Darth Caedus vs. Starkiller

That's the case with Zannah's spells but I had not known that of Caedus's illusions. Would you please quote me an example of Caedus's illusions having this effect on someone he didn't know intimately?

He's already overcome his demons as we saw on Kashyyyk.

Galen has the superior feats. I don't know why you think it would be moot.

He likely can if I'm remembering Caedus's injuries correctly. He survived being electrocuted, being burned by lightsaber blades, blaster bolts, blunt force trauma and being left to drift in space before he was rebuilt stronger then before and after he was he survived getting a multiple ton stone table slammed into him with just a few cracked ribs where it would have killed him instantly beforehand.

Going to bed so if I don't respond I'm not ignoring you.

When he stared into Mara's eyes it automatically created the illusion there.
THough after rereading it (yes I have the book) She snarled at him wanting to prevent "her" from hurting Ben..yada yada...two handed chest vibro and saber strike at his chest....you know.

I dont think Caedus has to know Starkiller (clone) for him to do it, though it seemed to be out of desperation than anything else....but thats only if Starkiller can push him hard enough into the clutch.

I think most force Illusions do that in general, they simply prayed on there worst fears, they only take a moment, just a split second.

The Chiss and Zannah (Kal the Twi lek)
Exar kun (Im very sure)
Satal and Alemta (Tales of the Jedi) Where they tricked a battalion into thinking the rifle was a snake.
King Omin
Darth Wyrlokk vs Darth Krayt (though he know him) Im sure he can do that to just about anyone.

All Illusions do if the person doesn have the will is they might either scream, cry, crumble, kneel in pain, or swing at the invisible demons (Zannah and Xaj)

Syndicate, do you honestly believe that starkiller could've done better against luke than caedus did?
I don't see what's so shameful about being taken by surprise and ragdolled by probably the greatest force user of all time

Caedus admitted that he couldn't free himself later, though. And given how effortlessly Luke did pin him, I don't think surprise would've made too much of a difference.

Luke didn't do the same in their duel tho

Originally posted by TheDarthBoy
When he stared into Mara's eyes it automatically created the illusion there.
THough after rereading it (yes I have the book) She snarled at him wanting to prevent "her" from hurting Ben..yada yada...two handed chest vibro and saber strike at his chest....you know.

I dont think Caedus has to know Starkiller (clone) for him to do it, though it seemed to be out of desperation than anything else....but thats only if Starkiller can push him hard enough into the clutch.

I think most force Illusions do that in general, they simply prayed on there worst fears, they only take a moment, just a split second.

The Chiss and Zannah (Kal the Twi lek)
Exar kun (Im very sure)
Satal and Alemta (Tales of the Jedi) Where they tricked a battalion into thinking the rifle was a snake.
King Omin
Darth Wyrlokk vs Darth Krayt (though he know him) Im sure he can do that to just about anyone.

All Illusions do if the person doesn have the will is they might either scream, cry, crumble, kneel in pain, or swing at the invisible demons (Zannah and Xaj)

There's a difference between sorcery and active illusions. Luke creating an illusion over Jaina to make Caedus think it was him or making Caedus think there was an entire fleet where there wasn't was an active effort. You'd have to prove first Caedus can use sorcery to create illusions of Starkiller/Galen's fear like Zannah could and then the argument descends into one willpower and resistance, one that is heavily opinion based.

Originally posted by hutchy1345
Luke didn't do the same in their duel tho

That's because as I said he wasn't thinking clearly. He was solely focused on killing Caedus in the most painful way possible. Also in the text he does effortlessly pull Caedus back when he attempts to make a run for it.

"But Luke was attacking low, striking for the kidney to disable in the most painful way possible." - Inferno.

"Luke spat out a mouthful of blood and Force-leapt after his nephew, at the same time reaching out to drag him back." - Inferno.

Either way it's luke skywalker he's god-tier lol starkiller would get wrecked by him too, difference being he wouldn't injure luke at all
Caedus was fast enough to catch luke off guard and almost hit him, what's stopping him speed blitzing starkiller, I don't recall any speed feats of similar magnitude

Originally posted by hutchy1345
Either way it's luke skywalker he's god-tier lol starkiller would get wrecked by him too, difference being he wouldn't injure luke at all
Caedus was fast enough to catch luke off guard and almost hit him, what's stopping him speed blitzing starkiller, I don't recall any speed feats of similar magnitude

I'd have to disagree with you there.

Outpacing Vader for one.

