I seriously wonder, how one wants to make a case for Tenebrous here.
Following the thoughts of Plagueis, the feats of the Ancient Sith were so unbelievable, that he chalked them up to myth and legend. Later he muses, that either the Ancients were much more powerful than the Dark Siders of his age, or that the Dark Side itself must have been stronger in general back in the day.
The point here is: Plagueis before the "balance shift" is significantly less powerful than even the "lowest" of the Ancient Sith. And the gap is so huge, that he deems their feats outright impossible ("exaggerations", "myths"😉.
Azroger (aside from his rather stupid attempts to talk down Vitiate) follows the false assumption, that there is a straight line of knowledge transfer from Bane to Tenebrous / Plagueis / Sidious. We know that Darth Gravid destroyed a majority of the Sith Lore in 552 BBY. "Their [the Jedi's] Order might have already been decimated had it not been for the setback Darth Gravid dealt the Sith", as Darth Plagueis himself did put it. So essentially, the Sith needed to start all over at that point, when even Bane just had a fraction of the knowledge the Ancient Sith once possessed.
Furthermore, Azroger ignores the other possibility at hand: That the Dark Side, as Plagueis speculated, was indeed stronger back in the day of Bane and that the influence of the Jedi has diminished the Dark Side over the time-span of a thousand years. Thus leading to general weaker Sith Lords.
No matter what: Plagueis himself views himself as vastly inferior to the Ancient Sith, where he doesn't seem to consider himself that far below his master. So even entertaining the idea, that Tenebrous is (much) more powerful than Plagueis before he dies, he is nowhere near as powerful as Vitiate.
Originally posted by Beniboybling
Yawn indeed. Should you be able to substantiate your claims with actual extracts from the book and it might be worth somebody's attention. But as it stands anybody who has actually read Darth Plagueis would know your claims to be sketchy and best, and at worst entirely invented. 🙁
Sure. Because I'm the individual here with a long lasting feud with reading comprehension, right? Unlike, you know, the guy that overlooked the quote present in my last posting. To repeat:
"Their [the Jedi's] Order might have already been decimated had it not been for the setback Darth Gravid dealt the Sith." - Darth Plagueis, Chapter 15: Quantum Being.
In addition:
"Crucial knowledge had been lost during the brief mastery of Darth Gravid [...]" - Darth Plagueis, Chapter 5: Homecoming.
"Driven increasingly mad by his attempts to straddle the two realms, Gravid became convinced that the only way to safeguard the future of the Sith was to hid or destroy the lore that had been amassed through the generations - the texts, holocrons, and treatises - so that the Sith could fashion a new beginning for themselves that would guarantee success. [...]he had attempted as much and was thought to have destroyed more than half the repository of artifacts[...]" - Darth Plagueis, Chapter 25: The discreet charm of the meritocracy.
So the fact remains, that the Sith had lost more than half of their accumulated knowledge almost 500 years post Bane. That they got stronger from there is not disputed. But we don't have a constant progression from Bane to Tenebrous / Plagueis / Sidious, which is pretty obvious for "anybody who actually read Darth Plagueis":
"In the thousand years since his death, Bane had become deified; the powers attributed to him, legendary." - Darth Plagueis, Chapter 1: The Underworld.
It's pretty obvious, that Plagueis, characterizing Bane like that, was not even close to matching the powers attributed to the founder of the Sith Order, nor were the people that Plagueis knew (like Tenebrous). And much less were they above Bane in powers, whom they, apparently, considered to be godlike (read: "deified"😉. And if they consider Bane's exploits "legendary", what, pray tell, would they call the exploits of the Ancient Sith?
And for Plaguies view on the Ancient Sith:
"But had Sith like Naga Sadow and Exar Kun genuinely been more powerful, or had they benefited from the fact that the dark side had been more prominent in those bygone eras?" - Darth Plagueis, Chapter 5: Homecoming.
This is Plagueis musing about powers that the Ancient Sith have demonstrated, that none of the "new Sith" has even been close to replicate. Much more, the way Plagueis formulates his thoughts on the issue ("If one accepted the tales handed down in accounts and holocrons[...]", "Powerful adapts were said to have been able to [...]"), makes it rather clear that he doubts some of the more extreme force feats attributed to the Ancient Sith. And if he doubts the truthfulness of those accounts, that would logically mean that he can't imagine those stories to be true - which means that the powers demonstrated by those Ancient Sith are far outside his own grasp.
One could, of course, also point to the fact, that Bane got a nice share of his knowledge by studying Darth Revan's holocron. So the same individual that was deified by the post-Bane Sith, got most of his knowledge from the guy whom Vitiate did casually destroy with his powers.
Or, you know, one could simply consider the fact, that Vitiate has the absorbed power of hundreds or thousands of Sith Lords, which makes the idea that an individual not "powered up" in a similar manner defeating him in direct confrontation when he is in "top shape" rather absurd. Which limits the list to possible challengers for Vitiate to some selected few, with Tenebrous clearly not among them.
