The Ultimate Darth Plagueis Essay

”You ever hear the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?”

“No.”

“I thought not. It’s not a story the Jedi would tell you. It’s a Sith legend. Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith so powerful and so wise he could use the Force to influence the midi-chlorians to create life… He had such a knowledge of the dark side, he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying.”

“He could actually… save people from death?”

“The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.”

“What happened to him?”

“He became so powerful… the only thing he was afraid of was losing his power, which, eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice everything he knew, then his apprentice killed him in his sleep. It’s ironic: he could save others from death, but not himself.”

--Chancellor Palpatine and Anakin Skywalker
Revenge of the Sith

Darth Plagueis is still mostly ranked beneath Valkorion for some reason. Time to fix that.

YouTube video

Why this notion isn’t preposterous

Plagueis has what it takes to be Valkorion's superior. But I'll admit, he has not dominated thousands at once mentally, stomped other Force users, or defeated entire strike teams via Lightning. He has not done any of these, and the best he has in personal combat is reducing a group of assassins to mush with a Force Wave, and while an underrated feat in my view considering the circumstances, it pales in comparison to anything on the planetary scale, and even I admit as much. It is probably for this reason why so many find the idea of Plagueis defeating - and in some case even contending with - Valkorion laughable; it is because Plagueis lacks many overt displays of power that are easily understandable and wankable, like Darth Nihilus, Valkorion and Dark Empire Palpatine, and as such he is often assumed to be more in league with the likes of Darth Krayt, Exar Kun and Revan, or at least was assumed to be a few years ago by the majority, and still is by those who simply lack proper understanding of Plagueis and his book.

But the issue here is that those Valkorion supporters who tout the Ziost feat as the pinnacle of Force usage and far beyond anything Plagueis ever achieved, fail to understand the circumstances and context of the eras that Valkorion and Plagueis lived in, respectively. Plagueis had to keep his power hidden and contained within him, in order to prevent lack of discovery by the Jedi. Any serious display of the dark side would result in the Jedi being alerted to his presence and status as a dark side user, so him not displaying any world-destroying Force powers like Valkorion wasn't due to a lack of ability, but rather necessity. In fact, we have an example of this in the Darth Plagueis novel itself. When Plagueis is fighting the Maladian Assassins, it sent ripples throughout the Force that could be felt by both Palpatine and the Jedi, alerting them both:

Palpatine paced away from Pestage. He opened himself fully to the Force, and was left staggered by an inrush of overwhelming malevolence. He planted his left hand on the desk for support and managed a stuttering inhale. Somewhere close by, the dark side was unspooling.

[...]

“Master, we need to leave at once,” Sidious said. “What I felt, the Jedi may have felt, and they will come.”

[...]

“I’m relieved to learn that I didn’t disappoint you, Master. But the Jedi summoned the police to the Fobosi district moments after we left. The plan is already endangered.”

Color rose in Plagueis’s cheeks. “The Jedi have long known that the dark side has been reawakened and cannot be checked by them. Now they have felt it on their own Coruscant.”

Darth Plagueis

By contrast, Valkorion - as Tenebrae - was born into a dark side magocracy far away from Coruscant and the prying eyes of the Jedi. He was free to practise the dark side to its fullest, and had an entire empire at his back. He then went on to create his own Sith Empire and was left in peace for a thousand years to experiment with the dark side as he pleases. By the time of The Old Republic, the galaxy is divided between the light and the dark, with the Sith Empire at one point controlling more than half the galaxy. Basically in a nutshell, Plagueis lived his whole life in an environment where the use of the dark side was actively persecuted, and was alone against an force of ten thousand, which included Mace Windu and Yoda; whereas Valkorion lived his whole life in an environment where the use of the dark side was encouraged and the norm, and had the backing of an entire Empire equal in might to the entirety of the Jedi Order, in which no Force user could directly challenge him or even dream of approaching his power.

That is why it is illogical to conclude that inactivity means inability on Plagueis' part, and the novel in which he stars presents no limit on his power whatsoever, whereas with Valkorion, he was free to do whatever the hell he wanted without consequences, and actively and tirelessly sought out immortality and godlike Force power, so any inactivity there can logically be attributed to inability, at least on the macro scale.

And Plagueis, contrary to what many believe, does indeed have in him what it takes to defeat the Immortal Emperor. His feats are not overt, easily digestible like for example environmental destruction or stomping other powerful Force users. They are far more subtle, and sometimes need to be gleaned from between the lines to gain proper understanding, but they are potent, and carry with them a different kind of grandiosity, one of - as Plagueis himself puts it - “galactonic” proportions.

Unbalancing the Force

As you all know, Plagueis and Sidious unbalanced the Force of the galaxy to the dark side via months of meditation during which they mentally contended with the Force’s very will, and won. Details of the feat are as follows:

The question of whether he and Sidious had discovered something new or rediscovered something ancient was beside the point. All that mattered was that, almost a decade earlier, they had succeeded in willing the Force to shift and tip irrevocably to the dark side. Not a mere paradigm shift, but a tangible alteration that could be felt by anyone strong in the Force, and whether or not trained in the Sith or Jedi arts.

The shift had been the outcome of months of intense meditation, during which Plagueis and Sidious had sought to challenge the Force for sovereignty and suffuse the galaxy with the power of the dark side. Brazen and shameless, and at their own mortal peril, they had waged etheric war, anticipating that their own midi-chlorians, the Force’s proxy army, might marshal to boil their blood or stop the beating of their hearts. Risen out of themselves, discorporate and as a single entity, they had brought the power of their will to bear, asserting their sovereignty over the Force. No counterforce had risen against them. In what amounted to a state of rapture they knew that the Force had yielded, as if some deity had been tipped from its throne. On the fulcrum they had fashioned, the light side had dipped and the dark side had ascended.

