The Ellimist
As we discussed earlier, Ms Warehouse and I will be engaging in a one on one debate, with myself taking the side of RotJ Legends Sidious, and him taking the side of Valkorion. I propose the following stipulations:
15 meters starting distance
Neutral territory
All-out confrontation
All Legends material (not including infinities, what-ifs, etc.) taken into consideration
I suppose commentary is OK, but try to keep from jumping too thoroughly into the debate.
For my starting post, I'm going to focus on broader points and ignore having to do rigorous citations, and then Beefy can zero in on which sources he isn't familiar with or contests the context of.
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Case 1: The Accolades.
The Complete Visual Dictionary describes Darth Sidious as "the greatest master of evil ever to use sith power"; note that this is him as of the prequels, let alone his substantially superior RotJ reincarnation. A few points of note:
1. "greatest master of evil ever to use sith power" places Sidious above Valkorion, even if Valkorion isn't a sith. Analogy: if I say that someone is the "greatest student ever to attend MIT", this would suggest that this student is above anyone who has or had attended MIT; the fact that Valkorion is no longer a sith (if we even buy that, given the codex entry's claim that he's a "sith entity" doesn't preclude him from this discussion. Nor does it make any sense to argue that Valkorion is fundamentally separate from Vitiate; it's just a different body, but Vitiate switches bodies multiple times anyway, and clearly acknowledges that he is the former Sith Emperor, and talks about Vitiate in the first person.
2. The Ultimate Visual Dictionary is a Legends source. That it only references the movies is irrelevant; that's like saying a history textbook about the 19th century claiming that the British Empire was the largest in history isn't referring to the Mongolian Empire since that wasn't in the book. The Legends continuity has to be seen as one narrative, or else these sorts of debates become nearly impossible.
3. I suppose it's possible that "greatest master of evil" means greatest politician or something...but it isn't the most plausible explanation. For one, he wasn't even close to the political authority that he would eventually wield yet, and it would be a stretch to put him above, say, Vitiate himself as a political force. I think the most parsimonious interpretation is that they're talking about mastery of the dark side, given that they reference "sith power".
Darth Sidious then voraciously studies "the Force in all its guises" throughout the dark times, having collected a vast repertoire of knowledge from across the galaxy, and is boosted by the energies of Byss.
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Case 2: Telepathy
I think establishing Palpatine's superiority as a telepath is a sure way to establish his overall supremacy; telapathy is Valkorion's specialty, so if he can't beat Sidious on that, it's difficult to say what else he could on, given Palpatine's lack of any combative weaknesses. Yet Palpatine's feats are actually superior.
Vitiate's domination of Revan and Malak on a dark side nexus isn't particularly impressive given that the TOR encyclopedia makes it clear that he was able to do so easily because the duo were already on the precipice of the dark side. After that...well, he dominates some Jedi and Sith of no particular prowess, and fails to dominate lots of others; where are the high-caliber foes he overpowers this way? None, really. To note, with Nathema, the sith he dominated were voluntarily participating in a ritual; it's not like they were resisting and Vitiate broke their defenses.
We get to Ziost, where he does enslave a planetary population, but he does this on a nexus, and it seems likely that he was employing a ritual given its incredible similarity to Nathema. He was also drawing on their energy to do so.
Compare this to Palpatine. Firstly, with respect to dominating individuals, he's done this to Vader across the galaxy. Darth Vader is stronger in the Force than anyone Vitiate or Valkorion has successfully telepathically manipulated.
With respect to dominating large populations, Palpatine does this to Byss, which is at least as impressive as Ziost, and then to Coruscant on the lowering of the Lusankya. The difference, again, is that Palpatine did not need to employ a ritual, and in the latter example needed neither a nexus nor an external energy supply.
So even if you think this category is break even for the two...it isn't very impressive for Valkorion, given that this would be his strongest category.
--------------------------------------
Case 3: Other Force abilities
It seems pretty clear to me that Sidious's feats in other aspects of the Force are noticeably superior. Note that this serves two purposes: it's not just about the abilities themselves, but also how they signal overall Force power/mastery. We can go down every conventional category and find Sidious on top.
Telekinesis: Sidious has mused about his ability to destroy the Imperial Palace - which is around the size of a super star destroyer and almost as armored. Some may dismiss this as his own delusions, but Palpatine is actually pretty aware of the scope of his abilities (he admits that he cannot control Force storms yet, that he cannot fully replicate Plagueis's midichlorian manipulation, he tries to run from Yoda, he knows Anakin could far surpass him, etc.). He also benefits from powerscaling from Yoda with his telekinesis of massive droid control ships, and from both Galen Marek and Darth Vader. Valkorion is comparatively lacking in this area. All we know is that as Vitiate he sort of brings down some bus sized stone slabs on a dark side nexus, and it's implied that he eventually destroys the temple; in comparison, Galen Marek's suicide blast caused an explosion on the Death Star visible from space, and this is was in an instant.
