Dude, give it up already. Palpatine's status as the most powerful Sith Lord of all time, frequently given in the context of martial ability, is probably the second most repeated accolade in the entire mythos after Anakin's potential to surpass him. I can get putting Exar over Revan; that's what I'm doing right now; but Palpatine? Your people lost, buddy.
(Edit: to go into more detail, since Palpatine supremacy in power is established canon, you could try to push for Kun's superiority as a duelist or sorcerer. You'd certainly fail in the former, given that Palpatine's status as the first or second best in the Jedi's golden age of dueling >>> developing your own style (Windu did that too) and standing out in a far more puny era, and given that Palpatine can replicate literally everything Exar ever did, except without needing any prep or rituals. And even if we grant Kun benefits for the sake of discussion, Palpatine's lead in raw power is so massive from the RotS > TPM > TOR Vitiate > Novel Vitiate > post-Nathema Vitiate > Kun that it won't really matter. He's better.)
(Edit: btw, Exar needs the nexus of Yavin to maintain his identity after physical death, while Palpatine does it from sheer willpower. And only one of them is a walking dark side nexus. GG)
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Last edited by The Ellimist on May 2nd, 2016 at 09:13 AM
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*Looks at thread title*
I thought it would be fairly obvious, that I just didn't want to repost all that for this specific thread here. Obviously, I did overestimate the intellect of some individuals posting here.
And Sidious status, while being dubious at best, is no basis to judge his combat ability, where Kun beats him in applications of the Force and lightsaber skill every given time, when you take the source-material into consideration, instead of blindly following single quotes without analysing them.
I wonder where the idea of a "Golden Age of Duelling" for the PT comes from, when it's explicitly mentioned, that the only Jedi caring about "duelling" and using the form most suited for it, is Dooku.
I, of course, know the answer. The notion is extrapolated from the TPM commentary where Lucas, while Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon fight off droids, refers to the PT as the "Golden Age of the Jedi". This has been used to establish the time as the strongest point in terms of lightsaber combat. Which is pretty laughable. Not only because we know that Lucas doesn't give a damn about the EU (via his own statements regarding the issue), but also because this doesn't make sense, given that they didn't have much need to hone their lightsaber skills in comparsion to people in other eras.
And one must love the hilarious speculation that Sidious could replicate anything Kun did, which pretty much lacks any basis. Much like the notion that Sidious is more powerful than Vitiate.
Last time I checked, Palpatine needed the aid of several Sith spirits to make it back from the void to the living plane and then was in need to possess Jeng Droga, in order to survive. And none of them is a walking dark side nexus, which is just another of Gideon's large amount of missconceptions regarding his favourite character.
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I do find it amusing that 3/4s of your pseudo-respect thread obsesses over profound descriptions of Kun having "enormous power", and the vague aphorisms of characters who encounter him, and you think this somehow proves his superiority over Palpatine. However, explicit statements that Palpatine is the most powerful in history get dismissed as more "dubious" than oh-so-quantifiable descriptions of Kun going through "immense transformations" or whatever.
Nonetheless, though you provide an impressive amount of detail about Exar, you don't actually do any comparative analysis between him and Palpatine to explain why BS quotes like "one of the greatest ever" that have been also labeled on Agen Kolar and Kit Fisto mean anything.
The "dubious" criticism could work if we're talking about some one-liner publisher's statement on the back cover of an obscure novel. Instead, we are looking at potentially a dozen independent sources, including
Third person sourcebook statements pertaining both to combat (defeating Yoda) and mastery of the dark side ("succeeded where all others had failed in taming the dark side", "greatest master of evil to ever use sith power")
In-universe opinions of Darth Vader and ancient sith spirits
George Lucas's own opinion
An official interview question
At some point, where there's smoke, there's a fire, and you start looking like you're grasping at straws to nitpick semantics distinctions in every single quote.
Of course, being capable of unbalancing the Force itself and unleashing Force storms sort of makes this pretty clear already.
[It's also ironic, given your reliance on vague, fallible in-person statements in your link, as I mentioned earlier]
Mastery of the Force is probably the single most important factor to combat ability, and Sidious's supremacy in the former is stated specifically in the context of Yoda not being able to defeat him.
Seeing as how Sidious has been stated to be a master of every style and weapon, I somehow doubt that Exar possesses any advantage over him in technical ability. At the very best case scenario it is a wash - and so we defer to Sidious's superior mastery of the Force. There's only so much technical skill can do to compensate for such a disadvantage in raw power - see Cin Drallig vs. Vader.
Asa for "applications of the Force", since Palpatine's standard lightning can light up planetary surfaces, you're presumably talking about Kun's sorcery. I'd love for you to show us where in any of his sorcery he produces power in excess of what Palpatine can create from his own power alone.
That doesn't contradict the phrase at all. Kingdoms in the middle ages probably cared a lot more about war than we do, it doesn't make them better at it.
The PT Jedi Order's dueling prowess is advanced in spite of their relative peacetime, which should be apparent enough from the unusually high density of powerful Force users in this era. Show me any other era in galactic history where a guy corroborated by multiple sources to be the most powerful Jedi and duelist in the history of the Order (Yoda), the most powerful Sith in history (Sidious), the prior most powerful in history (Plagueis), several characters who explicitly rival Sidious in potential (Kyp, Starkiller), and the Chosen One himself (Anakin) all happen to reside at the same time. The films and thereafter events contain the most powerful concentration of non-entity Force users in galactic history.
Under the former EU system, Lucas's word stands as G canon. Sorry.