So I was not sure if I wanted to continue this line of conversation, given your unprovoked hostility and incredibly disrespectful refusal to use the quote function because I’m not “worth” the Mighty Syndicate’s precious muscle movements, but I figured that it would be sufficiently entertaining to lay the smackdown on you and shut you the **** up, so here we go. I’m going to start over from the first portion of your reply, though I had already responded to it.

Originally posted by Syndicate First off upon reading the passage it appears Caedus couldn't even sense Luke's presence in the Force even when he had prior warning.

What does this red herring do for you? If you had actually read the novel (and it’s pretty obvious that you did not – despite quite bombastically making declarations about its details) you’d realize that Luke had figured out a way to selectively show his Force presence. He invented an interesting Force technique – this has jack all to do with their comparative martial abilities, and it’s just an attempt for you to pretend that you actually have anything useful to say.

This further supports Caedus's utter inability to compare to Luke as a force user who has also as I've mentioned casually pinned Caedus to a chair without gesturing or making any movements at all. Another good example exemplifying the gap between Caedus and Luke is force users is this little scene.

If you were following along with our debate properly, you’d recognize that the discussion at hand was Caedus’s dueling ability, not his strength in the Force, which is explicitly beyond Vader’s anyway.

Luke not only had a bad knee but a chest wound from his duel with Lumiya.

Neither of these injuries are typically enough to make a difference in a duel if the characters are as disparately dangerous as, well, LotF Luke and his RotJ incarnation (who is >= Galen as a swordsman by scaling from Vader). Maul still defeated Qui Gon with a broken ankle, and heck, Caedus still put himself above any swordsman in the galaxy bar Luke with only one arm. A drugged Bane was still able to fend off Zannah’s attacks despite not having a lightsaber with him. I do not think Starkiller could’ve done anything against Luke, bad knee and chest wound or no, if he and Vader together were not powerful enough to defeat the Emperor.

And not only only was Caedus clever with his environment he was completely familiar with it as well. Given this fight takes place on neutral ground he won't have the same advantages he held in his fight against Luke.

You conveniently downplay all of the hits Caedus got in independent of those environmental benefits. He did better against Luke than Dooku did against Anakin. Meanwhile, Dooku > Galen Marek as a duelist (ANH Vader’s performance against Ben Kenobi, for example) and Luke obviously > Anakin. Comparative analysis of Caedus’s ability relative to Luke’s makes it clear that a Vader-tier combatant would not stand a chance against him.

It's also specifically mentions that Caedus's pain empowered him making him stronger and faster.

Correct, which is a point in his favor…

Also you should make note that Caedus is on the defensive for the entirety of the fight and attempts to flee as soon as he is able to disengage with Luke.

The point manages to fly spectacularly over your head. The question isn’t whether Caedus is stronger than Luke, it’s whether his performance against Luke is better than the performance Starkiller could have mustered against him, and the answer is clearly so, given that he’s a Vader tier duelist, and even Dooku tier duelists get trashed by the likes of Palpatine (see pre-vaapad Windu).

It should also be noted that whenever he actually does engage Luke directly, even hindered as Luke is during the entirety of the fight, he gets trashed.

You’re either a charlatan or one of the worst readers I’ve ever seen. Caedus makes Luke scream in pain multiple times, so he hardly getes trashed “whenever he does engage Luke directly”. There’s a reason why Luke had to spend a week in a bacta tank after their fight.

Admit it; you read some people’s opinions about the duel, believed it, and then decided to arrogantly lecture me on what actually happened while letting slip that you didn’t even know which book it was from.

So to sum it all up we have an amped Caedus fighting an injured Luke in a setting he is intimately familiar with and still being on the defensive for the entirety of the duel and attempting to run away whenever possible, not to mention Luke being distracted by the presence of Ben during the entirety of the fight.

Yes, and seeing as how Luke could have felled Starkiller in a matter of seconds if they clashed blades, given that the RotS novelization makes it clear that Mace Windu would’ve died within seconds to Palpatine had he not sunken into vaapad, this is a very impressive demonstration.

To address your powerscaling argument I would actually not disagree with you that RotJ Luke is a match for RotJ Vader as a duelist. I also would say that Galen being around that level as a duelist is accurate as well.

Your opinion is irrelevant; you can read the RotJ novelization for yourself. Vader notes Luke’s ability and considers them evenly matched. He also says that he’s more powerful in RotJ than he’s ever been.

Actually, I do. If RotJ Luke was as merciless as, as familiar with the area, and as powerful as Caedus along with holding the same advantages over Luke that Caedus did during the fight, not to mention being amped by his own pain, I believe he could replicate such a performance.

