually sought to kill Luke at the end of ROTJ, "resolving to kill Luke," being "bent on the annihilation of the impudent boy," and openly declaring "now you will die." Still, Luke didn't die instantly, presumably because the lethal lightning wasn't tailored to maximize heat but electrical output.

tl;dr: Palpatine unleashed a non-lethal attack designed to effect Plagueis in a way the text cannot comment on anyway. We have no way of knowing what he did.

??? Did you link to the wrong photo? Where does it say it's written within the Star Wars universe?

What link are you opening? The text states the events of the book happened / that Palpatine lived in the galaxy of the reader "a long time ago."

...and you're telling me that the solution to some errata in a source is to dismiss the entire group of sources as a fantasy alternative universe? Where is this mentioned in any of the Legends policy?

Lucas' universe is not a fantasy alternate universe.The book consistently makes continuity references that apply only to Lucas' universe. Stating Boba Fett died in the sarlacc pit, for example, isn't just an error. Everyone knows Boba came back in the EU. It's a deliberate separation from EU chronology. And if you disagree with the line of reasoning for whatever reason, then that just means it's in-universe limited, as it's riddled with inaccuracies.

Caedus coming up.  Revan's response will probably be tomorrow, as I want to spend more time on it.

DarthAnt66 wrote:The mental gymnastics, lol. 

"This removes a Jedi’s ability to use the Force, and was introduced in the Tales of the Jedi comics during the 1990s. Given what we’ve learned of the Force since then, I added the detail that this works by triggering a mass die-off of the subject’s midi-chlorians."

Wallace, citing the specific page Plagueis discusses sever Force, says this ability "was "introduced in the Tales of the Jedi comics" and that he "added the detail that this works by triggering a mass die-off of the subject's midi-chlorians." Note that "this" refers to what "was introduced in the Tales of the Jedi comics," meaning that's what they do too. That is, unless you want to say the "this" exclusively refers to the general description (i.e. "removes a Jedi's ability to use the Force) and not the "introduced in the Tales of the Jedi comics" part, but his description that he "added the detail" means he's still referring to other usages of the ability besides Plagueis'.

Again, this doesn't change the fact that the way Plagueis does it, as explicitly described in the novel, is to command the midichlorians, which is not being done by the Ancient Sith by any account of their doing it. That the end feat is to kill midichlorians doesn't preclude room for the very obvious difference in the way they're described. It's like the difference between using an herbal remedy to treat a disease and reverse engineering the components of the herb and making an FDA approved drug from it. Literally, shooting someone to death with a blaster would trigger a "die off" of midichlorians - clone troopers = midichlorian manipulators confirmed!

If the analogies I've been using are't illuminating, then a way to put it that more or less sums up the point is Plagueis's "version" is far more precisely tuned. Or rather:

If it were literally the same technique, then why couldn't any of the Ancient Sith just apply the "inverse", as you put it? They couldn't because they were able to do the killing part in a gross way, where they didn't know what was going on but just through more conventional applications of the Force (or maybe they were all just less powerful than Plagueis).

You focus a lot on Wallace's note and the specific naming of the technique but that has nothing to do with the practical difference between them. Like, you make it clear that you think Revan's teleportation is more advanced than Caedus's, but hey they're both called the same thing, so I guess they must be identical right?

Because it says so? "Crackling from his fingertips, a web of blue lightning ground itself on the Muun's breathing device."

That it ground itself on the device doesn't mean that it doesn't conduct itself to Plagueis's body? It would, unless if Sidious consciously prevented it from doing so.

But whatever - one or two bursts doesn't change the point.

I addressed how Plagueis could have been using a passive MM to protect himself in his sleep, given that he's able to  give "orders" to midichlorians to die and then walk away as it happens. The idea that Sidious would take chances and toy with him when he had just pages earlier been paranoid about how Plagueis was seemingly omniscient is a little unbelievable.

As for why he didn't kill him with a lightsaber, that would've taken more windup, and so could've been more easily detected (if it would even work).

How are you posing Plagueis defended this attack otherwise? He's asleep, so he's not using MM or a Force barrier. Palpatine didn't want to just kill Plagueis in his sleep--he wanted to torture and gloat beforehand. Palpatine is right next to a sleeping Plagueis, and Plagueis doesn't awake until the lightning strikes him. Palpatine could have easily sliced his throat instead. He choose not. Later, Palpatine didn't follow up his second lightning burst with a sustained attack; instead, he let Plagueis try to repair his midichlorians and suffocate out. 