Oh hey, Nai's back. It's pretty clear to me that Deronn won't respond so I might as well respond to Nai here.
Originally posted by Nai
I seriously wonder, how one wants to make a case for Tenebrous here.Following the thoughts of Plagueis, the feats of the Ancient Sith were so unbelievable, that he chalked them up to myth and legend. Later he muses, that either the Ancients were much more powerful than the Dark Siders of his age, or that the Dark Side itself must have been stronger in general back in the day.
That is only Plagueis' opinion during Part 1: Enlistment, which takes place in 65 - 67 BBY, over three decades before Plagueis reached the height of his power. And in experimenting with the Force almost obsessively throughout those decades, forgoing sleep, he must have grown more powerful by quite a bit, and indeed he did. His updated assessment is as follows:
If a Sith of equal power had preceded him, then that one had taken his or her secrets to the grave, or had locked them away in holocrons that had been destroyed or had yet to surface.
--Darth Plagueis
So in his prime, Plagueis views himself as superior to all previous Sith Lords whose feats he is aware of - despite the tales he had previously dismissed as myths i.e. stars being blown up - and that list, quite interestingly, includes Vitiate:
As evidenced by those few Lords who had managed to perpetuate their spirits after physical death—foremost among them Emperor Vitiate, who was said to have lived a thousand years—the ancient Sith had come halfway across that bridge.
--Darth Plagueis
If you accept Plagueis' thoughts in comparison to the ancient Sith as fact, as you appear to do below, then you mustn't cherry-pick.
The point here is: Plagueis before the "balance shift" is significantly less powerful than even the "lowest" of the Ancient Sith. And the gap is so huge, that he deems their feats outright impossible ("exaggerations", "myths"😉.
Where do you get that he was less powerful than even the lowest ancient Sith? You do realize that if that were the case, Plagueis would be less powerful than Sith trainees who can barely even tap into the Force? I'm not seeing how that is the case, when Plagueis can ignite an entire landscape with Force Lightning, or move at lightning speeds, or create doppelgänger illusions of himself. And looking over the text, you seem to be leaving out quite a bit of context:
While midi-chlorians appeared to resist manipulation of a sort that might imperil the balance of the Force, they remained passive, even compliant, in the case of a weak-willed being manipulated by one who was strong in the Force. Perhaps that explained why it was often easier to call on the Force to heal someone other than oneself. Extending life, then, could hinge on something as simple as being able to induce midi-chlorians to create new cells; to subdivide at will, increasing their numbers into the tens of thousands to heal or replace damaged, aging, or metastatic cells. Midi-chlorians had to be compelled to serve the needs of the body; to bestow strength when needed; to overcome physical insult, or prevent cells from reaching senescence.
If one accepted the tales handed down in accounts and holocrons, the ancient Sith had known how to accomplish this. But had Sith like Naga Sadow and Exar Kun genuinely been more powerful, or had they benefited from the fact that the dark side had been more prominent in those bygone eras? Some commentators claimed that the ability to survive death had been limited to those with a talent for sorcery and alchemy, and that the use of such practices actually predated the arrival of the Dark Jedi exiles on Korriban. But sorcery had been employed less to extend life than to create illusions, fashion beasts, and resurrect the dead. Powerful adepts were said to have been able to saturate the atmosphere of planets with dark side energy, compel stars to explode, or induce paralysis in crowds, as Exar Kun apparently did to select members of the Republic Senate. Other adepts used sorcery merely as a means to better understand ancient Sith spells and sigils.
--Darth Plagueis
Plagueis' musings are in the context of extending one's life with the Force, and given that Exar Kun and Naga Sadow accomplished this, Plagueis then speculates on how they achieved this. Them being more powerful than him or the dark side being more prominent are simply possibilities that Plagueis throws around, because he doesn't know the truth like we do. We know for a fact that Naga Sadow lived for six centuries because he put himself in stasis, and that Exar Kun attained eternal life via a Sith ritual which required thousands of Massassi as fuel, which then separated his spirit from his body. In neither case was the feat of long life the result of inherent power on the Sith Lords' part, so the idea of them being more powerful than Plagueis on the basis that he thought of it as a possibility can safely be dismissed.
Azroger (aside from his rather stupid attempts to talk down Vitiate) follows the false assumption, that there is a straight line of knowledge transfer from Bane to Tenebrous / Plagueis / Sidious. We know that Darth Gravid destroyed a majority of the Sith Lore in 552 BBY. "Their [the Jedi's] Order might have already been decimated had it not been for the setback Darth Gravid dealt the Sith", as Darth Plagueis himself did put it. So essentially, the Sith needed to start all over at that point, when even Bane just had a fraction of the knowledge the Ancient Sith once possessed.