Darth Plagueis

Context and circumstances

Almost a millennium prior, the Jedi Order, along with help from the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Bane albeit unbeknownst to the Jedi, eradicated almost all Sith and dark side practitioners from the galaxy, leaving mostly lightsiders in it. As a consequence of the Jedi’s unchallenged paramountcy and their unchecked galaxy-wide influence, over time, the Force became unbalanced to the light side:

Where an extremely low midi-chlorian count might have bolstered the odds of survival, nature had instead made the ysalimir species strong in the Force. So strong, in fact, that several of the creatures acting in concert could create a Force bubble encompassing kilometers rather than meters. In a sense, the Jedi Order had done the same on a galactic scale, Plagueis believed, by bathing the galaxy in the energy of the light side of the Force; or more accurately by fashioning a Force bubble that had prevented infiltration by the dark side, until Tenebrous's Master had succeeded in bursting the bubble, or at least shrinking it. How the Order's actions could be thought of as balancing the Force had baffled generations of Sith, who harbored no delusions regarding the Force's ability to self-regulate.

Darth Plagueis

Said Force bubble prevented infiltration by the dark side; in essence meaning that using the dark side at all in the galaxy would have been near impossible, making it effectively an extremely potent light side nexus that bolstered lightsiders and hindered darksiders in their efforts to call on the Force. While Tenebrous' Master helped in bursting the bubble, it is commonly yet erroneously believed Tenebrous’ Master’s machinations somehow helped Plagueis and Sidious in their feat. In a sense, this is true: they did not have to perform their feat completely entrenched in the light side as a result of the nexus’ presence. However, the feat did not help them beyond their own natural power - and this is a key distinction of great import. Plagueis and Sidious were not amped as a result of the tear in the bubble; they would merely have been on “neutral ground,” or even possibly weakened given that Plagueis contemplates the possibility the bubble had not been burst entirely, but merely been shrunken. The feat is, regardless of the way you spin it, entirely within the natural capabilities of Plagueis and Sidious.

Clarifying misconceptions

Plagueis’ detractors have often argued that the feat was done in accordance with the will of the Force; that Plagueis and Sidious did not really overpower the Force, but rather the Force allowed itself to be unbalanced. The most direct evidence for this comes from the text itself, and this is most often pointed at by the Vitidiots: “...no counterforce had risen against them…” Yet they take this out of context; the following line is left out by them: “...in a state of rapture, they knew the Force has yielded…” signifying that the Force gave up, which is the reason for the lack equipoise to oppose the Sith Lords. In other words, the reason no counterforce rose against them is because the Force had yielded, and the reason they knew the Force had yielded was because no counterforce rose against them. The text is incredibly straightforward and clear with that, and with the fact that they did actually, literally, really fight the Force itself: “challenge the Force for sovereignty [...] at their own mortal peril, they had waged etheric war [...] they had brought the power of their will to bear, asserting their sovereignty over the Force [...] the Force had yielded, as if some deity had been tipped from its throne.” Plagueis himself clarifies that they do meet resistance every time they try to wrestle with the Force:

“As we attempt to wrest the powers of life and death from the Force, as we seek to tip the balance, the Force resists our efforts. Action and reaction, Sidious. Something akin to the laws of thermodynamics.”

--Darth Plagueis
Darth Plagueis

Plagueis would not be stating this if they had met no counterforce at all, nor would the meditation be described as “intense,” nor would it take months to accomplish if they outcome had been something the Force wanted to happen. The only time no counterforce rose was when the Force had given up, which is pretty much what the text itself states; to say that no counterforce rose at all is false and disingenuous.

Plagueis and Sidious made the Force their bitch.

Consequences for the galaxy

As a direct consequence of the feat, the Force was unbalanced to the dark side. Much like the Jedi turning the entire galaxy into a light side nexus back when they reigned unchallenged and supreme, the Sith transmogrified the galaxy into a dark side nexus, and as a result, found their powers increasing in contrast to all lightsiders discovering the future clouded and their connection to the Cosmic Force weakened:

In what amounted to a state of rapture they knew that the Force had yielded, as if some deity had been tipped from its throne. On the fulcrum they had fashioned, the light side had dipped and the dark side had ascended.

On the same day they had allowed Venamis to die. Then, by manipulating the Bith’s midi-chlorians, which should have been inert and unresponsive, Plagueis had resurrected him. The enormity of the event had stunned Sidious into silence and overwhelmed and addled 11-4D’s processors, but Plagueis had carried on without assistance, again and again allowing Venamis to die and be returned to life, until the Bith’s organs had given out and Plagueis had finally granted him everlasting death.

[...]

Yoda and the rest of the Council members will double their meditation sessions in an effort to peer into the future, only to discover it clouded and unknowable. Only to discover that complacency has opened the door to catastrophe.

Darth Plagueis

In the twilight days of the Old Republic, the Jedi Council came to believe that the Force was dangerously out of balance. To them, the lessening of their contact with the Cosmic Force and the return of the Sith meant the dark side was growing dangerously ascendant.

Force and Destiny

Even if one were disparaging of the idea that the Sith outwilled the Force and refuses to accept it, we would still be left with the fact that the feat required months of intense meditation for the Sith to accomplish and that the galaxy did indeed turn into a dark side nexus; those are inarguable facts. So whether or not the will of the Force was involved or not, the feat is still a perfectly valid demonstration of the participants’ power.