Let's see.

And? That doesn't mean he wasn't significantly affected. If this was a fight, the attack could still have still gravely damaged or altogether naturalized Plagueis.

And? Vader lived for minutes after Palpatine "mortally wounded" him. Hell, it's entirely possible Palpatine's lightning "mortally wounded" Plagueis anyway. 

A failed telekinetic storm that did basically nothing. Force users have used the Force while gravely damaged / mortally wounded before.

You yourself think Anakin was uber-amped against Palpatine. And I would like to see the examples of a hindered combatant taking Sidious-tier full-power lightning without a barrier and still being able to stand and launch TK attacks in return. Even with a barrier, almost any combatant would be dead from that.

As outlined earlier, Palpatine didn't want to insta-kill Plagueis. That's consistent with Palpatine tailoring his Force lightning to not incinerate Plagueis (which we know, based on his clothes), indicating he's focusing it's electrical attributes. The attack drew on his full power, but that doesn't preclude it's intent to cripple / ravage his innards / mortally wound Plagueis, all of which could have actually happened. Palpatine also allowed Plagueis the opportunity to try to repair the damage anyway, which he may have done to some success despite the suffocating, though that opportunity wouldn't be available in combat. 

Likewise, consider Palpatine actually sought to kill Luke at the end of ROTJ, "resolving to kill Luke," being "bent on the annihilation of the impudent boy," and openly declaring "now you will die." Still, Luke didn't die instantly, presumably because the lethal lightning wasn't tailored to maximize heat but electrical output.

If Palpatine was making his lightning weaker either in intensity or using a form of lightning that is just inherently weaker, why would he need to draw more deeply on the dark side than he ever had?

So there is just this super-inefficient form of lightning that is extremely weak but requires a huge amount of effort to replicate that weakness?

Like, why not take the more straightforward option, which is that the lightning was was super powerful just as it was described? The lack of environmental damage to his clothing doesn't mean that it's weak; the environmental effects of Force lightning aren't automatic.

tl;dr: Palpatine unleashed a non-lethal attack designed to effect Plagueis in a way the text cannot comment on anyway. We have no way of knowing what he did.

Yeah, because for a non-lethal attack against a foe whose power level he was uncertain of and didn't dare attack until he was drunk and half-asleep, he would draw "more deeply on the dark side than he ever had".

What link are you opening? The text states the events of the book happened / that Palpatine lived in the galaxy of the reader "a long time ago."

The opening of RotS novelization:

This story happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. It is already over. Nothing can be done to change it.


But who is the in-universe character saying this? The disembodied narrator lives in-universe? Yet somehow knows the precise thoughts of every character and can shift perspectives on the fly?

That doesn't mean it's IU, at least not in the sense that it's a fallible character living in the universe. It just means that it's speaking from a certain vantage point in the future of the Star Wars universe. Given that plenty of "OOU" sources use the present tense or mix the present and past tense, this doesn't mean much. (aka Sidious "is the most powerful practitioner of the Sith in modern times") Nothing prevents an OOU narrator from anchoring to a specific point in time.

BTW, the films famously do this too. Are the opening crawls IU?

The SWTOR codex uses the present tense and even asks ambiguous questions that indicate uncertainty, btw.

Lucas' universe is not a fantasy alternate universe.The book consistently makes continuity references that apply only to Lucas' universe. Stating Boba Fett died in the sarlacc pit, for example, isn't just an error. Everyone knows Boba came back in the EU. It's a deliberate separation from EU chronology.

"Deliberate"? You're claiming that these books were deliberately not a part of Legends? Because if they were to get republished, or if they have been, I somehow think they'll have the "Legends" banner.

Where does Leland Chee's policy give any place for EU sources to not be a part of the EU, but rather be exclusively a part of Lucas's universe? How is this a remotely reasonable conclusion to reach because the narrator used the famous rhetoric "a long time ago" and has some errors (like virtually every source)?

The fact of the matter is that the supremacy quotes may not be something that you like, but they are there, and have been repeated in multiple sources. They're canon to Legends, like them or not.

There is also this begging the question that it matters that we should focus on quotes published after the release of SWTOR, even though the arguments against the "limitations shedding" have been ignored.

BTW, nobody has bothered to deal with the Mace Windu scaling; I know you're hoping it won't matter because he's mysteriously been forgotten about this round, but the point remains that he quite indisputably scales above Revan.