Firstly, let’s compare their mastery of the Force. Caedus’s Force abilities surpass Starkiller’s for two reasons:

a) The third person novel preview says that Caedus > Vader, and Vader by RotJ has had two explicitly stated power leaps over TFU. Funnily enough, I’ll quote your own statements in your later post to buoy your butthurt over this; third party statements are better than your biased opinion. You can still override these kinds of declarations if they literally make no sense, are clearly outdated, and/or can be overridden with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. You’ve done…none of these things. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of sentences you’ve devoted to actually explaining what advantages Starkiller has over Caedus beyond just downplaying Caedus’s.

b) We know that Caedus is overall more powerful than Kyp Durron, at least according to both Caedus himself and the opinion of the Jedi Council. We also know that he is powerful enough that Luke cannot ragdoll him when he is prepared, or else he would’ve done so during their duel. He had been able to pin Caedus to his chair when, by Caedus’s own thoughts, he had taken him by surprise. Luke’s anger may explain why he didn’t think to surprise him with telekinesis at the start of their confrontation, as he had done to him earlier, but later we can clearly read Luke examining his tactical options and Caedus’s actions cohesively enough that he could have easily thought of doing this. He does catch Caedus in a Force wave after beating him down with his lightsaber. Meanwhile, Starkiller is weak enough in comparison to Palpatine that the Emperor has been described in sourcebooks as being able to “destroy [both Vader and Starkiller]”. How could he do this? If it’s in the Force, I rest my case; if it’s with a lightsaber, then just look below and rest my case with respect to their comparative dueling abilities. Either way, you lose.

Your counterargument – as in, your actual case for Marek rather than your attempt to pick at my own, seems to be that he has better feats. He has been put in more situations where he can show off his telekinesis and lightning against environmental references, yes, but this doesn’t actually mean that he’s stronger, because we don’t have any upper limits on Caedus’s own abilities. It is important for you to recognize this distinction; The Force Unleashed gives us a clear picture of the lower limits of Galen’s abilities and a rougher picture of his upper limits, but just from direct environmental manipulation we don’t get a clear upper limit on Caedus’s abilities from Legacy of the Force. This alone proves nothing with regards to Starkiller being more powerful. So to avoid the same train of thought that would lead us to Starkiller > Sidious and Yoda, we can consider a feats war secondary to more precise accolades and powerscaling.

Now, let’s look at dueling. Caedus’s performance against Luke, even if we discount all the environmentally influenced hits he gets in and take into consideration Luke’s bad knee, is more impressive than pre-vaapad Mace’s performance against Sidious or Dooku’s performance against Anakin. Let’s try to establish some sort of function to map this comparison to Starkiller vs. Luke. Well, Starkiller is an inferior duelist to Windu; he’s on par with Vader, yet an older Vader in ANH was only marginally winning against a Kenobi he remarks in Death Star to have weakened in RotS. Luke, meanwhile, is a better duelist than RotS Palpatine, given that DE Luke was just some “hidden reserves” away from beating Palpatine Reborn, and some 30+ years of training probably accounts for Leia’s half-trained battle meditation that Luke didn’t even initially notice. So Starkiller would have performed very poorly against Luke, worse than pre-vaapad Windu did against Palpatine, and thus worse than Caedus.

The other data point we can tabulate with is Starkiller's standing relative to RotJ Luke. RotJ Luke is, contrary to your baseless protests, a match for or superior to Rotj Vader as a duelist, who has improved significantly since TFU. Starkiller, meanwhile, is comparable to TFU Vader. Now, do you honestly think that, given Luke's ridiculous growth rate from ESB to RotJ, RotJ to DE, DE to NJO, and even through the NJO series, that his RotJ self is close enough to his LotF incarnation that he could put him in a bacta tank for a week if the latter had a bad knee? 😆

Starkiller is simply not in the same league as Caedus as an overall combatant. He may be within shooting distance in raw power; he’s not his equal in dueling ability, damage soak, esoteric abilities, combat experience, or anything, for that matter. Some of these advantages in Caedus’s favor are small, some of them are larger, but together they accumulate into a curbstomp.

He withstands illusions on Kashyyyk similar to the ones Luke faced on Dagobah. While we don't know if Luke by Inferno would or would not have I'm simply saying that Galen has experience with dealing with illusions.

He’s successfully pulled off illusions in the middle of combative situations against Mara Jade and even Luke himself. It’s another tool in his kit that increases his probability of winning.

Have you responded to it all then?

Now, to lay the nail in the coffin to this walking allegory of the funniest American idol auditioners:

Quote the entirety of my post if you're going to quote it in the first place rather then cherry picking. I said he was holding back only insofar as he didn't want to have to kill Luke if he could help it which is stated in the novel.

