Originally posted by Azronger
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 it is also the only opinion that matters here, because - if I may remind you - you're arguing in favor for Tenebrous who is long gone when Plagueis reaches the height of his power. D'uh.
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.
There are so many wrong conclusions here, that it does almost hurt.
Plagueis didn't get more powerful through his experiments. What made him more powerful was the balance shift that he and Sidious invoked. That is the single event that he attributes all his newfound powers to. And given that, before that, he saw himself as weaker than all the Ancient Sith, it stands to reason that any of them could have replicated that feat, if they had tried.
And I seriously have to wonder, wether or not you're even capable of processing text, given the next paragraph of your posting.
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.
Oh. My bad. I forgot the word "Lords" there as in "Ancient Sith Lords" with "Ancient", in my book, referring to the people up to and including Exar Kun.
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.
Erm. While his thoughts start with "extending one's life", he then crosses over to their other feats, all seeming not repicateable for him.
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.
Did you, by chance, miss the list of feats he comes up with. You know, like you also "missed" the persona of Vitiate completely, who obviously attained a lifespan of over a thousand years by his powers and who did use Sorcery / Alchemy to grant the same immortality to some of his servants (e.g. Lord Scourge). And you, seriously, want to lecture me on "cherry-picking"? 😂
No, the Sith did not have to start from scratch. There were plenty of scriptures and holocrons that survived Darth Gravid’s rampage.
More than half of their knowledge was lost.
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
What does the fact that Gean successfully managed to stop Gravid have to do with her knowledge / power compared to him? Is Vader more powerful than Sidious, because he managed to throw him into the reactor shaft on the second Death Star in ROTJ with his bare hands? Would it have been harder for Gean's apprentice to overpower the master, who was now lacking an arm, a shoulder and the entire left side of her face and chest? Just wondering...
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.
Oh my. I see. Despite doing nothing but talking about literature, you people still have not managed to aquire any skills in literature analysis or critical thinking. Okay. Time for another lesson:
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
Darth Gravid and his deeds weren't introduced to the SW universe before 2012 with the release of the Darth Plagueis novel. So, logically, a scrapbook released in 1999 couldn't take them into account...
Ultimately, Bane's plan produced more powerful Sith Lords with every generation.--Force and Destiny
That Bane's plan did ultimately do so, doesn't mean that it constantly did from start to finish. D'uh.
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
Same problem as above: A source from 2006 was clearly not able to factor in information that wasn't available until 2012 (the deeds of Darth Gravid).
"Bane's power has been passed down for a thousand years. I vow to be its last recipient."--Darth Sidious, Book of the Sith
Wow. Not even a mentioning of a constant increase in power among the Sith Lords of Bane's Order. And even more: This is a statement from a fallible character, describing his very own power. 😂
"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
Excuse me. Did you just shoot yourself in the knee? So, really, in order to present proof for the idea, that the Sith Lords of Bane's order became more powerful, you present a quote that says, that an apprentice doesn't need to be stronger than the master any longer to take over? That's really smart. 🙄
The Sith Lords of Plagueis’ time weren’t weaker at all, as per the statements above.
The statements above are operating under the assumption that there was a constant improvement from Bane to Sidious, with the Sith Order just gaining more knowledge. With the introduction of Gravis, we know that this assumption is false. In fact, it is so false, that Plagueis and his predecessors viewed Bane as a godlike entity with legendary powers. Which is, by the way, a point that you have failed to address entirely. Why would Sith like Plagueis or Tenebrous have that view on Bane, if they were by far more powerful than him (which is what your idea of the Bane Sith Order suggests, if there really was a constant improvement from Bane onwards).
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.
And welcome to the realm of the outright denial of facts. You do realize that Plagueis did, sort of, kill Tenebrous, right? You do also realize that Plagueis defeated Venamis, who - despite what he may have thought - was clearly no match for him:
"Gradually the Bith understood that something had changed - that what up until then had been a fight to the death seemed suddenly like a training exercise." - Darth Plagueis, Chapter 6: The Hunter's Moon.
While Venamis might have been a worthy challenger for Plagueis in terms of lightsaber combat, he was absolutely no match for him when it came to the mastery of the Force, which Plagueis easily demonstrates in defeating 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.
