Darth Caedus vs Cade Skywalker

The Ellimist wrote:Caedus wins.

Blade_of_Dorin wrote:Arguments for either winning?

Ziggy wrote:

Blade_of_Dorin wrote:Arguments for either winning?

Because most of Cade's unimpressive showings are done while he's a recovering addict and out of shape. Caedus doesn't have that excuse to fall back on. 

We've unearthed a particularly lousy feat from Caedus recently, having used battle meditation on around hundred of his commanders, discharging that same energy into confusing a group of energy-shield technicians in a control room and being drained utterly from such a feat.

Other than that, I don't consider Caedus' brawl with Luke an indicator for any reliable scaling, mostly because Luke jobs... a lot.  But also because Luke's resolve was weakened and the memory of that event is something that can paralyse his force connection, it makes sense that experiencing the event did so too.  I also don't see the brawl as a particularly good feat itself.  Caedus only got in more reliable hits after poisoning Luke with the Embrace of Pain, something that would have dulled Luke's Force connection further.  Before that, he broke off the engagement by retreating backwards when Luke had him on his knees after three hits. I prefer Cade against Krayt tbh.  I don't think Krayt is a match for Full power Luke, but he has good odds against the jobbing guy we usually see in SW lore. 

Cade beating Nhil, Talon and then contending with Vong Krayt, while not in his prime, is better than Caedus being taxxed after fifteen seconds of dueling Katarn and three nobodies. 

I also prefer the potency of Dark Transfer over any of Jacen's esoteric powers.

Legacey of the Force Revelation


Caedus took it in his stride. This was meant to be, to put him in the right frame of mind to win. The bridge around him distorted a little and the colors seemed to leach out, but he recognized his anger and grabbed the reins to make it serve him. Unlike the bloodfin’s unlucky rider, he wouldn’t fall and be devoured by it.  He reached out to his commanders and imbued them all with a little more aggression, a little less willingness to play by the rules of engagement.


[...]




The adrenaline and pure white rage looping back to him from the individual commanders made his throat tighten. It was almost like a back-pressure effect, that the passion for the battle that he was channeling into them gained power and momentum, and syphoned back into him as a changed and magnified thing that he felt he had to vent from his chest or scream.


He was out of breath. He hoped nobody noticed. It might have looked as if he were panicking.


[...]



He could no longer pick out the individual crew and their stations around him in the Anakin Solo, just a complex tapestry of emotions, and that was the state of near blindness that he needed to push his way into the minds of strangers many kilometers away on the planet beneath.


[...]



Caedus saw what the Fondorians operating the shield facility might see; he had no idea what the actual location looked like, but he didn’t need to waste his strength projecting his consciousness to actually observe. Any imagined scene would do to focus him as the torrent of anger and raw nerves of a hundred or more commanders poured back through him.



[...]



Caedus dropped into that white noise of the feelings and thoughts of billions on Fondor, and heard the one repeating note out of kilter with the rest. He focused. In seconds, it filled his head to the exclusion of all else.


He was aware of solid, real beings moving around him on the ship, but he was now more aware of the shield generator facility five kilometers east of Oridin and the minds of the control room team. There were more of them than usual, he could feel that. There was a sense of having strangers around, as if they’d called in extra staff and were running emergency operations, which fitted a facility that probably ran on standby with droids and a caretaker crew most of the time.

[...]



Caedus concentrated on projecting an impression that the GA Fleet and its allies had been driven off, and now ships needed to return to base under the protection of the shield. There was urgency in it, because many of the vessels were damaged and needed to land before atmosphere vented or hulls gave way.  He flooded the operators’ minds with an urge to get the ships to safety as soon as possible, all kinds of worries and concerns about family members who might be on board, a burning sense of saving people, of pulling out all the stops…



[...]


Shields down!” It wasn’t Nevil’s voice, but that of the weapons officer. Caedus was still drifting in that fog of minds, drowning in their panic and urgency, and not here with the ship that was going to unleash their worst nightmare. 


[...]



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




[...]



Caedus felt stronger now, but the raw energy of the battle link with his commanders, built up and discharged into the minds of the Fondorian shield technicians, hadn’t yet returned.  Exhausted, he had to rely on the natural skill of the commanders who’d rallied to him.”

