Originally posted by The_Tempest
My comparison would only be flawed if I were suggesting that the Maladians and the Massassi are equal with respect to Force defense; I’m not. My suggestion is that neither group is on par with Dooku.That Plagueis and Kun can lay waste to comparatively pedestrian enemies does not mean that the same tactics will be successful “against a Sith Lord the caliber of Dooku.”
The comparison is perfectly valid.
The point is, that said "tactics" have been successfully used against Freedon Nadd (spirit), Odan-Urr, Sylvar and Aleema Keto. Or, one could say, whenever Kun points his hand at somebody, they either get tossed around, knocked out or flat out killed - without him breaking a sweat.
Dooku’s expertise in Sith magic is unattested. But is there any reason to believe that natural Force defenses, employed by someone suitably powerful, would be insufficient protection?
We may ask Darth Bane about this particular point. Oh, wait. He's dead. Mainly because his apprentice utilized sorcery on him, that he couldn't exactly block. Does Bane strike you as "suitably powerful"? If yes, then I think we've found an answer.
It’s the scene in which Kun regains consciousness inside the temple. The text notes tremendous energies are focused therein.
Yeah. And there still is no mentioning of Kun utilizing those energies, where each other occassion where that is the cased is spelled out in the text (e.g. Jedi Academy Trilogy). And then, one would still need to ask, to what extend those energies did aid him.
I’m not suggesting that the source of Kun’s abilities is the temple; I’m suggesting the temple would amplify the effects.It's not at all the same thing.
It is, if you assume, that said amplification was essential to the feat, which, apparently, you do:
If X performs a Force feat at a place where such energy is known to be magnified and X never again performs the same feat or something comparable elsewhere, I see no reason to conclude that X can duplicate said feat on neutral ground. And that’s pretty much my blanket policy for every character—Palpatine included.
Oh. Really? So Sidious is incapable of utilizing most of his demonstrated abilities, when not in close proximity to Byss? 😉
Seriously. One can't just assume that, because some energy swirls around in a certain spot, each force user occupying the space will suddenly turn into some kind of force god, who can't even perform similar (albeit downsized) feats on different occassions. Especially not, when said force user is using compareable methods at other occassions.
Of course not. But again, what works against muggles is not guaranteed nor even likely to work against someone on Dooku’s level.
If its something he's not familiar with? Well. We could ask Mother Talzin how good Dooku's force defense is when confronted with sorcery. Somehow I recall a particular scene with the Count on the ground, crying in pain, while Grievous was commanded to save his ass. What was it again that did something like this to him?
I believe the commentary states that LFL endorses “no hierarchy.” That notion has been soundly debunked. Hierarchies among Force users exist all over canon and at every level.
Do they now, Gideon?
I hate to burst your bubble there, but your personal interpretations of the source material aren't the source material. What we have in there, are - in 95 percent of the cases - characters stating their opinion on other characters. Surely. Their are examples were the gap in terms of skill appears to be so obvious, that one is inclined to say X > Y. But is that spelled out somewhere in the source material in the clear cut way you suggest here? Can't remember a single source where that was the case.
I’m not claiming that there was a specific point in time that Kun lost the mantle. But the phrasing does indeed indicate that it was lost. Additionally, why do I need to present evidence from the “very same source”? It’s all C-canon. As long as there aren’t contradictions, there’s absolutely no rule forbidding me from weaving a tapestry together from multiple sources.
Oh. There absolutely is, the way you want to do it, Gideon. You assume, that there is a "mantle" a "title" to be claimed. Since that is based on a single source, where that title is present, one would need to find the next person who holds the title. In this case, I can make it even easier for my side of the argument: Find me any source that describes another Sith Lord with the words "the most powerful and dangerous". I'm rather sure you won't find it.
So we are back at speculation and, while that is certainly funny, we can sum it up with the following line: If you can't present a Sith Lord who "inherited" the exact title from Kun, it stays with Kun in any discussion where he is put up against another Sith. 🙂
With respect to Kun, it’s reasonable to conclude that he was the most powerful Sith Lord at one point (per the Fact File & Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia); at some unknown point, he was in turn surpassed by Vitiate (per The Old Republic Encyclopedia), who was in turn surpassed eventually by Sidious (per a multitude of sources). There’s no contradiction there.
No, Gideon. That is not reasonable to "conclude". That's a pursueable line of reasoning, and it certainly makes sense from where you stand. But it's not "logical" or "reasonable". It's guessing according to your personal preferences. There is no proof that either Vitiate or Sidious [or Whoyamomprefers] have surpassed Kun in the "powerful and dangerous" category. That you assume this is the case, doesn't make it "true".
I find it pretty straightforward, actually. It's just now conforming to existing information about Palpatine and then-previously unknown information about other Sith Lords, Vitiate included.
Yeah.
Let me check that on a most basic level. Vitiate has absorbed the force energy of 8,000 Sith Lords and an entire planet filled with people. From there, you conclude "Sidious > Vitiate" how exactly? I'd need a bridge to cross that gap in your "logic".
And, of course, I can utilize that kind of speculative reasoning as well. We know, from various TOR codex entries, that Tulak Hord utilized rituals to train the powers of his opponents. We know, that Sadow obviously left the knowledge about a similar ritual behind, given what Kun does to the Massassi with his massive force drain. From there "its reasonable to conclude", that Marka Ragnos, the "most powerful of the most powerful", "the Dark Lord of the Sith" had access to similar knowledge and utilized it through-out his 150 year long rule, and perhabs even before that.
But instead of utilizing usual human beings, he used Massassi. Maybe even fallen opponents like Hord. The force energy of how many beings could he have absorbed that way? Hundreds of Sith Lords? Thousands of Massassi? And then - and here comes the fun part - he transfers that power to Kun and Ulic.
And, gosh, suddenly everything I read makes sense. Of course, being given such power, on top of his own talent and abilities and coupled with that nice amulet and Sadow's knowledge, its only reasonable to conclude that Kun is "the darkest power in the galaxy", which the narrator of the Sith War comics notes, right after Kun kills Odan-Urr. Who cares about Vitiate? And what does Kun do in this particular scene? Ah, yes: "walk away with something that will make him even stronger."
So. He is already the darkest power in a Galaxy hosting Vitiate. And then he becomes even stronger. No surprise then, that the Jedi did find it necessary to field the entire order against the Dark Lord. Who survived even that (albeit in spirit form) and - during his little return - was about to forge himself a new body out of energy drained from Luke's students. Wait. Create himself a new body as good as the old one? Resurecting himself in fully capable flesh. I know that Ragnos was about to do the same with the help of the Disciples of Ragnos in JK:JA. I did also read something similar from Nadd, when he attempts to command Kun to utilize Sadow's knowledge to do the same for him.
And, of course, I know two Sith Lords who failed at that task precisely. The one is being named Vitiate, the other Sidious. So Kun being the most powerful makes much sense. And with his field record of personal butchering and force kicking of a nice couple of people - and that little genocide annihilating the Cron Cluster - the title of "most dangerous" is also not easily argued.
Pardon. You were saying? 😉
You really prefer that to the idea that LFL doesn't want to give us power-charts (which was the exact term by the way) and hence obscures a previously non-ambigious statement? Good god.