It is quite clear that you don't follow any kind of "logic". Thanks for admitting that.
My reasoning is quite straightforward: Plagueis perceived Bane as a legend in terms of power. Bane perceived the Ancient Sith as legends in terms of power and gained much of his knowledge from Revan, who was also looting what they left behind before. The point is: Those people did just have a fraction of the knowledge the Ancient Sith had.
Vitiate is an Ancient Sith, arguably the most powerful of them all. Which puts him ahead in the "knowledge" department compared to Revan, Bane and the Sith of Bane's Order. But, even more important than that, he is a force user that has lived for more than a thousand years. The guy has single-handedly conquered a planet when he was a teenager, than force drained the entire planet later, consuming the power of hundreds (or thousands) of Sith Lords in the process. He was capable of outright dominating the minds of rather powerful individuals such as Revan or Malak and likewise able to transfer his essence to other bodys at will. Not even mentioning the Alchemy / Sorcery proficiency which was enough to grant eternal live to his servants (and himself). How does Tenebrous even remotely compare to that?
Certainly not by tossing some random quotes onto the table, that just serve to prove that the Sith increased in power from Bane on, when you outright ignore the story of Darth Gravid introduced later. Which, just to put the final nail on that coffin, doesn't matter at all, because Bane doesn't seem to be that powerful, when it comes to power - especially not, when comparing him to Vitiate.
And your entire stance is outright contradicting itself: If you assume, that the Sith always got stronger, and the apprentice must be stronger than the master in order to kill him, that means that Plagueis must be more powerful than Tenebrous in the very moment he kills his master, which undermines the entire basis for your argument. What was that about "cherry picking" you mentioned earlier? 😉
Originally posted by Nai
So, really, in order to present proof for the idea, that the Sith Lords of Bane's order became more powerful, you present a quote that says, that an apprentice doesn't need to be stronger than the master any longer to take over? That's really smart. :roll eyes:
Uh, no, please practice basic reading comprehension. The quote says that the apprentice no longer has to be stronger than the master now that Plagueis chose to abandon Bane's order.
Originally posted by Deronn_solo
A basic ***** like you have no right to speak on Da King. Az either, for that matter. 👆
I'm sure we'll remember that when we actually address anyone resembling a king.
Originally posted by Deronn_solo
In any regard, I promise to have a post up with today since it's my B-Day, unless someone pisses me of today and destroys my mood
Aww... Happy Birthday, dear.
Originally posted by Nai
And it is also the only opinion that matters here, because - if I may remind you - you're arguing in favor for Tenebrous who is long gone when Plagueis reaches the height of his power. D'uh.
No clue what you’re getting at here. Yes, Tenebrous is long gone when Plagueis reaches the height of his power, but that has about as much to do with this as the fact that it rains on rainy days. Pre-prime Plagueis’ opinion of his power next to the ancient Sith’s is irrelevant here, because Plagueis isn’t Tenebrous, and they aren’t close in power at all.
There are so many wrong conclusions here, that it does almost hurt.
Plagueis didn't get more powerful through his experiments. What made him more powerful was the balance shift that he and Sidious invoked. That is the single event that he attributes all his newfound powers to. And given that, before that, he saw himself as weaker than all the Ancient Sith, it stands to reason that any of them could have replicated that feat, if they had tried.
The means through which Plagueis became more powerful literally changes nothing. It doesn’t change the fact that Plagueis in his prime thinks of himself as superior to all Sith before him, and it doesn’t alter the outcome of Tenebrous vs Vitiate.
Erm. While his thoughts start with "extending one's life", he then crosses over to their other feats, all seeming not repicateable for him.Did you, by chance, miss the list of feats he comes up with. You know, like you also "missed" the persona of Vitiate completely, who obviously attained a lifespan of over a thousand years by his powers and who did use Sorcery / Alchemy to grant the same immortality to some of his servants (e.g. Lord Scourge). And you, seriously, want to lecture me on "cherry-picking"? 😂
It is painfully ironic when you accuse others of lacking reading comprehension, yet produce blunders like this yourself. Let’s take a look at the text one more time:
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 is reciting historical applications of Sith Sorcery. That’s literally it. There is absolutely no hints here that Plagueis isn’t capable of any of this, or that the ancients were more powerful, when even Plagueis himself pulls off an Illusion, which is an application of Sith Sorcery:
Like a feline, Sidious leapt from the scree, his curled fingers aimed for Plagueis. But instead of vising themselves around the Muun’s slender neck, his hands went through thin air and met each other, leaving him to collapse face-first atop the outcropping. Off to one side he heard his Master laugh in scorn. Either Plagueis had moved faster than Sidious could discern or, worse yet, he had never been there to begin with.
