The_Tempest
Senior Member
Nephthys
As you've pointed out in your argument with Nai, Palpatine had plenty of time to study the Force and plenty of materials to do so, as well as a heightened learning rate due to being a particularly powerful dark sider.
Depends on what you mean by plenty of time to study. He was a political operative for decades and spent years masterminding his own rise to power, to say nothing of when he finally micromanaged an unprecedented galactic war by controlling both sides. Hardly a lax schedule. By your reckoning, Sidious must have been a veritable neophyte in the ways of the Force. Now, obviously, everything we know about him says otherwise—but that would require you to reconsider your stringent formula for determining Force mastery.
Nephthys
POD clearly shows this aspect. Bane learns faster than any other student despite the fact that 'Many of the students had trained for months or years before they had been accepted at the Academy on Korriban' learns Force Lightning faster than Githany did and was able to learn all of Revans holocron in a week or less and Freedon Nadds and Belia Darzu's secrets even faster.
Actually, you’ve made my point for me: the fact that Bane surpassed other, more experience adepts so quickly is conclusive evidence of what I’ve said all along: time is inconsequential when the adept in question possesses such innate talent. Your argument that the dark side is what confers mastery is undermined completely: his Sith colleagues and classmates were aligned to the dark side as well and could not match his accelerated learning rate.
Nephthys
Revan was noted by the Jedi Masters in Kotor to be extremely hungry for knowledge and went through several teachers in the Force as a padawan. He also had the opportunity to plunder Malachors vast collection of Sith knowledge.
This is irrelevant; I don’t need a rundown of Revan’s thirst for knowledge as it wasn’t in question. Clearly he was a voracious learner and Force prodigy; that’s precisely my point: time alone would not have conferred on him such an elite command of the Force, which outstripped scholars decades older than he (Kreia? Nyriss?).
Nephthys
Notice how all these people are darksiders? Is there examples of lightsiders gaining knowledge this fast or have you just made my point for me?
No, because if it were merely a product of alignment and time, then all dark siders would progress at comparable rates.
Nephthys
It is not the only aspect in the equation, no.
Indeed, clearly there are far more important elements at play than time. Force alignment may very well play a role, but the deciding factor is innate talent.
Nephthys
Sidious had greater access to learning materials and likely was not as obsessed with fencing as Dooku was. I also don't think its mentioned that Dooku was particularly scholarly as Sidious or Vitiate were.
That depends. Dooku had access to the Jedi Archives, supposedly the single greatest repository of knowledge in the galaxy. Dooku’s skill with fencing was never attributed as obsession nor has it ever been claimed that he spent every waking moment honing his talents in this regard. It is precisely Dooku’s quest to “learn the secrets of the dark side” that enticed him to leave the order (Darth Plagueis). Whether or not he was as lustful of knowledge as Vitiate or the Emperor is not the question; the fact remains that he was, by all accounts, an inquisitive mind with access to a wealth of Force knowledge and a considerable amount of time to slake such thirst.
Nephthys
Logically, in the case of his mastery and knowledge, this is true. Vitiate had thousands of years, access to a huge knowledge base and was devoted to his studies. His Force Mastery logically is off the charts. I am not too sure about the power aspect however.
No, this logically is not true. As you confessed earlier, you perceive the two as being very close in abilities. Where does Vitiate’s “exponentially” superior mastery relative to the Emperor’s manifest?
That’s the trap, you see. It’s not enough to claim that Vitiate’s mastery is greater; that has been acknowledged as absolutely possible. You claimed that it is “off the charts” and tremendously superior. Where is the evidence for this? Where is such peerless mastery made manifest? Your formula requires that, since Vitiate had exponentially greater time to study, the results must be exponentially greater as well.
Yet I’ve shown you plenty of examples (a few you have unwittingly provided yourself) where this is not the case at all. Next to these, your formula alone cannot stand. A cursory examination of their relative feats hardly suggests a titanic advantage for Vitiate.
Unaided, we know Vitiate overpowered Tol Braga’s strike team and destroyed droids; on a dark side nexus, he’s created “shadow clones,” unleashed a telekinetic wave that put Revan on his ass, and a storm of lightning that sheared through the former’s defenses and reduced him to a smoldering heap. Ritually, we know he orchestrated an effort with the participation of thousands of Sith Lords that enabled him to absorb their power, along with the life-force of the entire planet, and reduced it to either an extremely powerful dark side nexus or a world devoid of the Force entirely; similarly, he was able to bind the wills of the Imperial Guardsmen to him and incite perpetual lightning storms across the surface of Dromund Kaas. Under murkier circumstances, we know he’s telepathically enthralled Force users and purged two incarnations of the Dark Council and may have mentally ensnared the Sith Lords on Medriaas before the ritual began.
Unaided, we know Sidious overpowered three of the finest swordsmen in the Jedi Order, defeated and deflected attacks from hundreds of adversaries each in conjunction with Plagueis, curbstomped Darth Maul and Savage Opress combined, overpowered Starkiller, and reduced three Sith acolytes to ash and slain dozens of treacherous stormtroopers with Force lightning. Additionally, we know that he is capable of loosing world-killing Force storms “with mere thought and inclination.” On a dark side nexus, he’s disintegrated lightsabers, shrugged off the crushing impact of a ton of machinery, overpowered Luke Skywalker and used the dark side to break his will. Ritually, we know he radiated unnerving ripples in the Force, incited anxiety among most Jedi throughout the galaxy, and increase Anakin Skywalker’s bloodlust; on similar grounds, he and Plagueis tipped the balance of the Force to the dark side through meditation. Under murkier circumstances, we know he mentally subjugated the twenty billion inhabitants of the planet Byss and transformed it from a nascent world to one of the strongest dark side sites in the galaxy; he was able to use his “mind-fogging powers” to assist Imperial engineers in the burial of a star dreadnought on Coruscant; as well as cloud the collective vision of ten thousand Jedi Knights for over a decade.
If an advantage exists for Vitiate, I’m not seeing a clear and decisive one that would reflect “exponentially greater” mastery of the Force.
3/3
Sorry for the lack of paragraph breaks, I went through and divided up the text wall.