So what? We don't have as much need to use bows and arrows, yet modern ones are a f*ckton superior to medieval versions. They have training sabers and seem to take some sort of ceremonial importance in dueling, so they get better at it. Contrary to what ancient-wankers think, organizations and societies tend to get better at things over time.
Show me a counterexample?
Neither could do that alone, but Palpatine could retain his essence alone.
BTW, some sith spirits later agreed that Palpatine had become the greatest of them all.
ROFLAMO! Exar needed to feed off of one of the most potentially powerful Force users of all time (Kyp Durron) + a dark side nexus, and it still wasn't enough.
Eager to meet his captor, Luke learned that the dark side nexus he had sensed was none other than the cloned reincarnation of Emperor Palpatine himself.
^ he is, actually.
Last edited by The Ellimist on May 2nd, 2016 at 10:05 AM
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Ellimist, Exar Kun is listed alongside Reborn Palpatine as two of the greatest dark side focal points Luke has ever faced by Specters of the Past, so no Exar Kun is a dark side nexus as well, a 'great' one at that.
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It's especially egregious if you actually look at what Lucas said. It's laughable to suggest he was talking about lightsaber skill, the ability of duelists or that his statement is exclusive to the PT given what he actually, literally says. All he mentions is them fighting in large groups. Hardly unique to the PT.
So, a brief overview. We’re debating two separate battles here – the Force, and a lightsaber duel.
In the Force contest, we’re essentially both trying to powerscale; myself, by pointing to Exar Kun’s defeat of Luke Skywalker, and you, pointing to Revan’s ragdolling of the strike force. Basically my argument is that, firstly, spirit Exar and Kyp are not as powerful as Exar in his mortal body, and secondly, that JA Luke is significantly stronger than the collective strike force.
With dueling, I’ve pointed out Exar Kun’s ability to create his own dual-bladed lightsaber style and you’re…well, quite frankly I’ve no idea what the f*ck you’ve got going here.
Let’s go into more detail.
Simple; full power Exar Kun > nexus spirit Exar + Kyp Durron, hence why it says the latter can only use “some” of his powers.
He never shows tendrils, lol. Darth Bane knew about the attack, and still his only recourse was to just rush Zannah and try to break through her guard in time. Too bad he doesn’t have that sabers advantage to do this.
There’s no evidence that a specific defense to tendrils even exists. Likely you just have to be incredibly powerful + reach the person doing it, so it’s not clear why Luke’s defeat wouldn’t have happened to Revan.
Why wouldn’t Vitiate’s voice be able to do something you claim Revan learned from Vitiate, lol? It’s a smaller leap in logic than just asserting that Revan can defend against tendrils.
You’re assuming that the exertion of teleportation and/or defending against the tendrils is smaller than the exertion of creating them.
Detoxifying poisons is something every Jedi padawan learns, lmao. My point here is that we’ve established a clear precedent that sorcery cannot compensate for a sufficient gap in raw power between two combatants. We know this because Kun himself needs Kyp’s aid to overpower Luke, and because Darth Bane is able to resist Zannah’s sorcery and outright overpower her telepathic sorcery through sheer power. From the Bane vs. Zannah precedent, we can assume that spirit Exar’s power must be relatively close to Luke’s in order for it to have much of any effect. So again, we have a few modifying variables to balance:
Exar’s advantages – Luke was surrounded, couldn’t attack Kun back, might know less about sorcery than Revan would
Exar’s disadvantages – was already tired from the sun crusher, was explicitly weaker than his mortal form, beat Luke so matching him with JA Luke would be an underestimate
Tbh his disadvantages seem to be greater, as they signal tangible mitigations in power rather than more circumstantial ones like tactical unawareness that might not have even mattered, since you can’t demonstrate that Revan has some sort of defense against tendrils (does that even exist?) beyond sheer willpower/Force defenses, and Luke was still able to try everything he could to defend himself.
So at the worst, Exar must be only somewhat weaker than JA Luke in raw power to be able to affect him in this manner. JA Luke > DE Luke, and DE Luke was strong enough that Palpatine acknowledged that he could give him a fight.
That’s >>>> a strike team that collectively wouldn’t have stood a chance against Vitiate, who is canonically below Palpatine.
Um he enslaved plenty of them and their spirits, see Golden Globe.
Yeah, Revan sure knows how to amp himself off nexuses.
Luke is not > Palpatine at this point, but he is strong enough to challenge him, by Palpatine’s own admission. The strike team, meanwhile, cannot challenge Vitiate. Ergo Exar’s victory is more impressive than Revan’s.
I said “in addition to” being an elite duelist, which could imply an attempt to establish superiority or just equivalency with that particular part of the sentence, but whatever, this isn’t really meaningful.
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Last edited by The Ellimist on May 5th, 2016 at 10:13 PM
That was, ironically, not my point at all. I was using his form creation as a signal for his technical skill, not as a direct advantage.
If the only information I have about person A and person B is that person A pioneered an entire fighting art while person B was just regarded as really good, I would say that person A is probably superior because his accomplishment is more exclusive.
A purely defensive argument which just knocks down a point I didn’t make, lawl.
You’re going to have to show me some actual examples of Revan employing this, and to explain how this gives him a decisive edge over Exar, for me to take this as a serious thing rather than an exaggerated version of what real life martial artists, do, lol.
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May 2nd, 2016 08:59 AM
Dude, give it up already. Palpatine's status as the most powerful Sith Lord of all time, frequently given in the context of martial ability, is probably the second most repeated accolade in the entire mythos after Anakin's potential to surpass him. I can get putting Exar over Revan; that's what I'm doing right now; but Palpatine? Your people lost, buddy.