“So easily tricked,” Plagueis said, confirming the latter. “You waste my time. More of this and the dark side will never take an interest in you.”
--Darth Plagueis
There is not a single line in the entire book that compares Plagueis to the ancient Sith in terms of power (well, except when Plagueis muses himself to be their superior 😉 ). There is only the rants of an egotistical little man with a feud with reading comprehension, but he is too blind and too arrogant to see it 🙁
And also Vitiate didn't achieve long life due to his personal power nor was he able to grant it at will, but rather only through arcane rituals requiring preparation.
What does the fact that Gean successfully managed to stop Gravid have to do with her knowledge / power compared to him? Is Vader more powerful than Sidious, because he managed to throw him into the reactor shaft on the second Death Star in ROTJ with his bare hands? Would it have been harder for Gean's apprentice to overpower the master, who was now lacking an arm, a shoulder and the entire left side of her face and chest? Just wondering...
Probably the fact that Gean managed to penetrate Gravid’s Force Barriers, displaying superior Force power…
And are you seriously using the way in which Vader disposed of Sidious as a basis for how Gean killed Gravid? What’s that supposed to prove? Considering that Gean lost much of the left side of her body – the description of the injuries sounds very much like a severe lightsaber wound – there was probably an actual fight between the two Sith, and Gean proved victorious. Plagueis himself confirms this notion as well:
“Your thoughts betray you,” Plagueis said. “Do you think that Malak’s powers were weakened by Revan’s lightsaber? Bane by being encrusted in orbalisks? Do you think Gravid’s young apprentice was hindered by the prosthesis she was forced to wear after fighting him?”
Darth Gravid and his deeds weren't introduced to the SW universe before 2012 with the release of the Darth Plagueis novel. So, logically, a scrapbook released in 1999 couldn't take them into account...
Indeed it wouldn’t. And given that there is no contradiction between Gravid’s deeds and the statement of that source, I don’t see the issue.
That Bane's plan did ultimately do so, doesn't mean that it constantly did from start to finish. D'uh.
Someone doesn’t know the definition “every generation”. It doesn’t say that ultimately Bane’s plan produced more powerful Sith Lords; it says that ultimately Bane’s plan produced more powerful Sith Lords every generation.
Same problem as above: A source from 2006 was clearly not able to factor in information that wasn't available until 2012 (the deeds of Darth Gravid).
Same solution as above: there is no contradiction.
Wow. Not even a mentioning of a constant increase in power among the Sith Lords of Bane's Order. And even more: This is a statement from a fallible character, describing his very own power. 😂
No, he is describing Bane’s power, which should be pretty obvious considering he mentions “Bane’s power has been passed down for a thousand years.” Where exactly do you get the idea from that he was describing his power own when referring to Bane’s power? 😂 Even the next sentence – ”I vow to be its last recipient.” – only refers to Sidious’ intentions to be the last member of the Banite line, and the “its” in it is if course referring to, once again, Bane’s power. Hopefully you don’t think Sidious is stating here he will be the last recipient of his own power 😆
And while this doesn’t outright confirm each successive Sith Lord is stronger than the last, it does deny the notion that they got weaker at any point, since if that were the case, then Bane’s power would not have been “passed down” if there had been someone weaker than Bane. Someone weaker than Bane cannot possess Bane’s power, obviously.
And while this is from a fallible character, so is your statement about Bane being deified and having legendary powers. And there is some evidence to Sidious’ words, actually. Every time we have witnessed a Banite apprentice kill their master, they received an increase in power.