Implications for the rest of the mythos

Obviously this is a monumental feat, that does not need to be said aloud. But how impressive is this exactly, and where does it rank overall? Well, Valkorion never managed to replicate this feat, by himself or with the resources of two empires and over a millennium of time to execute it. At the time of the Revan novel, the Force was shifting in balance constantly, and during The Old Republic video game, the galaxy was divided between light and dark:

The Force was omnipresent. It radiated stronger in certain places and at certain times, and the balance of the dark side and the light constantly shifted.

The Old Republic: Revan

”Thus began the unprecedented stalemate: the Jedi reconnecting with their roots, the Republic nursing its wounds, the Sith consolidating their power, in a galaxy divided between darkness and light.”

--Gnost-Dural
The Old Republic: Timeline #1: The Treaty of Coruscant

So what Plagueis and Sidious did in months sitting on an island in the middle of nowhere, Valkorion only a few decades before his peak in power had not accomplished in over 1400 years. At best you could argue he had succeeded in unbalancing half the galaxy over the course of 300 years (the time from Revan to The Old Republic), but still does not compare to unbalancing the whole galaxy in a few months. The only provable similar feat he has is turning the Dark Temple into a dark side nexus:

Burial place, prison, and reliquary, the Dark Temple was built on the orders of the Emperor to seal away powerful artifacts and the Emperor's enemies, both alive and dead. The temple became a nexus of dark side energy as the Emperor performed rituals within, drawing strength and knowledge from his captives.

The Old Republic Encyclopedia

Similar feats have been accomplished by Shaak Ti when she shifted the alignment of the planet Felucia, Emperor Palpatine when he corrupted the planet Byss, Freedon Nadd whose dark side influence permeated the planet Onderon, and on a smaller scale by Darth Vader when he tainted Bast Castle, Darth Sidious when he made the LiMerge Building a dark side nexus, and by most other random Sith Lords who corrupted their residences:

If a powerful darksider operates in a specific place for a long period of time, or if that darksider meets a violent end at a specific location, that place can also become imbued with the dark side.

The Dark Side Sourcebook

Doing the same on a galactic scale is obviously orders of magnitude more impressive, however. And even though Plagueis had help from Sidious in doing the feat, it is most likely that he had more of an impact as he was the more powerful of the two, not to mention it can be argued he can replicate the feat on his own during his prime, but I’ll get into that later. For now, it is quite obvious this feat went beyond anything ever done prior in the history of the galaxy.

Attracting the ire of the Force

Darth Plagueis, through his plotting and actions, forced the Force to take decisive action against him and Sidious to maintain balance. Obviously the will of the Force has always been a factor in the defeat of powerful Force users in the past, but such a direct and drastic intervention by the Force to ensure the defeat of darksiders as in the case of Plagueis and Sidious is unheard of, and established both Sith Lords as unprecedented threats.

The Chosen One

As a result of Plagueis’ and Sidious’ machinations, the Force spawns a being born of pure Force energy; essentially a demigod, the most powerful Force user imaginable: the Chosen One of Jedi prophecy, Anakin Skywalker, whose very existential purpose was to bring balance back into the Force and destroy the Sith.

“The beliefs of the Jedi are expressed in ritual and storytelling. Plain language somehow eludes those who have grown up tightly wrapped in tradition.

“The Jedi await the coming of a savior, a prophesied Chosen One who will destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force. The Jedi tell of Mortis, a place of impossible geography inside the angles of a gargantuan monolith. The three all-powerful beings of Mortis can assume strange shapes and exemplify the dark side, the light side, and the principle of balance.

“Compelling? It is debatable, but at the very least it is an adequate way to illustrate an allegorical point. Day coexists with night, for example and construction is always followed by ruin. Yet many of the Jedi treat the legend of Mortis as literal truth. They believe that the Chosen One will prevent these gods and demons from tearing the universe asunder—that their champion will be a vessel of pure Force energy.”

--Darth Plagueis
Book of the Sith

“Fully defeated by just anyone, the dark side cannot be, but only by the Chosen One. And who might be this Jedi? Know I do not, but not yet born is he or she. This much, sense I can. A vessel of pure Force the Chosen One will be, more powerful than any Jedi in history.”

--Yoda
Jedi vs Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force

Gazing into Sojourn’s darkening sky, he wondered what calamity the Force was planning in retreat to visit upon him or Sidious or both of them for willfully tipping the balance. Was retribution merely waiting in the wings as it had been on Coruscant twenty years earlier? It was a dangerous time; more dangerous than his earliest years as an apprentice when the dark side might have consumed him at any moment.

[...]

Dooku smiled with his eyes, but not in mirth. “On the contrary, as you say. Since I’m interested in learning more about the possibility of an alliance.”

Palpatine adopted a hooded look. “You’re resolved to leave the Order?”

“Even more than when we last spoke.”

“Because of the Council’s decision to intervene at Naboo?”

“I can forgive them that. The blockade has to be broken. But something else has occurred.” Dooku chose his next words carefully. “Qui-Gon returned from Tatooine with a former slave boy. According to the boy’s mother, the boy had no father.”

“A clone?” Palpatine asked uncertainly.

“Not a clone,” Dooku said. “Perhaps conceived by the Force. As Qui-Gon believes.”

”Palpatine’s head snapped back. “You don’t sit on the Council. How do you know this?”

“I have my ways.”

“Does this have something to do with the prophecy you spoke of?”

“Everything. Qui-Gon believes that the boy—Anakin is his name—stands at the center of a vergence in the Force, and believes further that his finding him was the will of the Force. Blood tests were apparently performed, and the boy’s concentration of midi-chlorians is unprecedented.”

“Do you believe that he is the prophesied one?”

“The Chosen One,” Dooku amended. “No. But Qui-Gon accepts it as fact, and the Council is willing to have him tested.”

“What is known about this Anakin?”

