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And yes, I said ritual.

So, as a thread created by member Selenial pointed out, Vitiate did perform some sort of ritual to consume all life on Ziost. This begs a few questions: which part of Ziost actually was a ritual? Does this diminish the impressiveness of Vitiate? Let's find out:

Which Part of Ziost Required a Ritual?

Answer: The part we don't see.

An important part of understanding Boyd's take on Ziost is reading what he actually agreed with:







The first and third quotes that Boyd affirmed are especially interesting. The first quote was in response to someone asking, "But then how do we explain Ziost?" The answer likens Ziost to the galaxy ritual, i.e. causing constant death over a period of time and massive amounts of death over a short time. Funny enough, Ziost fits the bill. Throughout the expansion, the Emperor is causing constant death and feeding in increasing amounts to expand his power. Eventually, his power grows to a point where he can end all life on Ziost, which as affirmed by Boyd, causes a disturbance in the force, allowing him to consume the spirits of those he had just killed. Notice the bifurcation between Vitiate ending all life on Ziost through the death wave, and consuming the spirits of the dead. Said bifurcation is noted throughout the entire third quote that Boyd agreed with. So tl;dr:


The Emperor causes constant death over a period of time through his soldiers and monoliths, and he feeds on this constant death to continuously grow in power, thus allowing him to possess more people, create more monoliths, and cause more death.
The Emperor eventually reaches a point where he has the necessary power to kill everybody on Ziost, thus fulfilling the second ingredient of the ritual: massive amounts of death in a short period of time. Note that this ingredient isn't a ritual in and of itself.
The above 2 combined cause a disturbance in the force, thus allowing the Emperor to feed on the spirits of every life he had just killed on Ziost.


I think this starts to make more sense when you realize how the Emperor fed throughout the entire Revanite War and Ziost: invisibly. We never actually see the Emperor drain beings on-screen. The death wave that killed every being on Ziost wasn't the outcome of his ritual, it was an ingredient that allowed him to perform a ritual. This, at least in my opinion, shows that the death wave is indicative of the Emperor's own personal power, as it's essentially confirmed to not be a ritual in and of itself.

Does this diminish the impressiveness of Vitiate?

No. In fact, after sorting out this whole situation, it only made me raise the Immortal Emperor even higher. Regardless of what I said above, the fact remains: the Emperor required a ritual to consume all the dead spirits on Ziost. Doesn't this essentially pull him out of the discussion with the likes of Palpatine, or even Darth Nihilus? I beg to differ.

To quickly compare Nihilus and Vitiate, I would argue their positions are quite similar. As member DarthAnt66 pointed out, Nihilus uses his fleet to blast worlds into ruin, then devours their life energy. It's entirely possible (likely?) that the mass death caused by Nihilus' fleet caused a profound disturbance in the force, thus allowing Nihilus to feed. The difference is that instead of using a fleet, Vitiate causes constant and mass death under his own power. Not to mention the fact that Vitiate was heavily weakened/vastly pre-prime while doing it.

Another reason why this doesn't diminish Vitiate is the sheer depth of his drain when compared to just about any other force user. As we see with Vaylin, when he consumes an individual's spirit, it allows him to not only grow in power and immortality, but to actually control said individual's spirit and use it as a weapon, as shown in KOTET Chapter 9. The gains the Emperor receives from consuming spirits are tremendous: the population of a single city on Ziost gives him the power to rid the entire planet of life, when previously he was merely possessing soldiers and causing delirium. Where my raising of the Emperor comes into play is in the following implication: if the Emperor grew this tremendously in power from killing and consuming the individuals of a single city, how much more powerful would he be upon killing and consuming all life on the entire planet?

That's all. Feedback would be appreciated.

Doesn't Visas Marr explicitly state that Nihilus laying waste to Katarr was "not a thing done with machines"?

Not the point of the argument here.

Yeah it always worked like this. The galaxy ritual was no different at all.

Strikes me as a bit of a queer tactic to ask for feedback on a thread titled "my final take on (insert issue)."

Wouldn't this imply Vitiate would of devoured all life in this galaxy via his own power.
He needed Millions dead from the war, and then Millions/death of a planet, to create said ritual. Wouldn't this imply, Vitiate had a decent amount of power, comparatively for the Galaxy Ritual, before he was stopped by the HoT.

Retracted.

Originally posted by NewGuy01
Strikes me as a bit of a queer tactic to ask for feedback on a thread titled "my final take on (insert issue)."

Fair enough.

Originally posted by Haschwalth
Wouldn't this imply Vitiate would of devoured all life in this galaxy via his own power.
He needed Millions dead from the war, and then Millions/death of a planet, to create said ritual. Wouldn't this imply, Vitiate had a decent amount of power, comparatively for the Galaxy Ritual, before he was stopped by the HoT.

As far as the galaxy ritual is concerned, I'm not sure whether any of this information makes it more impressive than it already was. Given that it required trillions of deaths over a long, long period of time and then billions (trillions if we go by Belsavis iirc) of simultaneous deaths, I suspect that would cause an enormous disturbance in the force for Vitiate to use to feed on the galaxy. Not necessarily indicative of his off-the-cuff power.