Even from a distance, she had sensed an incredible burst of power-the same power she had sensed in Bane himself. She didn’t know how it was possible, but it almost seemed as if the Dark Lord’s life energy had burst free of his physical form in one glorious instant, releasing itself upon the material world. Then, as suddenly as she had sensed the presence, it was gone, vanishing like an animal gone to ground.
--Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil
Awake in the oppressive heat, he replayed the events of the previous day, still somewhat astounded by what he had done. The Force had whispered to him: Your moment has come. Claim your stake to the dark side. Act now and be done with this. But the Force had only advised; it had neither dictated his actions nor guided his hands. That had been his doing alone. He knew from his travels with and without Tenebrous that he wasn't the galaxy's sole practitioner of the dark side-nor Sith for that matter, since the galaxy was rife with pretenders-but he was now the only Sith Lord descended from the Bane line. A true Sith, and that realization roused the raw power coiled inside him.
[…]
With 11-4D deep in processing mode, Plagueis withdrew a vial of his own blood and subjected it to analysis. Despite the recent amplification of his powers he sensed that his midi-chlorian count had not increased since the events on Bal'demnic, and the analysis of the blood sample confirmed his suspicions.
--Darth Plagueis
A tremor took hold of the planet.
Sprung from death, it unleashed itself in a powerful wave, at once burrowing deep into the world's core and radiating through its saccharine atmosphere to shake the stars themselves. At the quake's epicenter stood Sidious, one elegant hand vised on the burnished sill of an expansive translucency, a vessel filled suddenly to bursting, the Force so strong within him that he feared he might disappear into it, never to return. But the moment didn't constitute an ending so much as a true beginning, long overdue; it was less a transformation than an intensification-a gravitic shift.
A welter of voices, near and far, present and from eons past, drowned his thoughts. Raised in praise, the voices proclaimed his reign and cheered the inauguration of a new order. Yellow eyes lifted to the night sky, he saw the trembling stars flare, and in the depth of his being he felt the power of the dark side anoint him.
[…]
The dark side had made him its property, and now he made the dark side his.
Breathless, not from exertion but from the sudden inspiration of power, he let go of the sill and allowed the monster to writhe through his body like an unbroken beast of range or prairie.
Had the Force ever been so strong in anyone?
Sidious had never learned how Plagueis's own Master had met his end. Had he died at Plagueis's hand? Had Plagueis, too, experienced a similar exultation on becoming a sole Sith Lord? Had the beast of the end time risen then to peek at the world it was to inhabit, knowing its release was imminent?
--Darth Plagueis
If Sidious is to be believed, this is Darth Bane’s power transferring from master to apprentice (in the case of Sidious is seems that it was Plagueis’ power that was transferred to him).
Originally posted by Nai
Excuse me. Did you just shoot yourself in the knee? So, really, in order to present proof for the idea, that the Sith Lords of Bane's order became more powerful, you present a quote that says, that an apprentice doesn't need to be stronger than the master any longer to take over? That's really smart. 🙄
Again, with the reading comprehension. What Sidious is describing here is what Plagueis had told him numerous times. Essentially, Plagueis says that Bane’s order had ended with the death of Tenebrous, and then elaborates that a master no longer needs to be stronger, but merely more clever. This references the way Plagueis killed his his Master, which was not through strength but through misdirection i.e. being clever. Given that Bane’s order “had ended” with Tenebrous’ death because he was offed by a weaker apprentice by means of deception, and that all previous apprentices needed to be stronger, it means that Plagueis was the first in the line not to engage their master in a duel to the death, and also the first to be weaker than their master upon the latter’s death.
The statements above are operating under the assumption that there was a constant improvement from Bane to Sidious, with the Sith Order just gaining more knowledge. With the introduction of Gravis, we know that this assumption is false. In fact, it is so false, that Plagueis and his predecessors viewed Bane as a godlike entity with legendary powers. Which is, by the way, a point that you have failed to address entirely. Why would Sith like Plagueis or Tenebrous have that view on Bane, if they were by far more powerful than him (which is what your idea of the Bane Sith Order suggests, if there really was a constant improvement from Bane onwards).