“Very little, except for the fact that he was born into slavery nine years ago and was, until recently, along with his mother, the property of Gardulla the Hutt, then a Toydarian junk dealer.” Dooku smirked. “Also that he won the Boonta Eve Classic Podrace.”

Palpatine had stopped listening.

Nine years old... Conceived by the Force... Is it possible…

[...]

Ignoring the reactions of apprehensive residents and wary security personnel, Plagueis hastened along a plush corridor in 500 Republica toward Palpatine’s suite of crimson rooms. He had planned to be at the Senate Building to hear Amidala’s call for a vote of no-confidence in Valorum, which would strike the first death knell for the Republic. At the last moment, however, Palpatine had contacted him to recount a conversation he had had with Dooku. The fact that Qui-Gon Jinn had identified Maul as a Sith was to be expected; but Dooku’s news about a human boy at the center of a vergence of the Force had come as a shock. More, Qui-Gon saw the boy as the Jedi’s prophesied Chosen One! He had to see this Anakin Skywalker for himself; had to sense him for himself. He had to know if the Force had struck back again, nine years earlier, by conceiving a human being to restore balance to the galaxy…

[...]

Plagueis came to a halt at the entry to Palpatine’s apartment. Eventually one of Queen Amidala’s near-identical handmaidens came to the door, a vision in a dark cowled robe. Her eyes fixed on the breath mask. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, “Senator Palpatine is not here.”

“I know,” Plagueis said. “I’m here to speak with a guest of the Senator. A young human boy.”

Her eyes remained glued on the mask. “I’m not permitted—”

Damask motioned swiftly with his left hand, compelling her to answer him. “You have my permission to speak.”

“I have your permission,” she said in a distracted voice.

“Now where is the boy?”

“Anakin, you mean.”

“Anakin, yes,” he said in a rush. “He’s the one. Fetch him—now!”

“You just missed him, sir,” the handmaiden said.

Plagueis peered past her into Palpatine’s suite. “Missed him?” He straightened in anger. “Where is he?”

“Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn came to collect him, sir. I suspect that you can find him at the Jedi Temple.”Plagueis fell back a step, his thoughts reeling.

There was still a chance that the Council would decide that Anakin was too old to be trained as a Jedi. That way, assuming he was returned to Tatooine…

But if not... If Qui-Gon managed to sway the Council Masters, and they reneged on their own dictates…

Plagueis ran a hand over his forehead. Are we undone? he thought. Have you undone us?

Darth Plagueis

Sidious recalled the desperate return trip to Coruscant; recalled using all his powers, and all the potions and devices contained in his medkit, to minister to Anakin's hopelessly blistered body and truncated limbs.

He recalled thinking: What if Anakin should die?

How many years would he have had to search for an apprentice even half as powerful in the Force, let alone one created by the Force itself to restore balance, by allowing the dark side to percolate fully to the surface after a millennium of being stifled?

Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader

Palpatine had carefully cultivated Anakin's hopes for preventing this dire premonition, and had revealed everything to Anakin: Palpatine's secret identity as Darth Sidious. His murder of his own Master, Darth Plagueis. The role that the Sith had played in creating Anakin by manipulating the midi-chlorians.

The New Essential Chronology

”You gotta remember this is one movie, and it’s meant to be seen one through six, so I think when you watch the actual movie in order, the story will become very clear: that Anakin is the Chosen One.

“And even when Anakin turns into Darth Vader, he is still the Chosen One.

[...]

“The prophecy is that Anakin will bring balance to the Force and destroy the Sith. He becomes Darth Vader, Darth Vader does become the hero, Darth Vader does destroy the Sith, meaning himself and the Emperor. He does it, because he is redeemed by his son.

“So the prophecy is true, and by doing that he redeems himself and goes from being Darth Vader back to being Anakin again.”

--George Lucas
Episode III: The Chosen One Featurette
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqLsQClut5c&

An act like this is basically the equivalent of divine intervention. The fact that the Force had to go to such lengths to ensure the defeat of the Sith speaks volumes of their power and danger. The Force did not create an all-powerful champion to stop Darth Nihilus or Vitiate when they were planning to consume the galaxy, the universe and the Force itself - and they co-existed during the same time period, keep in mind, and these guys are beings who can consume worlds. So it kind of boggles the mind to imagine just how powerful Plagueis and Sidious must have been if the Force was so terrified of them even though they had no empires or resources beyond their political cunning and power in the Force - certainly not enough to compare to galactic superpowers and millenia of prep time.

Direct intervention from the Force

During one of his meditation sessions, Plagueis stretches out with his mind to touch the minds of every living being in the galaxy, but is stopped by the Force who retaliates by infecting his laboratory specimens with deadly diseases:

And so he had stretched out—indeed, as if invisible, transubstantiated—to inform every being of his existence, and impact all of them: Muunoid or insectoid, secure or dispossessed, free or enslaved. A warrior waving a banner in triumph on a battlefield. A ghost infiltrating a dream.

But ultimately to no end. The Force grew silent, as if in flight from him, and many of the animals in his laboratory succumbed to horrifying diseases.

Darth Plagueis

The obvious retort to this would be that Plagueis didn’t succeed, but that was only because the Force blocked his efforts, growing silent, “as if in flight from him,” and killed Plagueis’ experiments as payback. So if the Force personally intervened, wouldn’t that confirm Plagueis would have succeeded otherwise? If he couldn’t have, the Force wouldn’t have needed to step in.