So what? He makes it clear that he thinks Luke compares to him as a duelist, an observation repeated in multiple sourcebooks. RotJ Luke is, at the very least, comparable to Vader as a duelist, and thus probably superior to Starkiller. It's not a matter of your opinion.

Now you have to defend your bizarre notion that ~40 years of advancement, multiple galactic wars, the discovery of multiple Jedi holocrons detailing lightsaber instruction, and the explicit observations of his growing power by multiple sources ranging from Lando to Emperor Palpatine could be negated by a bad knee. Maybe with real life athletes; not with combatants whose primary energy springs from the Force, and not from how well defined their muscles are.

So you're saying that you believe that Plagueis was stronger then Vitiate? Just to be clear.

Your reading comprehension is cringe-worthy. How could you not figure out what I was trying to say?

Not "cause I say so." But because the comparative feats support that idea and we've had statements and back covers that were inaccurate or just flat out wrong in the past.

You fail to understand the distinction between upper and lower limits. Why am I not surprised?

Kyp Durron can manipulate dorvin basils and use freighters as telekinetic weapons, yet he does not think he can defeat Caedus. Why do you think Starkiller can, when even with Vader's help he doesn't think he can defeat Palpatine?

What the hell?! He's impaled and stated to be poisoned by it!

🙄 Caedus was getting hits in before and independent of the thorns.

Name me those instances that weren't circumstantial or just after Luke had been injured.

Are you f*cking kidding me? He clearly lands a hit in against Luke, who them stumbles back and thinks "good, this was supposed to hurt." Not only are you so f*cking arrogant as to try to lecture me about the duel without having even read it, after reading it you can't even understand its English!

On a light side nexus, after he had just fought through an army of force users, with an entire world aiding Shaak Ti during her fight before his prime. Try harder.

There's no such thing as a "light side nexus". And Caedus was able to fight Luke with an injured kidney, and later a Jaina amped to Luke-levels with one arm, so forgive me if I'm not too impressed that Starkiller can't beat Shaak Ti because he's tired. Mind you, if you were to actually read the fight (seeing a pattern here...) you'd notice neither an emphasis on his fatigue nor an absence of feats Shaak Ti pulled off that had nothing to do with her environmental advantages.

Lol. Third person unbiased statements are greater then your martial arts instructor's opinion.

Holy sh*t, I can't believe the irony and hypocrisy of this statement never registered to you as you were typing. But even if we ignored how flagrantly you just conceded Caedus's superiority in the Force and your idiotic contesting of that canon declaration, the other half of the point still flies over your head. My martial art instructor probably understands when something is "nearly perfect" and when it isn't; he's not omniscient, but the probability that he is in error is small enough for it to not constitute a meaningful objection. The more relevant observation is that calling someone's form "nearly perfect" is neither a unique nor particularly impressive compliment. If you were to observe any modern swords master, you'd probably find their technique to be nearly perfect as well. You get that way when you're a master at something, which hundreds of Jedi during the PT were. And even if it were a remarkable accolade, we have no idea what "nearly perfect" means; is it 90% perfect? 80%? How does this compare to Caedus's technique? Why did you think this was something worth wasting time quoting?

Proof? Vader has decades more experience and applies more forms in his lightsaber combat.

Gillard states that RotS Anakin is in his prime in the context of lightsaber dueling.

Vader was likely capable of ragdolling Old Ben but given his speech at the beginning that he had surpassed Kenobi he likely wanted to beat him in a duel to prove his superiority. If not that's no mark against Vader who has plenty of other skill feats to draw on but simply one in favor of Ben.

No, the Death Star novel makes it clear that Vader has learned his lesson from trying to showboat against Obi Wan. It also makes it clear that Kenobi has gotten weaker. Sorry, but Starkiller is a sub-Dooku tier duelist going against someone who seriously injured someone more powerful than the Palpatine who made pre-vaapad Windu look like an utter fool.

Lol. He attempted to run away from an injured Luke when amped in an environment that favored him.

So what? The objective here is to analyze how his fight with Luke places him relative to Starkiller's own ability. Your making statements like this in a vacuum tells me that you don't understand how to compare points A and B.

"It's explicitly stated that Sidious can "destroy them both"."

Quote?

I can't find that particular quote at the moment, but I can pull from the SW database that Starkiller was "ultimately no match for the Emperor".

That's where I'd disagree with you. I say Galen is comparable to Luke in raw power.

For some others I would assume that they were trolling, but with you I honestly can't tell.

Starkiller is "no match" for the Emperor, while Luke defeated the Emperor, and you think they're comparable.

