Another thread; testing the ever-nebulous opinions of our fellowship.
Round one:
With both characters at their peak, who would win in a 1v1 battle? Assume the contest takes place in the empty Geonosian arena as depicted in Episode II, a neutral environment.
Round two:
As a separate issue, which character is more cosmologically powerful? Your considerations should include applications of the Force in terms of both scale and skill, direct and indirect, destructive and passive. tl;dr: consider might and mastery.
Round three:
Which character is more important? Consider the depth and scope of their geopolitical, historical, and cosmological achievements.
Sheev is canon Palpatine who probably loses. Assuming Legends:
Palpatine crushes him. If the two are comparable, or if Valky is marginally superior in the Force, Vitiate won't be able to kill Palpatine before he forces a melee, and then Valkorion obviously gets sliced and diced. His only hope of victory is to win really, really quickly, and that's only possible if he substantially outclasses Palpatine in the Force.
He doesn't, though; the reverse is closer to being true. Palpatine outmatches his greatest destructive feat (Force storms are more destructive than Ziost, and done without prep, a ritual or nexus), exceeds him in telepathy (dominating Luke and Vader >> not being able to dominate Scourge or the Outlander), exceeds him in telekinesis (muses that he can destroy the kilometers long imperial palace, is far more powerful than Vader+Starkiller, both of which have feats on the level of manipulating and destroying capital ships vs. destroying a random temple on a nexus), exceeds him in Force lightning (overloading Yoda's tutanimus >>> killing Darth Marr and random weaklings) and vastly exceeds him in Force speed (blitzing three celebrated Jedi masters + pre-vaapad Windu). Valkorion's only potential advantages come with rituals and sorcery that are useless in a one vs. one confrontation.
Sidious is also a more experienced and capable combatant, having trained with Plagueis by fighting and deflecting fire from hundreds of battle droids decades before his prime, while the Revan novel shows us how awful in actual confrontations Valkorion is whenever he actually has to fight someone.
Sidious is more powerful in the Force, and even if he weren't, he'd still win by virtue of being much faster and deadlier.
Palpatine, and it's only marginally closer than round 1.
Destruction: Palpatine's Force storms threatened to "consume all of space". Even if you dismiss that quote as outlandish, they still demonstrate a far greater destructive ability than anything Vitiate has ever done, and can be performed without a ritual or nexus.
Telepathy (large scale): Valkorion does have impressive feats in this category, but once again, most of them are done on a nexus or via rituals, and Palpatine matches them with Byss. Palpatine needs neither to remove a specific memory from the minds of trillions of witnesses. He also manages to shroud the Force abilities of the Jedi Order at its peak, to the point where it couldn't detect him sitting right under its nose.
Telepathy (individual): Palpatine can mind fugg Vader from across the galaxy and force DE Luke to forget his name and become his apprentice, although the latter did happen on a DS nexus. Valkorion can mind fugg mando wars Revan and a few featless Sith and Jedi with prep and a dark side nexus, but he cannot do so to the Outlander.
Foresight: Palpatine is able to foresee and concoct elaborate plans throughout both the PT and OT, outmaneuver the most powerful Jedi Order in history, divine Anakin's fears and premonitions, etc. Valkorion was tricked by Revan into fearing a ravaged Republic with no army and virtually no Jedi Order.
Combat: see above. It's Palpatine and it's not even close.
Sorcery and rituals: This is typically Valkorion's strong suit, and he can point to Nathema, Ziost and some other impressive demonstrations of his abilities. Granted, Sidious didn't have several thousand gullible sith lords to work with, but it is still a point in Valkorion's favor. Palpatine strikes back with his cloaking himself from and shrouding the minds of the entire Jedi Order, and possibly the most impressive application in the mythos, wrestling with the Force and knocking it out of balance with the aid of Plagueis. He also claims in the Plagueis novel to also be able to manipulate midichlorians like his master, although apparently not to the same extent. Vitiate does have his galaxy-consuming ritual that would probably be the most impressive feat in all of Star Wars, but he never actually does it, so I'm going to remain skeptical. I'd say that they've shown different strengths in this category, although most of Vitiate's come from having the opportunity and more Sith to take advantage of, whereas Palpatine's are done under more or less his own exertion.
Immortality: Vitiate has a longer natural lifespan, although he accomplished this due to having lots of Sith lackeys that Sidious lacked. He is also more powerful in his spirit form, and can exist and act in multiple places at once, which Sidious can't. He might have an advantage here, but thanks to rituals that require large concentrations of gullible Force users.
Just through tabulating the number of people they affected, it's probably Valkorion, given that he ruled around a quarter of the galaxy for 1300 years and then affects the entire galaxy for like 100. Palpatine's Empire was far more massive, but existed for a fraction of the time, and Valkorion having lived longer ago benefits from this metric through butterfly effects on progeny, etc. If we look from the perspective of, say, 1000 years after ANH, Palpatine would have probably exceeded him.
In terms of impact on the Force, it's clearly Palpatine, given that he knocks it off-balance and forces the creation of the Skywalker family line.
In terms of political impact, Palpatine overthrew a Galactic Republic and Jedi Order that had existed more less continuously for 25,000 years. Valkorion failed.