It’s not an assumption when it’s literally stated in the source material. And Plagueis can very much attribute such a description to Darth Bane without being less powerful than him. And he isn’t – at least not in his prime – when he himself is a clear advocate of each successive apprentice growing more powerful than their master, and neither is Tenebrous. All it means is that Plagueis respected Bane’s power extremely highly, and labelled it as “legendary” not in comparison to himself (or Tenebrous) but in general i.e. he is a standout among the long history of the Sith.
And welcome to the realm of the outright denial of facts. You do realize that Plagueis did, sort of, kill Tenebrous, right? You do also realize that Plagueis defeated Venamis, who - despite what he may have thought - was clearly no match for him:"Gradually the Bith understood that something had changed - that what up until then had been a fight to the death seemed suddenly like a training exercise." - Darth Plagueis, Chapter 6: The Hunter's Moon.
While Venamis might have been a worthy challenger for Plagueis in terms of lightsaber combat, he was absolutely no match for him when it came to the mastery of the Force, which Plagueis easily demonstrates in defeating him.
Yes, Plagueis did kill Tenebrous, but not through his own might – which I assume Venamis was referring to when he stated it would be impossible for someone of Plagueis’ caliber to kill him. And, the fun part here is the fact that Tenebrous planned for his death to happen:
Dying, Tenebrous observed with mild surprise, was turning out to b enot only pleasant, but wholly wonderful; had he ever suspected how much he’d enjoy the process, he wouldn’t have wasted all those decades waiting for his foolish apprentice Plagueis to do him in.
So, even as he lay gasping around the icy barbs that pierced his lung, Tenebrous smiled. Even with the jerking and convulsing in his body’s last reflexive rebellion against the fall of eternal night, even as organ systems shut down one by one to maintain the last shreds of light and life withing the vast intricacies of his brain—massive beyond even those of other Biths, a people justly legendary for their intellectual prowess—Tenebrous found himself particularly enjoying the incremental disappearance of his own midi-chlorians.
His Force-perception was even more cuate than the magnifying powers of his enormous eyes; in the Force, he could feel each individual midi-chlorian wink out in turn, a spreading wave of darkness, like starts eclipsed by the silhouette of an approaching whip.
Or falling through the event horizon of a black hole.
Ah, darkness. Darkness at last. The darkness he had dreamed of. The darkness he had planned for. The darkness that was his one true love. The darkness he hadtaken as his name.
Was he not Darth Tenebrous?
His vision dimmed. His hearing became a rish of wind like static on an electrodriver – and the silence. The sole sensation registered by his quivering flesh was the rip of shattered bone and slow suffocation choking his consciousness, as his shredded lung could only supply only a fraction of the oxygen required by his massive brain.
It hardly mattered. Shielded from suffering by his command of the Force, Tenebrous observed the death agony of his physical form with appropriately Bithan dispassion. And now his impossibly refined perceptions detected the birsh of Plagueis’ mind, as the apprentice probed the vanishing midi-chlorians of his dying master with his own use of the Force, as Tenebrous had known he would. Tenebrous had spent decades making sure Plagueis would be unable to resist doing exactly that.
Everything was proceeding according to plan.
--The Tenebrous Way
Tenebrous coughed spittle and blood. "Then for the last time, I call you apprentice. And I applaud your skillful use of surprise and misdirection. Perhaps I was wrong to think you had no stomach for it."
"The dark side guided me, Tenebrous. You sensed it, but your lack of faith in me clouded your thoughts."
The Bith's head bobbed in agreement. "Even before we came to Bal'demnic."
--Darth Plagueis
And where exactly does Plagueis use Force powers in his fight with Venamis? The entire duel was a lightsaber fight, and Plagueis defeated him by tricking Venamis into foghting recklessly, and then defeating him with a sudden and unexpected burst of speed:
Realizing that the fight could go on indefinitely, he took himself out of his body and began working his material self like a marionette, no longer on the offensive, instigating attacks, but merely responding to Venamis's lunges and strikes. Gradually the Bith understood that something had changed-that what up until then had been a fight to the death seemed suddenly like a training exercise. Exasperated, he doubled his efforts, fighting harder, more desperately, putting more power into each maneuver and blow, and in the end surrendering his precision and accuracy.