• Huge versatility because of his five years journey in order to learn new technics in the Force:
  

They had learned much of what Jacen learned; skills that no other Jedi had known for centuries, if ever.

Even Luke did not know the full of extent of Caedus's powers, and Jaina had no illusions about being her brother's equal in terms of Force strength

I've no idea what he learned from Lumiya, let alone what he picked up on his travels during those five years 

• Being way more powerful in sheer force power:
  

"Jacen convinced Tenel Ka, or you used Jacen to convince her?" Jaina was thinking of how Raynar had nearly forced her to leave just a few moments earlier-and of the irresistible call that had summoned her and the others to the Colony in the first place. "Your touch can be very compelling." "Perhaps, but even we are not strong enough to control Jacen," Raynar said. "He has moved beyond our control-or anyone else's. You know that yourself."

Jacen jerked his head around, suddenly seized by such a powerful sense of immediate danger that his instinct was to fling himself on Niathal and wrap the taxi tight in a Force shield. The vessel bucked hard as if it had been hit by a tidal wave. There was a second of silence before a deafening whump shook it like a box and they were caught in an instant blizzard of what seemed to be glittering snow. It hammered the hull as Jacen fought to hold the taxi steady, oblivious of the pilot's efforts.
Shattered transparisteel.
It seemed to go on for minutes. The pilot was shouting. Jacen straightened up, staring into the rapidly blinking eye of a shaken Niathal, and knew that they had caught the tail end of a huge explosion.
…
Jacen could feel what had happened, but it was still a shocking sight. Ahead of them, the skylanes seemed to be a gaping hole of nothing-as if a whole mass of speeders had fallen out of the sky, which they clearly had-and for a hundred meters the buildings on either side were like jagged, open mouths. Each transparisteel frontage had been blown out. The Force was torn with anger and fear and shock. The unnatural silence was broken by emergency klaxons and echoing shouts. Jacen realized the taxi's screens had collapsed into the cabin, although still in one piece.

• Beeing insanely resilient (I think that I didn't need to give you some examples)
  
• Being able to draw on his own pain to fuel him
  

"No painkillers - I need a clear head." Actually, Caedus was feeding on the pain, burning it like fuel to keep his hormone levels high and his mind alert"

"His pain would only fuel his power"

• Last but not least, we have particularly this quote from Luke that speaks volume for Caedus
  

I know I'm the only one who can be sure of stopping him, but no matter how I envision it, it always leads to darkness

The Ellimist wrote:For the battle meditation, you don't know how effective or intense the BM was, you just know roughly the amount of people affected. It originally notes that he wants to imbue them with just a "little more aggression", but then it says that the commanders returned "pure white rage" that seems to have contributed to the problem in emotional overload rather than a depletion of Force power. 

He's also doing this involuntarily to commanders that are presumably somewhat strong willed. 

For the Fondorian shield generator, he located a specific group of people out of billions from thousands of kilometers away within seconds and then TP'd them with a very specific message. This is only a "bad" feat if you compare it to, say, Ziost or Byss, or some other top-tier TP feats. I think Vitiate is stronger than Caedus, but frankly Vitiate seems to be a TP savant anyway.

I'm also guessing that the Fondorians would have especially strong willed people in critical infrastructure if they knew Caedus was a threat.

Lowkey it's not always precise to try to scale characters from different source materials based on the difficulty with which they do particular feats. I could use that to show that TCW Mace Windu is fodder compared to OCW Anakin, or that RotS Yoda is fodder compared to Act I Barsen'Thor. This brings in the question of whether feats should matter at all, of course.

xolthol wrote:I will make a little compilation of things that put Darth Caedus above Cade:

• Huge versatility because of his five years journey in order to learn new technics in the Force:
  
  
  

All of this technic will give him lots of way to defeat Cade, or at least give him a good advantage.

• Being way more powerful in sheer force power:
  
  

Unuthul cannot control him despite the trillions of killiks that could give him their power, have having succeed to do this to Jaina Solo, Mara Jade and even Luke Skywalker (this latter wasn't prepared for this attack)

He was able to shield himself and his taxi in a surprise bombing attack that could destroy on a 100 meters radius buildings

Basically, Caedus have more than anything that he need to defeat Cade.