CAEDUS DEBUNK:

Or it's because Caedus's damage soak lets him punch above his weight class, since Jaina's observation was based on Caedus's tanking of damage. Jaina attributed that to her brother's power (which she is used to believing is much greater than her own) - but that's just a major component of it.

No, that's not what Jaina said. Jaina said Caedus' damage soak "proved how much greater his Force powers were than her own," not that Caedus' damage soak allowed him to contend with a foe with greater Force powers. After a long fight with Caedus, amped Jaina still believed his powers were "much greater" than hers. No reason to backtrack, as you stated this yourself: "Jaina assesses the fight by noting that Caedus's Force powers were far greater than her own even while she was amped." The quote binds amped Jaina significantly below prime Luke, and also shows that Caedus' lack of mentioning of how good Luke is performing is a flawed metric to scale Caedus. I cannot see how you can try to continue the debate beyond this. There's nothing more to grab besides straws. 

But you yourself argued that Luke might not have been able to put his full power into Jaina, which suggests that the power-amp is indeed more difficult than just casting the illusion, and that therefore it makes sense for Caedus to see the power-amp as the limiting factor in believing that it's Luke and not the face-illusion.

No. I argued Luke would not have put his full power into Jaina because he's exhausting so much of his power casting the illusion and imprinting his Force signature from across the fleet. Caedus gave two reasons for why he believes it's Luke (i.e. the Force presence and that Luke can't be two places at once), neither being the power-amp.

Luke's difficulty in doing so decades earlier doesn't matter; he and Jacen can easily do it by LotF, and by Revelation Luke makes Jacen see an entire imaginary fleet.

You don't think it's taxing to overlay Jaina's active body for a prolonged period, across a vast distance, with a hyper-real Force illusion that even Jacen's esoteric illusion-detecting abilities can't pierce? And beyond that, also binding/projecting his Force presence on Jaina's location? Of course that's difficult--none of that has ever even been done before. It's so difficult Jacen effectively deemed it impossible. And how do your examples disprove that? The NR quote shows it's insanely taxing to do a fraction of what Luke does here. I don't recall Jacen ever doing prolonged illusions easily, and Jacen believed the "imaginary fleet" feat to be the absolute limits of Luke's power.

Caedus had come to that conclusion long before he saw "Luke" bat back blaster bolts, and to Mirta points to his lost arm as evidence that it wasn't Jaina. Clearly the fact that he deflected blaster bolts isn't the wow-factor for Caedus here

I think you misread the quote? I don't think he's labeling the presences as real specifically because they can bat back blasterfire. 

I mean, theories can be constructed around why Luke was actually super-weak, but those are not at all the most reasonable or straightforward unless if the goal is to just dismiss Jacen.

It's straightforward to say a Force user in the worst mental state ever seen in Star Wars will be super-weak relative to his normal power-level, lol.

---

Caedus sees Luke and concludes that because Luke cannot be at two places at once, that must be him. Caedus dismisses the possibility of an illusion because he can judged Luke's presence as "real" as it gets. Caedus has better reasons to believe it's Luke than gauging by power, and regardless we know via Jaina that the foe he fought was nowhere near Luke-level. You might have some other Caedus arguments, but I think it's time for you to concede on this one.

tl;dr: Amped Jaina is significantly if not vastly less powerful than Luke, per her admission. Ergo, there's no grounds to scale her beyond anything. 

IG wrote:@Azronger: I apologize for misusing the term then, I was addressing his use of “useless drivel”. However it’s odd that you defend him entirely and attack me, despite another mod addressing both of us. Perhaps because you have a dislike of me personally?

I clarified you misused the term ad hominem, and correctly pointed out that you acted far more egregiously than he did. Whether I like or dislike you on a personal level has nothing to do with that. I was describing a set of facts.

Is it condescending of you to say that MP is a far, far better debater than me? No, it isn’t,

Depends on the context. If we're objectively rating debaters in a neutral setting, then there's nothing wrong with saying X is better than Y. But your goal here was solely to berate Corvinus and your wording was "DC's post is far, far better than anything you could come up with." That is clearly derogatory and meant as an insult. It is condescending and deserving of a warning.

and say I called a post of MP’s nonsensical bullshit (for example), you’d be perfectly justified in calling me out for it.

The most I'd say if I were interested is ask why. Sure, you could stand to be more polite, but so long as it's an attack on the post and not the person, it won't grab my attention.