At the height of Venamis's attack, Plagueis came back into himself with such fury that his lightsaber became a blinding rod. A two-handed upward swing launched from between his legs caught Venamis off guard. The blade didn't go deep enough to puncture the Bith's lung but scorched him from chest to chin. As his large, cleft head snapped backward in retreat, Plagueis brought his lightsaber straight down, tearing Venamis's weapon from his gloved hand and nearly taking off his long fingers, as well.
--Darth Plagueis
And as for Force powers, don’t you wonder why Plagueis – someone who views lightsaber combat as a tedious exercise and clearly prefers the Force – would keep the entire contest as a lightsaber duel, even when having his defenses penetrated, realizing that he could defeat Venamis through conventional methods? Would it not be sensible to bring out the Force into the mix, especially when Plagueis was a dedicated Force user? Probably, unless Venamis was actually powerful enough for Plagueis to dismiss such efforts as ineffective. In fact, earlier in the novel, upon becoming the sole Sith Lord in the galaxy, Plagueis nonetheless sensed a (Sith) being of near-equal power to his own:
Awake in the oppressive heat, he replayed the events of the previous day, still somewhat astounded by what he had done. The Force had whispered to him: Your moment has come. Claim your stake to the dark side. Act now and be done with this. But the Force had only advised; it had neither dictated his actions nor guided his hands. That had been his doing alone. He knew from his travels with and without Tenebrous that he wasn't the galaxy's sole practitioner of the dark side-nor Sith for that matter, since the galaxy was rife with pretenders-but he was now the only Sith Lord descended from the Bane line. A true Sith, and that realization roused the raw power coiled inside him.
And yet...
When he reached out with the Force he could detect the presence of something or some being of near-equal power. Was it the dark side itself, or merely a vestige of his uncertainty? He had read the legends of Bane; how he had been hounded by the lingering presences of those he had defeated in order to rid the Sith Order of infighting, and return the Order to a genuine hegemony by instating the Rule of Two: a Master to embody power; an apprentice to crave it. To hear it told, Bane had even been hounded by the spirits of generations-dead Sith Lords whose tombs and manses he had desecrated in his fervent search for holocrons and other ancient devices offering wisdom and guidance.
Was Tenebrous's spirit the source of the power he sensed? Was there a brief period of survival after death during which a true Sith could continue to influence the world of the living?
--Darth Plagueis
We can dismiss the possibility of Tenebrous’ spirit, as he was trapped in a time loop living the same moment over and over again at the place of his death, whereas Plagueis was already a day away. The only other option is Venamis. The novel even foreshadows the duel between Plagueis and Venamis when Tenebrous attempts to warn Plagueis of something, and Plagueis sensing a near-equal darksider somewhere in the galaxy.
My reasoning is quite straightforward: Plagueis perceived Bane as a legend in terms of power. Bane perceived the Ancient Sith as legends in terms of power and gained much of his knowledge from Revan, who was also looting what they left behind before. The point is: Those people did just have a fraction of the knowledge the Ancient Sith had.
Possibly so, yet it does not mean they are less powerful despite possessing less knowledge. After all, Gean defeated her Master despite not knowing everything he did.
Vitiate is an Ancient Sith, arguably the most powerful of them all. Which puts him ahead in the "knowledge" department compared to Revan, Bane and the Sith of Bane's Order. But, even more important than that, he is a force user that has lived for more than a thousand years. The guy has single-handedly conquered a planet when he was a teenager, than force drained the entire planet later, consuming the power of hundreds (or thousands) of Sith Lords in the process. He was capable of outright dominating the minds of rather powerful individuals such as Revan or Malak and likewise able to transfer his essence to other bodys at will. Not even mentioning the Alchemy / Sorcery proficiency which was enough to grant eternal live to his servants (and himself). How does Tenebrous even remotely compare to that?
I’ve already answered how Tenebrous beats Vitiate in my response to Deronn.
And your entire stance is outright contradicting itself: If you assume, that the Sith always got stronger, and the apprentice must be stronger than the master in order to kill him, that means that Plagueis must be more powerful than Tenebrous in the very moment he kills his master, which undermines the entire basis for your argument. What was that about "cherry picking" you mentioned earlier? 😉
What? No, Plagueis mustn’t be stronger than his master when he didn’t even kill him in a genuine fight. Seriously? 😂