In terms of impressiveness, taking that leap from controlling a quarter-half of the galaxy to controlling all of it and exterminating the Jedi Order is far more impressive than tricking some Sith Lords and then hiding in the outer rim for 1300 years before waging war and failing. And Palpatine does this all in a fraction of the time and with a fraction of the help, against far more powerful enemies including the creation of the Force itself and his progeny.
Last edited by The Ellimist on Apr 24th, 2016 at 07:13 PM
You are obviously too stupid to do anything but assume that chronological lifespan is the most valid indicator of how successful something is. Apparently, you think that homo erectus was more "successful" than homo sapiens because it had existed longer, and that some random 97 year old should be referenced just as frequently in history books as Abe Lincoln. Valkorion's empire lasted longer because they were hiding from the Republic in the outer rim. Palpatine's empire is more impressive because it's harder to eradicate the Jedi Order and the Republic, and then to basically crush everyone until the child of a literal in-universe deus ex machina created by the Force comes of age.
As for building an empire from scratch, what opposition did Vitiate actually face in doing this? Weakling, no-name sith lords? A Republic not aware of its existence? Again, you think that it's just a matter of counting the seconds. Palpatine had to build his empire against powerful opposition; Vitiate just needed to work for a long time. That means very little.
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1: Valkorion. While Sidious has a wider range of more destructive powers, they can only be unleashed outside combat, and are not relevant in this situation. Force Wormhole is one that would be effective if he had the chance to use it, however, while he is stated to be able to use it on a whim, he's only shown to be able to use it in that regard for teleportation uses, and cannot use an offensive variation without killing himself, nor leaving himself open for Valkorion to kill him in the time it takes to create it. I 100% believe that Sheev is more than capable of winning at melee range, but once within range to strike with his lightsabers, Valkorion can easily teleport away. I find that Valkorion's ability to call upon his Force powers faster than Sheev gives him a large edge, one larger than Sheev's physical speed advantage; not to mention Valky's superior sorceries and arcane-like powers that Sidious requires prolonged meditation to achieve give him a large advantage here as well. Now as far as a fight would go, I see Valky opening with FL, which Sheev can definitely defend against, however, the speed and potency of the attack could catch him slightly by surprise, putting him on a desperate defensive from the start, giving Valkorion a chance to send a wave of TK to knock Palpatine off his feet. Sheev would recover from this quickly, probably cackle, and unleash his own lightning at Valkorion, who would defend against it with little difficulty. It's at this point I can see Palpatine rushing forward and activating his lightsaber to begin a melee attack. His speed would carry him about half the distance between them before Valkorion responded with a blast lightning or TK, perhaps even a Force Storm (not wormhole) or Dearh Field. Regardless of what his response is, it would slow down Sheev's advance, perhaps even force him to stop and defend himself, regardless giving himself more time to build his power for a stronger attack. Once the assault ends, Palpy would continue rushing and enviably reach Valkorion and strike at him, however, Valkorion, knowing that he can't cope with the sheer speed of Palpy's attack, would teleport away and prepare a more powerful attack. At this moment Sheev'd be pretty annoyed and use Force Wormhole, or at least prepare it, giving Valky a chance to unleash his full power in one attack that Sidious'd be too preoccupied to defend against, and die. That's how I perceive the fight going.
2: I believe that Valkorion is more powerful overall, but I've seen more impressive things from Sheev that he performed out of combat (sans the Ziosf destruction). That one event trumps everything Sheev did, however, Sheev has easier access to very distractive powers. I'm pretty torn, but I'd give slight majority to Vity still.
3. Sidious for sure. This shouldn't need an explanation.
Darth Sexy isn't smart enough to break it down this way, but the "who is more impressive" debate essentially breaks into comparing peaks with longevity. Valkorion did last longer, but he failed in overthrowing the Republic and eradicating the Jedi (yes, his ultimate goal was something else - but he failed in that too!). Palpatine, meanwhile, succeeded.
Usually we care about longevity because it demonstrates a level of consistency and stability against a multitude of threats and challenges. Having 15 minutes of fame can be attributed to a fluke; ruling for 1400 years cannot be. But there isn't much marginal return for Valkorion's reign length over Palpatine's here. Palpatine ruled long enough against a large enough variety of opponents that his success cannot be attributed to a fluke - indeed, what matters more is not chronological time, but the fact that he faced more potent and varied enemies than Valkorion did, and beat all of them until Luke.
For most of Vitiate's rule, meanwhile, he just takes advantage of inertia. Why should we care that he ruled for 1000 instead of 200 years, when he basically just did the same thing and maintained an empire? Sure, he faced a few rebellious dark councils, but none of them would have intimidated Palpatine or posed any serious threat to either contestant here. He just did the same thing over and over again. When he actually tried to expand to the rest of the galaxy, he lost. Like, if a table can hold up a book for twenty minutes, we aren't that impressed that it can also do it for a month.
Simply put, Sidious's flame burned much brighter than Vitiate's, and that impresses me more.
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1. Coin toss
2. Sidious
3. Valkorion, simply by the scale he works on with his convoluted and millennia long plans, though at least Palpatine's make sense.
Apr 24th, 2016 06:31 PM