This confirms Plagueis is beyond anyone before him. The Force being scared of his power and intervening personally proves this in itself, but the feat of galaxy-wide telepathy is astronomically more impressive than possessing the population of a planet or dominating powerful Force users. The Galactic Empire contained over one hundred quadrillion beings, over one hundred thousand times the populace of Coruscant, but Plagueis is explained as influencing not only humanoids, but insectoids and any and every sentient being in general:

The known galaxy includes nearly a billion inhabited star systems, from uncharted settlements set up by smugglers to megapolis worlds where scarcely a meter of untouched ground remains. Nearly seventy million of those star systems were sufficiently populated for representation of some sort in the Galactic Empire, a vast bureaucracy responsible for the affairs of more than one hundred quadrillion beings.

The Essential Atlas[/i]

The amount of insects on Earth is estimated to be roughly 10 quintillion, so the ratio between humans and insects would be one to 1.3 million. Applying that to the Star Wars galaxy, and the amount of beings Plagueis is capable of affecting telepathically would be, lowballed, roughly 130 sextillion. Infinitely more than Valkorion.

Debunking other similar instances

A common argument in favor of Valkorion has been the idea of the Hero of Tython being a similar Chosen One-esque being to Anakin. The idea for this stems from Revan’s musings and Scourge’s vision:

”The Force always strives for balance. The Emperor is an agent of darkness and destruction. It is inevitable that a champion of the light will one day rise to oppose him.”

--Revan
The Old Republic: Revan

In that time, much could happen. Revan had spoken of another champion who would rise; Scourge had seen that champion in his final vision. Blessed with eternal life, Scourge would serve faithfully at the Emperor’s side, biding his time as he waited for that champion to emerge from the mists of time.

While serving, he would study the Emperor. He would learn everything about him. He would come to understand his strengths and weaknesses so that when the time came, he could help Revan’s prophesied champion destroy the Emperor once and for all.

The Old Republic: Revan

”I have waited over three hundred years to see the face that came to me in a vision. Your face.”

--Lord Scourge
The Old Republic

The problem with this is the lack of evidence that the Force spawned the Hero; all Revan speculated and Scourge saw was that some guy would one day beat Vitiate. “The Force always strives for balance” bit doesn’t prove the Hero was conceived by the Force; it merely states that a powerful lightsider will be born to oppose a powerful darksider, and even then the Hero never came close to becoming as powerful as Vitiate so Revan may have simply been wrong, and the idea that he is a demigod in the flesh is far-fetched. The Jedi never identify him as the Chosen One and the Force was never unbalanced at that time to begin with, so the idea that he is a divine champion of the same cosmological significance as Anakin Skywalker is baseless, especially when the Chosen One hadn’t been found yet at the time of the prequels.

Valkorion simply never was a threat to the Force or a galactic powerhouse on the same level as Plagueis. Plagueis is simply a bigger deal as a Force user and thus warranted more drastic actions from the Force to get rid of him and balance itself.

Midi-chlorian Manipulation

As most of you know, Darth Plagueis is most known for his ability to manipulate midi-chlorians with the Force. Most, however, don’t appear to be aware of the extent of this power, what it means to have mastered it, its applications, or what is required to use it. So let’s dive in, shall we?

Willpower

To successfully manipulate midi-chlorians for them to do the user’s bidding, one must have enough will and strength in the Force to override the Force’s control of them and replace it with one’s own. Midi-chlorians are the Force’s “proxy army”; they execute the Force’s will and allow the Force to be sensed and used by mortals, in addition to being the basis for the Living Force and life in the galaxy. Thus, for Plagueis to be able to manipulate them, he’d require the willpower to substitute the will of the Force, so that instead of executing the Force’s will, the midi-chlorians would instead execute Plagueis’ will, and that is exactly what he did:

”I began with experiments on scurriers and other small creatures. I used my will, amplified through my body’s own midi-chlorians, to override the lesser concentrated midi-chlorian voices of the test subjects. This proved more challenging than I predicted. Because midi-chlorians are linked by a universal mind, the ones in my own cells seem to resist this imposition upon their fellows. But eventually I succeeded, first with small creatures, then with slaves purchased from the Hutts. I forced midi-chlorians to override their natural life cycles.”

--Darth Plagueis
Book of the Sith

The unbalancing of the galaxy feat is not needed to demonstrate Plagueis superiority over the will of the Force; manipulating midi-chlorians is in itself an act of defiance against the Force’s will, a perversion of the natural and cosmic order of the universe. To master the art of manipulating midi-chlorians is the equivalent of mastering the Force itself on its most fundamental and basic level. Thus, if one deifies the Force, then one must also conclude Plagueis himself to be a god, literally, an apotheosized entity who brought down the divine arbiter of the galaxy “as if some deity had been tipped from its throne," and replaced its will with his own:

In the same way that the pre-Bane Sith had been responsible for their own extinction, the great dark side Lords of the past had doomed themselves to the nether realm through their attempts to conquer death by feeding off the energies of others, rather than by tapping the deepest strata of the Force and learning to speak the language of the midi-chlorians.

Darth Plagueis

Plagueis correctly surmises midi-chlorians to be the deepest strata of the Force: they are what generate the Living Force, allowing sentient beings to sense, feel and use it to manipulate the surrounding world. These acts of remodeling the physical universe are known as Force abilities, and different ones have disparate effects. They are all born of the Living Force, however, and the Living Force itself is born from midi-chlorians; thus, all Force abilities are born from midi-chlorians, and so in mastering midi-chlorians, one has in essence mastered all Force abilities, circumventing the usual prerequisites of research and prior knowledge completely, allowing oneself to learn them through nothing but one’s own will:

But Plagueis now understood that Tenebrous had been wrong about sorcery, as he had been wrong about so many things. Yes, the gift was strongest in those who, with scant effort, could allow themselves to be subsumed by the currents of the Force and become conduits for the powers of the dark side. But there was an alternative path to those abilities, and it led from a place where the circle closed on itself and sheer will substituted for selflessness. Plagueis understood, too, that there were no powers beyond his reach; none he couldn’t master through an effort of will.

