Since we definately know Sidious is good, we can make the judgement that his apprentice will be good. When a master teaches his aprentice something, he learns the Force but his actual strength depends on himself.
Since Sidious is a true master, he'll probably teach Maul everything, and since Sidious > Plagueis, we can assume Maul is a powerful apprentice.
well becuase we know very little about plagueis there are two ways to think about this. you can either go with the idea that he tought sidious everything and therefore is as good or better than sidious. or you could look at how strong with the force sidious said plagueis was and the fact plagueis spent all his time trying to find the secret to immortality.
he obviously spent a very very large portion of his life in meditation trying to learn secrets from the force and was possibly vrey passive as far as sith go. the idea that sidious killed him in his sleep doesnt really give an indication either way, its possible sidious viewed plagueis as being a better fighter and killed him in his sleep becuase its the only way he could have acomplished it, or it could be that sidious thought he was a much better fighter and simply wanted to kill his master with the least risk to himself.
being more focused on the force rather than combat doest mean plagueis wasnt a good fighter, sidious was very patient, spent most of his time either scheming or carrying out his evil plans but he was a skilled enough swordsman to take on 4 jedi and kill 3 of them in pure saber combat within a few seconds. sidious seemed to prefer non violent solutions to all his problems, manipulating people and planning years in advance, he wanted to talk anakin around and seduce him into joining the dark side rather than show him huge displays of power and talk about how weak the jedi are and how strong the sith are.
if possible i think sidious would have overthrown the republic and killed all the jedi without drawing his saber once. so he wasnt focused on combat anywhere near as much as most sith, but he was physically one of the most dangerous that ever lived.
id probably go for plagueis but the fight would probably be won through his huse of the force and not saber to saber combat. mauls greatest desire was to be the best duelist in the galaxy and worked to achieve that goal above all others. in a pure saber contest i think maul could beat most of the jedi or sith other than the likes of dooku yoda, sidious and mace, but hes not a great tactician and would ignore using the force in favour of defeating his opponent in pure melee combat, and that would probably cost him this match.
well plagueis mastered something sidious could never do, that is midichlorian manipulation, the sith during revans era believed about the sith ari and thats anakin skywalker.
note what sidious said to anakin "he was so powerful he could influence the midi chorians to make life" that meant he should have mastered other abilities like choke, lightning and others
Damn, I don't want that guy to exist. When I saw ROTS and Sidious started to talk about this creating life with the dark side, I thought, "damn he's a good manipulator, saying the exact things that will draw Anakin to the dark side". For it to actually be true, and for the dark side to CREATE life, is just silly for me....
Originally posted by Advent
And? The narrator of the NEC is right here. There's at least two other sources that confirm it, and have almost the same crap written on Plagueis. So obviously he's right, Plagueis does exist.
Did you miss 'However he obviously does exist, I mean they're writing a book on him.'? Clearly I believe that he exists, I was just saying that using the NEC as a source isn't aways the best way to go.
Actually, I have heard that Plagueis was really Qui-Gon Jinn.
Sounds far-fetched, but it could be the reason that Qui-Gon found the secret of preserving oneself through the Force.
It was said when Jinn died, he returned to the Force and gave himself completely over to it, destroying his ego. As a result all the memories of any former life would have come aware to his consciousness.
It was then that he remembered the secret of "not dying".
As a side note, Sidious was no where near as powerful as Plaguis.
It was stated in the novel that Sidious knew that his master was about ten times more powerful than him, and this scared him.
Enough that he knew not to attempt to fight him...while he was awake.
He waited till his master was asleep and killed him, with poison I believe.
Plaguis's grand secret to eternal life may have very likely lay within achieving a state of preservation within the Force, instead of merely living forever in the physical existence.
Some of this is opinion, but I had heard this from a suspected "official" source around the time people were first starting to hear about Plaguis.
And if it seems too unbelievable, think about it...
Was Qui-Gon just stumbling upon Anakin on Tatooine just pure coincidence? Or had he managed to sub-consciously track down the boy he had helped to create through the Force.
And how did Qui-Gon recover the technique to living forever?
Think about it...
Plaguies is Qui-Gon, wtf???!!! We don't have enough info on Plageuis to draw a conclusion that he can defeat Maul. Maul has many accomplishments and he was trained by a powerful master, so he might be good. Plagueis could have been good as he taught Sidious, however Sidious's Force skill is his own level, and he could have learned his DE powers from maybe a holocron or something, you don't know.
I don't see Plagueis defeating Maul, but you never know.