Lightning: Valkorion's lightning feats involve oneshotting powerhouses like Darth Marr (lol), killing random strike teams, and disabling some ships from a long distance away. Note that in the latter case, he doesn't actually physically damage the ships, the lightning just conducts through the hulls and kills the pilots. Sidious, meanwhile, has pushed Yoda's tutanimus to its limits with his lightning, disintegrated sithspawn, and one-shotted like 100 stormtroopers.
Augmentation: well this isn't even a question. Valkorion can only claim that he can block lightsaber strikes, but it seems to be more of a telekinetic barrier against a far weaker Arcann doing really slow and predictable strikes. Sidious can move so quickly that three of the greatest swordsmen in history died to him in a matter of seconds, and later Anakin couldn't even see his duel with an amped Mace Windu.
We can look to Palpatine's ability to channel Force storms as another sign of his superior power in the Force. Though he cannot finely control them at this point, he can still summon them with similar amounts of raw power to his Dark Empire incarnation, and was able to teleport his spirit during his death via a wormhole.
Lastly, we can look to Sidious and Plagueis's ability to wrestle with the Force and unbalance it; something such a threat to the cosmic balance that the Force itself intervened with the creation of Anakin. If Valkorion were capable of doing this, why didn't he? His hundreds of years of dabbling in sorcery on a nexus led to some thunderstorms; Plagueis did this by appearing on Naboo, Sidious did this to Vjun just by appearing via a hologram, and the two together just needed a few months to twist the Force on a universal scale.
--------------------------------------
Case 4: Close quarters combat ability.
This one is pretty important. If two Force users are fairly evenly matched, it's not very easy to "ragdoll" or overpower the other, and the combat usually reduces to a lightsaber duel. Here, Valkorion has to do everything he can to avoid that, and he's dealing with one of the fastest combatants in the mythos.
So it's not just enough to say that Valkorion is evenly matched with Sidious as a Force user, or has a slight edge; you have to think he has such an advantage that he can kill Sidious in the seconds or fractions of a second he has before he's dead.
--------------------------------------
On rituals/sorcery/etc.
Valkorion does seem to know more esoteric sorcery than Sidious. But none of this is applicable in combat, and doesn't seem to signal overall ability as much as more conventional measures, because these rituals almost always involve prep, a nexus and participants, and involve feats grossly disproportionate to Valkorion's baseline abilities.
But that appearance of Valkorion's superiority in this category may not even be accurate. Sidious has employed sorcery, arguably on a tighter schedule, doing so to help Vader's survival through Mustafar and assaulting Yoda himself with it. He has also been able to essence transfer others into new bodies and to perhaps have boosted his own midichlorian count.
----------------
Those are my opening statements.
15 meters starting distance
Neutral territory
All-out confrontation
All Legends material (not including infinities, what-ifs, etc.) taken into consideration
I suppose commentary is OK, but try to keep from jumping too thoroughly into the debate.
For my starting post, I'm going to focus on broader points and ignore having to do rigorous citations, and then Beefy can zero in on which sources he isn't familiar with or contests the context of.
--------------------------------------
Case 1: The Accolades.
The Complete Visual Dictionary describes Darth Sidious as "the greatest master of evil ever to use sith power"; note that this is him as of the prequels, let alone his substantially superior RotJ reincarnation. A few points of note:
1. "greatest master of evil ever to use sith power" places Sidious above Valkorion, even if Valkorion isn't a sith. Analogy: if I say that someone is the "greatest student ever to attend MIT", this would suggest that this student is above anyone who has or had attended MIT; the fact that Valkorion is no longer a sith (if we even buy that, given the codex entry's claim that he's a "sith entity" doesn't preclude him from this discussion. Nor does it make any sense to argue that Valkorion is fundamentally separate from Vitiate; it's just a different body, but Vitiate switches bodies multiple times anyway, and clearly acknowledges that he is the former Sith Emperor, and talks about Vitiate in the first person.
2. The Ultimate Visual Dictionary is a Legends source. That it only references the movies is irrelevant; that's like saying a history textbook about the 19th century claiming that the British Empire was the largest in history isn't referring to the Mongolian Empire since that wasn't in the book. The Legends continuity has to be seen as one narrative, or else these sorts of debates become nearly impossible.
3. I suppose it's possible that "greatest master of evil" means greatest politician or something...but it isn't the most plausible explanation. For one, he wasn't even close to the political authority that he would eventually wield yet, and it would be a stretch to put him above, say, Vitiate himself as a political force. I think the most parsimonious interpretation is that they're talking about mastery of the dark side, given that they reference "sith power".
Darth Sidious then voraciously studies "the Force in all its guises" throughout the dark times, having collected a vast repertoire of knowledge from across the galaxy, and is boosted by the energies of Byss.
--------------------------------------
Case 2: Telepathy
I think establishing Palpatine's superiority as a telepath is a sure way to establish his overall supremacy; telapathy is Valkorion's specialty, so if he can't beat Sidious on that, it's difficult to say what else he could on, given Palpatine's lack of any combative weaknesses. Yet Palpatine's feats are actually superior.