Darth Plagueis

The Force does not need study to learn itself; everything the Force does is part of its inborn attributes as an energy field that surrounds, penetrates and binds the galaxy together, and it can will whatever it wants to happen within the scope of its powers. Midi-chlorians are its way of birthing life and communicating with said life. So when Plagueis supplants the Force and hijacks its control over the midi-chlorians, he becomes what the Force is - the supreme commander of the midi-chlorians and the midi-chlorians the enforcers of his will - and so whatever he wills becomes reality within the scope of his own power, identically to how the Force functions. Thus he has in essence mastered all known Force powers, all previously unknown powers, and can create new ones on a whim without the need for study. As he himself put it, none are beyond his reach, none he can’t master through an effort of will.

Mastering life and death

Since midi-chlorians are the basis for all life, mastering them would be the equivalent of mastering life and, as they are ultimately the same, death itself. Plagueis does this, first, by giving life:

After receiving the Sith title Darth Sidious, Palpatine studied the secrets of the dark side, including his Master’s apparent ability to generate life by influencing midi-chlorians.

Insider 113

Plagueis could, it was said, coax the midi-chlorians present in all living cells to create life from nothingness.

Databank: Darth Sidious

A mystic obsessed with eternal life, Plagueis is believed to have possessed knowledge that could sustain those who were dying, and perhaps had even gained the ability to use midi-chlorians to draw new life directly from the wellspring of the Force.

The New Essential Chronology

Deeper in the complex, they moved past cages containing as many creatures as could be found in a well-stocked zoo. OneOne-FourDee indicated a cluster separate from the rest. “These are the Magister’s most recent pregnancies.”

[...]

“What did the droid mean when it said the Magister’s pregnancies?” Beneath the breath mask, Plagueis might have quirked a smile. “It means that the pregnancies were not achieved by normal means of conception, but rather through the Force.”

[...]

On the same day they had allowed Venamis to die. Then, by manipulating the Bith’s midi-chlorians, which should have been inert and unresponsive, Plagueis had resurrected him. The enormity of the event had stunned Sidious into silence and overwhelmed and addled 11-4D’s processors, but Plagueis had carried on without assistance, again and again allowing Venamis to die and be returned to life, until the Bith’s organs had given out and Plagueis had finally granted him everlasting death.

Darth Plagueis

Then, by prolonging it:

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.

[...]

But having gained the power to keep another alive hadn’t been enough for him. And so after Sidious had returned to Coruscant, he had devoted himself to internalizing that ability, by manipulating the midi-chlorians that animated him. For several months he made no progress, but ultimately he began to perceive a measured change. The scars that had grown over his wounds had abruptly begun to soften and fade, and he had begun to breathe more freely than he had in twenty years. He began to sense that not only were his damaged tissues healing, but his entire body was rejuvenating itself. Beneath the transpirator, areas of his skin were smooth and youthful, and he knew that eventually he would cease to age altogether.

[...]

Sidious knew that his own powers had increased tenfold over the decades, but he couldn’t be certain he had learned all of Plagueis’s secrets—“his sorcerer’s ways,” as the Sun Guards referred to them—including the ability to prevent beings from dying.

[...]

This was no Sith trick. Not an instance of feigning death, but one of succumbing to its cold embrace. The being who had guided him to power was gone. Wry amusement narrowed his eyes. The Muun might have lived another hundred years unchanged. He might have lived forever had he succeeded fully in his quest.

Darth Plagueis

And finally, by taking it:

On the same day they had allowed Venamis to die. Then, by manipulating the Bith’s midi-chlorians, which should have been inert and unresponsive, Plagueis had resurrected him. The enormity of the event had stunned Sidious into silence and overwhelmed and addled 11-4D’s processors, but Plagueis had carried on without assistance, again and again allowing Venamis to die and be returned to life, until the Bith’s organs had given out and Plagueis had finally granted him everlasting death.

[...]

“Let me explain what is happening to you,” Plagueis said. “The cells that make up all living things contain within them organelles known as midi-chlorians. They are, in addition to being the basis for life, the elements that enable beings like me to perceive and use the Force. As the result of a lifetime of study, I have learned how to manipulate midi-chlorians, and I have instructed the limited number you possess to return to their source. In plain Basic, Veruna, I am killing you.”

Darth Plagueis

Darth Plagueis the Wise mastered reality itself. Fundamental concepts like life, death, order and chaos were like playthings to him. He did this without the aid of empires, without rituals, without countless centuries of planning and experimentation; he did this merely by sitting in his laboratory on Aborah, and willing it so. He became so powerful that he could even procreate new midi-chlorians in his body, and as midi-chlorians numerically dictate one’s Force potential, this is synonymous with growing more powerful just by thinking about it. If Sidious had not murked Plagueis in his sleep, the ensuing would be a harrowing prospect indeed:

His inward turn had enabled him to master the equally powerful energies of order and disorder, creation and entropy, life and death.

[...]

Plagueis remained convinced that he was on the verge of absolute success. The evidence was in his own increased midi-chlorian count; and in the power he sensed in Sidious when he had finally returned to Sojourn. The dark side of the Force was theirs to command, and in partnership they would someday be able to keep each other alive, and to rule the galaxy for as long as they saw fit.

Darth Plagueis

In contrast, for Valkorion, the notion of true immortality is an impossibility and he can never achieved no matter how strong he became, implying even had he succeeded in his galaxy-consuming ritual - which in itself took centuries of preparation and billions of sacrifices to begin, not to mention relied on the external energies of others to grant him strength rather than his own inner power - he still would have died in the end regardless:

"The Emperor has manipulated events for centuries towards one goal: performing an even greater ritual that will destroy this galaxy. But the ritual requires a great sacrifice to begin: billions of simultaneous deaths."