Some nice logic there.

He doesn't outmaneuver him. He tricks Luke by holding up his hand as if he's about to shoot force lightning and uses the environment he knows well to his advantage by throwing a Vong torture device instead. Also Luke is definitely hindered by his emotional state. He's so focused on killing Caedus his precognition doesn't even warn him about the torture device about to be slammed into him.

That's...called...outmaneuvering him.

But semantics aside, Caedus still gets in hits without the use of his torture rack.

I didn't say RotJ Vader wasn't his strongest incarnation. Also them falling to Luke is only your opinion.

I love how you dismiss analysis and arguments by just calling them "opinions" (as opposed to your ironclad Decrees, like Starkiller being comparable to LotF Luke).

Luke could have killed him had he wanted to given this was the state Caedus was left in at the end of their fight despite having the advantages I listed above.

Your red herring machine is still up and running, I see. The point is that he could not have just ragdolled him after Caedus got his guard up, or he would have. The fact that he eventually won the duel and could have killed him in any number of ways then is irrelevant to that particular observation.

*Shrug* General laziness.

Yes, I can see that you're being pretty lazy.

Then don't. smile I'm not going to be bothered to putting in actual effort against a debater like you.

😆

Do you honestly think that you can hold even the faintest candle to me in any intellectual capacity? Like, I'm sorry if that makes me sound arrogant - I'm only boasting about myself relative to you, which is hardly saying much.

Lol. What the hell kind of logic is that. Windu being overwhelmed by Sidious has nothing to do with skill it has to do with speed considering Sidious blitzed the B team before they could even fully react making your whole scaling argument completely pointless.

I begin to wonder if your random topic switches signal dishonesty or just a lack of reading comprehension. Why do you arbitrarily limit the conversation to technical skill and not other factors that play into one's dueling ability, such as speed? Yes, Sidious was far faster than pre-vaapad Windu; Luke is faster than RotS Sidious, and couldn't blitz Caedus. Starkiller could not have lasted very long against Sidious in a duel, let alone Luke.

I'm assuming you've completed your response?

So let's summarize, *sshole:

1. Despite your arrogant lectures about the importance of "third party sources", you rest basically your entire argument on denying one of those third party sources that basically settles this debate. Notably, the canon statement that Caedus's strength in the Force exceeds that of his grandfather Darth Vader. You attempt to scurry around this by claiming that Caedus's feats are inferior to Starkiller's. Even if this were the case - and it is only in specific areas - you fail to recognize this as a consequence of Caedus not being in situations where he has to redirect falling star destroyers. Specifically, Caedus not doing X when not in the situation to have to try does not establish upper limits on his abilities. Why is this important? Because in order to go against a canon statement, you would have to show a substantial bodies of active contradictions with what happened, not merely that what happened doesn't actively support said statements. Different canon sources can stand on their own so long as they aren't contradicting one another; they don't need to be actively replicated.

2. You tried to belittle me on the specifics of Caedus's duel with Luke before having even read it yourself. Your fixation on Skywalker's knee and the Vong torture racks in a desperate attempt to salvage face pretty drastically misses the point. Caedus is not as good of a swordsman as Luke is, but he did far better against him than, say, Mace Windu did against Palpatine before vaapad kicked in, and if we translate these data points to Starkiller, we'd find that Starkiller, who is a lesser duelist than Windu, would have lasted far shorter against Luke, who is a greater one than Palpatine. All of the evidence converges towards Luke > Caedus >>> Starkiller, and all you can do is scream and shout out random red herrings.

3. RotJ Luke is around Vader's tier as a duelist, as Vader himself acknowledges. LotF Luke is so far beyond his younger self it's not even funny. The notion that RotJ Luke could've put himself as a grandmaster in a bacta tank for a week stretches credulity.

All of your weird topic-shifts (like pointing out that the B-team was slower than Palpatine, as though I wasn't allowed to talk about speed) and inability to understand the purpose of certain pieces of evidence (like talking about how Luke is better than Caedus, when the real question is analyzing how much better) point towards much failure in the basic art of debating. You should step down for a little bit and stop randomly insulting people who are better at it than you are.

Originally posted by Syndicate
I'm assuming you've completed your response?

Give it your best shot.

Sure got impassioned there near the end.

Don't worry I don't let enormous posts consisting of thousands of words dissuade me.

too many words...it went from a simple illusion to sorcery, though I think they are the same. Though sorcery seems to be more practiced, but Caedus, high potency in the force made it well worth it. Though it was raw...and out of panic im sure he can pull it off again.

B U M P