Vitiate's domination of Revan and Malak on a dark side nexus isn't particularly impressive given that the TOR encyclopedia makes it clear that he was able to do so easily because the duo were already on the precipice of the dark side. After that...well, he dominates some Jedi and Sith of no particular prowess, and fails to dominate lots of others; where are the high-caliber foes he overpowers this way? None, really. To note, with Nathema, the sith he dominated were voluntarily participating in a ritual; it's not like they were resisting and Vitiate broke their defenses.
We get to Ziost, where he does enslave a planetary population, but he does this on a nexus, and it seems likely that he was employing a ritual given its incredible similarity to Nathema. He was also drawing on their energy to do so.
Compare this to Palpatine. Firstly, with respect to dominating individuals, he's done this to Vader across the galaxy. Darth Vader is stronger in the Force than anyone Vitiate or Valkorion has successfully telepathically manipulated.
With respect to dominating large populations, Palpatine does this to Byss, which is at least as impressive as Ziost, and then to Coruscant on the lowering of the Lusankya. The difference, again, is that Palpatine did not need to employ a ritual, and in the latter example needed neither a nexus nor an external energy supply.
So even if you think this category is break even for the two...it isn't very impressive for Valkorion, given that this would be his strongest category.
--------------------------------------
Case 3: Other Force abilities
It seems pretty clear to me that Sidious's feats in other aspects of the Force are noticeably superior. Note that this serves two purposes: it's not just about the abilities themselves, but also how they signal overall Force power/mastery. We can go down every conventional category and find Sidious on top.
Telekinesis: Sidious has mused about his ability to destroy the Imperial Palace - which is around the size of a super star destroyer and almost as armored. Some may dismiss this as his own delusions, but Palpatine is actually pretty aware of the scope of his abilities (he admits that he cannot control Force storms yet, that he cannot fully replicate Plagueis's midichlorian manipulation, he tries to run from Yoda, he knows Anakin could far surpass him, etc.). He also benefits from powerscaling from Yoda with his telekinesis of massive droid control ships, and from both Galen Marek and Darth Vader. Valkorion is comparatively lacking in this area. All we know is that as Vitiate he sort of brings down some bus sized stone slabs on a dark side nexus, and it's implied that he eventually destroys the temple; in comparison, Galen Marek's suicide blast caused an explosion on the Death Star visible from space, and this is was in an instant.
Lightning: Valkorion's lightning feats involve oneshotting powerhouses like Darth Marr (lol), killing random strike teams, and disabling some ships from a long distance away. Note that in the latter case, he doesn't actually physically damage the ships, the lightning just conducts through the hulls and kills the pilots. Sidious, meanwhile, has pushed Yoda's tutanimus to its limits with his lightning, disintegrated sithspawn, and one-shotted like 100 stormtroopers.
Augmentation: well this isn't even a question. Valkorion can only claim that he can block lightsaber strikes, but it seems to be more of a telekinetic barrier against a far weaker Arcann doing really slow and predictable strikes. Sidious can move so quickly that three of the greatest swordsmen in history died to him in a matter of seconds, and later Anakin couldn't even see his duel with an amped Mace Windu.
We can look to Palpatine's ability to channel Force storms as another sign of his superior power in the Force. Though he cannot finely control them at this point, he can still summon them with similar amounts of raw power to his Dark Empire incarnation, and was able to teleport his spirit during his death via a wormhole.
Lastly, we can look to Sidious and Plagueis's ability to wrestle with the Force and unbalance it; something such a threat to the cosmic balance that the Force itself intervened with the creation of Anakin. If Valkorion were capable of doing this, why didn't he? His hundreds of years of dabbling in sorcery on a nexus led to some thunderstorms; Plagueis did this by appearing on Naboo, Sidious did this to Vjun just by appearing via a hologram, and the two together just needed a few months to twist the Force on a universal scale.
--------------------------------------
Case 4: Close quarters combat ability.
This one is pretty important. If two Force users are fairly evenly matched, it's not very easy to "ragdoll" or overpower the other, and the combat usually reduces to a lightsaber duel. Here, Valkorion has to do everything he can to avoid that, and he's dealing with one of the fastest combatants in the mythos.
So it's not just enough to say that Valkorion is evenly matched with Sidious as a Force user, or has a slight edge; you have to think he has such an advantage that he can kill Sidious in the seconds or fractions of a second he has before he's dead.
--------------------------------------
On rituals/sorcery/etc.
Valkorion does seem to know more esoteric sorcery than Sidious. But none of this is applicable in combat, and doesn't seem to signal overall ability as much as more conventional measures, because these rituals almost always involve prep, a nexus and participants, and involve feats grossly disproportionate to Valkorion's baseline abilities.
But that appearance of Valkorion's superiority in this category may not even be accurate. Sidious has employed sorcery, arguably on a tighter schedule, doing so to help Vader's survival through Mustafar and assaulting Yoda himself with it. He has also been able to essence transfer others into new bodies and to perhaps have boosted his own midichlorian count.
----------------
Those are my opening statements.