Luke Skwalker vs. the Sith Emperor
SW_legend and I briefly disputed this subject on another thread, and it seems as though people are still caught up over this issue, with some declaring that Vitiate could simply mind-**** Luke.
Well, I disagree. I'll state my contentions:
1. Revan figures out how to resist the Emperor's mind control to such an extent that he battles with him and actually subtly manipulates his actions for three centuries. Skywalker has faced similar enemies with mind domination capabilities, most notably Palpatine, Lord Nyax, UnuThul and Abeloth. Ergo, it's logical to conclude that he has developed and prepared defenses against such maneuvers, especially given that Luke Skywalker has a gary stue "invent whatever the **** I want" talent, learning shatterpoint in an afternoon and, according to Luceno, possibly discovering vaapad. And this is assuming that Vitiate can arbitrarily control any character of any level of power, even one who may be vastly more powerful - yet we see that sufficiently powerful characters can eventually free themselves from his mental grasp, so obviously there's a point at which a sufficiently powerful Force user can resist the attempt altogether.
2. Skywalker actually possesses superior Force feats to the Sith Emperor. His manipulating dorvin basals feat, dark nest supermassive black hole technique, and various ridiculously powerful illusions he's used to **** with Caedus and cloak entire warships stand as some of the best in the mythos. Remember that he effortlessly Force pins a being more powerful than Darth Vader to his chair, and it's suggested that he might not have even been there at all.
3. Vitiate's combat prowess is heavily questionable. He demonstrates remarkably poor tactical acuity in the Revan novel, almost getting incinerated by a droid's flamethrower, and getting disarmed by Meetra's saber throw, an attack that would have killed him had Meetra herself not instinctively protected Revan rather than attacked the Emperor directly. It seems as though his strength in the Force is such that he's never really bothered to learn how to actually fight with much competence.
Luke, on the other hand, has routinely defeated enemies that are actually more powerful than himself, most notably Unuthul and Abeloth, the latter of which was once described as having a "dozen times" his strength in the Force, and who was capable of turning cities to molten slag just by getting pissed. Luke has defeated them by being the more skilled and determined combatant. He has vast combat experience and tactical acuity, has prodigious saber skills (described as "perhaps the greatest swordsman there ever was" by Caedus), knows shatterpoint, and has trained in a vast variety of unarmed combat styles (Backlash). Ergo, even if he were weaker than Vitiate in terms of raw Force power, he would still likely win in a fight.
Thoughts?