--Lord Scourge
The Old Republic

Yet, immortality is an impossibility. No matter how strong, how powerful, how godlike, all must perish. In the end, Valkorion could not escape the permanent, inevitable end to his existence. Finally, after thousands of years, the Immortal Emperor - his body, his spirit, the very essence of his being - is no more.

The Old Republic Codex: The Fall of Valkorion

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. But those few had been so focused on worldly power that they had ended up trapping themselves between realms. That they had never provided the Order with guidance from beyond attested to the fact that their influence had been negligible, and had long since faded from the world.

In the same way that the pre-Bane Sith had been responsible for their own extinction, the great dark side Lords of the past had doomed themselves to the nether realm through their attempts to conquer death by feeding off the energies of others, rather than by tapping the deepest strata of the Force and learning to speak the language of the midi-chlorians.

Darth Plagueis

The gap between Plagueis and someone like Valkorion cannot be accurately put into words. Plagueis just operates on a higher plane of existence. It is that simple, and that complex, and it is final. Anyone preceding the Wise One is a mere sideshow compared to him.

Combative applications

Of course, the most powerful Force ability imaginable can logically be applied to combat as well. For Plagueis, this manifested in both offence and defence. With the former, he was able to induce the midi-chlorians of the target to return to their source, the Cosmic Force, which would sever their connection and capacity to use the Living Force, and if taken to its extreme, kill them, as the lack of midi-chlorians would cause the absence of life - the presence of death:

"To sever the Force is to trigger a mass die-off of a victim’s midi-chlorians – not enough to kill, but enough to take a Jedi’s power. It could be that the Jedi of old knew this feat, but if so they did not understand its underpinnings. Severing the Force is the inverse of what I have done when inducing midi-chlorians to create life. It is far easier to achieve."

--Darth Plagueis
Book of the Sith

“Let me explain what is happening to you,” Plagueis said. “The cells that make up all living things contain within them organelles known as midi-chlorians. They are, in addition to being the basis for life, the elements that enable beings like me to perceive and use the Force. As the result of a lifetime of study, I have learned how to manipulate midi-chlorians, and I have instructed the limited number you possess to return to their source. In plain Basic, Veruna, I am killing you.”

Darth Plagueis

As Plagueis attacks the target’s midi-chlorians directly, unless the target knows how to manipulate midi-chlorians themselves, I am skeptical of the notion that a defence exists against this technique. This is demonstrated with an Yinchorri gifted to Hego Damask early in his career, when Plagueis succeeds in bypassing a Ysalamiri-esque Force bubble the Yinchorri’s midi-chlorians had generated around the specimen, making Mind Tricks on it impossible. Yet when Plagueis assaults the source of the Force bubble, the source of the Living Force itself within the Yinchorri, he evades the Force-dampening effects of the bubble, making the specimen vulnerable to mental suggestion:

Larsh Hill waited until he was certain that Qayhuk was finished to remark under his breath, "I'm not sure even the Senate is ready for them."

Holding Qayhuk's baleful gaze and motioning with his hand, Damask said, "You have no interest in seeing Yinchorr seated in the Senate."

Qayhuk took umbrage. "Why else would we have journeyed all this way?"

"You have no interest in seeing Yinchorr seated in the Senate," Plagueis repeated.

Qayhuk glanced at his green-skinned brethren, then looked at Hill. "Is Magister Damask deaf or in ill health?"

Hill turned to Damask in concern but said nothing.

Damask concealed his astonishment. As rumored, the Yinchorri were apparently resistant to Force suggestion! But how was it possible that midi-chlorians in a being of relatively low intelligence could erect an impenetrable wall against the influence of a Sith? Was this some sort of survival mechanism-the midi-chlorians' way of protecting the consciousness of their vessels by refusing to be manipulated? He would need to possess one of these beings to learn the secret.

[...]

A gift to Damask from the Council of Elders on the occasion of Yinchorr’s seating in the Senate, the towering reptilian condemned murderer shuffled to the center of the energy field that defined his cage on Aborah and, with confusion contorting the features of his beaked face, prostrated himself on the permacrete floor and mumbled in Basic: “I’m honored to be here and to perform whatever tasks you require of me.”

Standing at the field’s shimmering perimeter, 11-4D pivoted his head toward Plagueis. “Congratulations, Magister. At last he responds to your suggestion. You have undermined his resolve.

That resolve, Plagueis had learned after more than two years of experimentation on the Yinchorri, was in fact a kind of Force bubble fashioned by the turtle-like alien’s limited number of unusually willful midi-chlorians. This suggested that the Yinchorri was actually strong in the Force, despite his pitifully low count. The discovery had come as a breakthrough, and Plagueis was still grappling with the implications.

The Force bubble itself was similar to those generated by creatures that drew on the Force to avoid predation by natural enemies. The relationship between the arboreal ysalamir and its adversary, the vornskr, provided a curious example, in that the latter was attracted to the former by the very mechanism the ysalamir employed as a defense. Where an extremely low midi-chlorian count might have bolstered the odds of survival, nature had instead made the ysalimir species strong in the Force. So strong, in fact, that several of the creatures acting in concert could create a Force bubble encompassing kilometers rather than meters.

[...]