If that's not indicative of his off-the-cuff power, then why is Ziost?

I never said consuming the spirits of the dead on Ziost was indicative of his off-the-cuff power. The point of this thread was suggesting that everything we see on Ziost (the possessing soldiers, creating monoliths, and killing everybody on Ziost) was indicative of his off-the-cuff power, actions that allowed him to consume the spirits of the dead.

No, but the Galaxy ritual required deaths to trigger a ritual that would then kill everyone else and feed on their essences. An easy parallel exists between that and Ziost, Vitiate possessed a population and had them murder each other to fuel a ritual that then wipes out and consumes the rest.

What information did you see that convinced you to set aside the obvious parallels in the story and assume the wave that destroyed the planet was entirely separate from the ritual to consume, unlike the past larger attempts? I'm just not quite seeing it.

Originally posted by XSUPREMEXSKILLZ
I never said consuming the spirits of the dead on Ziost was indicative of his off-the-cuff power. The point of this thread was suggesting that everything we see on Ziost (the possessing soldiers, creating monoliths, and killing everybody on Ziost) was indicative of his off-the-cuff power, actions that allowed him to consume the spirits of the dead. [/QUOTE

Okay, so by extension would you also contend that killing all life in the galaxy and *not* consuming their souls is also something indicative of vanilla Vitiate's off the cuff power?

Damn, look at that guy's quote fail. That's just embarassing.

Originally posted by Selenial
No, but the Galaxy ritual required deaths to trigger a ritual that would then kill everyone else and feed on their essences. An easy parallel exists between that and Ziost, Vitiate possessed a population and had them murder each other to fuel a ritual that then wipes out and consumes the rest.

The only issue I have with this is that we already know what Vitiate used the population for: to accumulate power for his own reserves. Now, with Boyd's comments, we can also add, "fulfilling first ingredient for the ritual," but there's no reason to believe that the deaths the Emperor was causing on Ziost through his possessed soldiers and monoliths were fuel for the ritual in and of themselves, especially given that we know for a fact that the Emperor was consuming their energies himself to become more powerful. It's corroborated by Lana and by the codex:



Given that you yourself are likening Ziost to the galaxy ritual, just as Boyd seems to, then some common themes would need to be established, like:

-constant death over a period of time (his initial actions on Ziost)
-massive amounts of simultaneous deaths (the death wave)

It's important to note that this notion isn't just coming out of my ass, it's what Boyd agreed to on that thread with quotes from users like:





And I would argue Nathema is the much more obvious comparison to Ziost, as opposed to the galaxy ritual.

The only real alternative would be another explanation for the massive amounts of simultaneous deaths, but to say it was just the deaths of the population via soldiers and monoliths that fueled the ritual makes it rather not like the galaxy ritual, which would make Boyd rather full of shit, which brings us back to square one.

Originally posted by Selenial
What information did you see that convinced you to set aside the obvious parallels in the story and assume the wave that destroyed the planet was entirely separate from the ritual to consume, unlike the past larger attempts? I'm just not quite seeing it.

I never said that the wave was entirely separate, in fact I said that the death wave was one of the two major ingredients for the ritual, essentially the catalyst that caused a profound disturbance in the force, thus allowing Vitiate to feed. The way I see it, Vitiate was performing the role Zildrog had performed on Nathema: "Devouring" the living. As explained in the aforementioned quote, Zildrog ended all life on Nathema, which presumably caused a profound disturbance in the force that allowed Vitiate to feed off of the extinction. IIRC even the codex describes the galaxy ritual as Vitiate "feeding off the extinction" of the galaxy.

Originally posted by NewGuy01
Okay, so by extension would you also contend that killing all life in the galaxy and *not* consuming their souls is also something indicative of vanilla Vitiate's off the cuff power?

I would, but the issue is that there seem to be fundamental differences between the galaxy ritual and Nathema, and by extension, Ziost.

Also would like to point out that, Wraths Vision of the Galaxy Ritual only consumed everyone's souls in Drumond kaas, not their bodies like Ziost/Nathema.

Which would mean, Vitiate's Ritual Galaxy Ritual could still follow the same logic, with the Trillions of deaths being the catalyst, for a massive force disturbance, in which Vitiate could of consumed the Galaxies souls. And by extension screw over the suns. This is some insane galactic level soul ****ery.

Would also wager this force disturbance to be beyond Plageuis/SIdious's ****ing with the force Pre TPM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLE5EU33mR4
even the stars are consumed, vitiate is good indeed.

I want to know what kind of technique valkorion, used to do this:
http://static5.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_super/11117/111179633/4579461-0619578816-vZd4b.gif

Of course he did?
Doesn't everyone know that? I thought it was pretty bluntly stated in the lore.

Originally posted by Freedon Nadd
Of course he did?
Doesn't everyone know that? I thought it was pretty bluntly stated in the lore.

Believe me, just about nothing regarding Ziost is bluntly stated in the lore.

Vitiate states it himself.