No, the Sith did not have to start from scratch. There were plenty of scriptures and holocrons that survived Darth Gravid’s rampage. And the power of the Sith Lords themsleves did not diminish at all; each successive apprentice became more powerful than their master and Gravid did not change this fact, as is rather apparent from the fact that Gravid’s own apprentice Darth Gean managed to overpower his Force field, and killed him with her bare hands:
Barricaded within the walls of a bastion he and his Twi’lek apprentice, Gean, had constructed on Jaguada, he had attempted as much, and was thought to have destroyed more than half the repository of artifacts before Gean, demonstrating consummate will and courage, had managed to penetrate the Force fields Gravid had raised around their stronghold and intercede, killing her Master with her bare hands, though at the cost of her arm, shoulder, and the entire left side of her face and chest.
--Darth Plagueis
Furthermore, canonical sources have repeatedly proven your claim to be false. Banite scaling’s been a thing since 1999, and was reaffirmed in the same novel Gravid was introduced in, and later in 2015, several years after Gravid’s introduction as well.
For a millennium, the Sith maintained the order in secrecy, passing down their evil heritage. As they gained knowledge of the dark side of the Force, their powers increased with each generation.
--Episode 1: The Phantom Menace Scrapbook
Ultimately, Bane's plan produced more powerful Sith Lords with every generation.
--Force and Destiny
For a thousand years we continued to follow Bane's Rule of Two, existing in the shadows, biding our time, growing in power, feeding our hatred. Darth Sidious proved to be the splendid culmination of a thousand years of Sith philosophy and teachings.
--Insider #88: Heritage of the Sith
"Bane's power has been passed down for a thousand years. I vow to be its last recipient."
--Darth Sidious, Book of the Sith
"How often you said that the old order of Bane had ended with the death of your Master. An apprentice no longer needs to be stronger, you told me, merely more clever. The era of keeping score, suspicion and betrayal was over. Strength lies not in the flesh but in the Force."
--Darth Sidious, Darth Plagueis
Furthermore, Azroger ignores the other possibility at hand: That the Dark Side, as Plagueis speculated, was indeed stronger back in the day of Bane and that the influence of the Jedi has diminished the Dark Side over the time-span of a thousand years. Thus leading to general weaker Sith Lords.
The Sith Lords of Plagueis’ time weren’t weaker at all, as per the statements above.
No matter what: Plagueis himself views himself as vastly inferior to the Ancient Sith, where he doesn't seem to consider himself that far below his master. So even entertaining the idea, that Tenebrous is (much) more powerful than Plagueis before he dies, he is nowhere near as powerful as Vitiate.
Where does Plagueis consider himself comparable to his Master in the early novel? To me it’s rather apparent that Tenebrous is far beyond is apprentice’s power level as of the first part of the book from the fact that he had continuously neglected to seriously train him, and that he managed to churn out another Force user on Plagueis’ level in a very short amount of time – that being Venamis, who appears to hold Tenebrous in quite high regard and even states it would be impossible for someone of Plagueis’ caliber to kill him.
Also, I don’t follow your logic here. If Plagueis is vastly less powerful than the ancient Sith, then how does that apply to Tenebrous when he is way more powerful than Plagueis? The only way that would work is that if the gap between Vitiate and Plagueis was greater than the gap between Tenebrous and Plagueis, but you haven’t proven that, and instead jumped straight to the conclusion that Vitiate >> Tenebrous.
A simple LOL no you're wrong? How about canonical quotes?
"As they gained knowledge of the Dark Side of the Force, their powers increased with each generation."
The Phantom Menace Scrapbook
"Ultimately, Bane's plan produced more powerful Sith Lords with every generation."
Force & Destiny
"For a thousand years we continued to follow Bane's Rule of Two, existing in the shadows, biding our time, growing our power, feeding our hatred."
Insider #88: Heritage of the Sith
"Bane's power has been passed down for a thousand years. I vow to be its last recipient."
Book of Sith: Secrets from the Dark Side
Originally posted by Nai
So the [b]fact remains, that the Sith had lost more than half of their accumulated knowledge almost 500 years post Bane. That they got stronger from there is not disputed. [/B]
Yes, as Luceno said when asked about the event in question, Gravid was introduced to separate the modern Sith from the ancient teachings. It's true that Tenebrous and Plagueis were missing some of the knowledge and abilities that their forebears possessed--but they were not weaker.
After all, while the accumulation of artifacts and knowledge contributed to the improvement of the Sith Order, it was not the primary reason that each generation surpassed the last. The reason each generation was stronger than the last was because, by design, the apprentice had to defeat the master to earn the right to progress the lineage themselves.
While Darth Gravid may have been a heretic and damaging to the Sith cause, he was still the most powerful of the lineage up to that point. And in the end, he was bested by Darth Gean, who went on to continue the cycle by following the Rule of Two. Yes, the power progression between Bane and Sidious was absolutely linear, as numerous sources clearly state.