Plagueis hadn't lost interest in Venamis by any means, but the Yinchorri's immunity to Force suggestion - an immunity the species shared with Hutts, Toydarians, and others - had provided him with a new line of investigation. Unlike ysalamiri, which created a Force bubble in the presence of danger, the Yinchorri were in a perpetual state of involuntary immunity to Force suggestion. The fact that immunity was in a sense hardwired into them meant that the ability was an adaptation, prompted by a past threat to the survival of the species. To Plagueis, it meant that the Yinchorri's midi-chlorians had evolved to provide protection to a species that was naturally strong in the Force. If that were indeed the case, then the Yinchorri were living proof that the Sith of the Bane line had been on the right path from the very start.

[...]

In the same way that the pre-Bane Sith had been responsible for their own extinction, the great dark side Lords of the past had doomed themselves to the nether realm through their attempts to conquer death by feeding off the energies of others, rather than by tapping the deepest strata of the Force and learning to speak the language of the midi-chlorians. Plagueis was finally learning to do that, and was just beginning to learn how to persuade, prompt, cajole, and coax them into action. Already he could command them to promote healing, and now he had been successful in enticing them to lower their defenses. If he could compel a murderous Yinchorri to become peaceful, could he - with a mere suggestion - accomplish the opposite by turning a peaceful being into a murderer?

Darth Plagueis

By manipulating the victim’s midi-chlorians, he is able to telepathically dominate them even though that proved to be impossible otherwise. Theoretically, in his prime - the above feat occurred two decades before Plagueis’ prime, long before he fully mastered midi-chlorians - when his expertise in manipulating midi-chlorians had reached its summit, he should be able to completely circumnavigate the mental defences of others and dominate them without issue, no matter how strong they were in the Force, as the act of manipulating midi-chlorians required scant effort from Plagueis’ part. Logically, this should extend to any and all Force abilities of the target, and also the power to remove the Force from the completely, and/or kill them outright, as discussed above. Plagueis would not even need active effort to maintain this; once he triggers the process, gives the midi-chlorians instructions, they will continue subserviently on their own:

"Let me explain what is happening to you," Plagueis said. "The cells that make up all living things contain within them organelles known as midi-chlorians. They are, in addition to being the basis for life, the elements that enable beings like me to perceive and use the Force. As the result of a lifetime of study, I have learned how to manipulate midi-chlorians, and I have instructed the limited number you possess to return to their source. In plain Basic, Veruna, I am killing you."

Veruna's face was losing color, and his breathing had slowed. "Bring... me back. I can still be... of service... to you..."

"But you are, Your Majesty. A celebrated ancient poet once said that every death lessened him, for he considered himself to be a brother to every living being. I, on the other hand, have come to understand that every death I oversee nourishes and empowers me, for I am a true Sith."

"No... better than... an Anzati."

"The brain eaters? What does better than mean to those of us who have passed beyond notions of good and evil? Are you better than Bon Tapalo? Are you better than Queen Padm? Amidala? I am the only one fit to answer the question. Better are those who do my bidding." Plagueis placed his hand atop Veruna's. "I'll remain with you for a while as you meld with the Force. But at some point, I will have to leave you at the threshold to continue on your own."

"Don't do this... Damask. Please..."

"I am Darth Plagueis, Veruna. Your shepherd."

Darth Plagueis

Unless the target can manipulate midi-chlorians themselves, I cannot imagine any way they would logically be capable of defending themselves with. Plagueis is both the Abrahamic God and the grim reaper, the alpha and the omega, the beginning, the middle and the end; he is the master and commander of life and death; he gives it, extends it, or takes it away as he pleases. It would be antithetical to the nature of the character and his accomplishments to suggest one could avoid death at his hands should he come to claim you (or the inverse, grant you eternal life), unless your yourself have mastered the same power like for example Darth Sidious has. Plagueis is, for the lack of a better term, overpowered.

His defensive applications of midi-chlorian manipulation are no less game-breaking: When his apprentice was seeing his murder through, Plagueis stopped short of defending himself with a traditional Force Barrier to guard against Sidious’ Force Lightning. He was lacking any sort of Force-generated defences and assaulting him was akin to electrocuting a non-Force user:

Crackling from his fingertips, a web of blue lightning ground itself on the Muun’s breathing device. Plagueis’s eyes snapped open, the Force gathering in him like a storm, but he stopped short of defending himself. This being who had survived assassinations and killed countless opponents merely gazed at Sidious, until it struck him that Plagueis was challenging him! Confident that he couldn’t be killed, and in denial that he was slowly suffocating, he might have been simply experimenting with himself, actually courting death to put it in its place. Momentarily taken aback, Sidious stood absolutely still. Was Plagueis so self-deluded as to believe that he had achieved immortality? The question lingered for only a moment, then Sidious unleashed another tangle of lightning, drawing more deeply on the dark side than he ever had.

[...]

Sidious peered at Plagueis through the Force. “Oh, yes, by all means gather your midi-chlorians, Plagueis.” He held his thumb and forefinger close together. “Try to keep yourself alive while I choke the life out of you.”

Darth Plagueis

Yet, despite Sidious drawing on the dark side more deeply than he ever had, Plagueis wasn’t dying. Rather, he was regenerating his dying midi-chlorians faster than Sidious could kill him, forcing the latter to choke him out instead. Keep in mind that Darth Sidious is even at this point is labelled the most powerful Sith Lord in galactic history while coexisting with Plagueis:

Meet Darth Sidious - the most powerful Sith Master who has ever lived.

Darth Maul, Sith Apprentice

Sidious also outright tanked a telekinetic blast from Plagueis to no perceptible effect, proving he is too powerful for the Muun to be able to harm him with conventional tactics:

Still struggling for breath, Plagueis managed to stand, but only to collapse back onto the couch, knocking a statue from its perch. Sidious moved in, his hands upraised to deliver another bolt, his expression arctic enough to chill the room. A Force storm gathered over the couch, spreading out in concentric rings, to wash over Sidious and hurl objects to all corners. In the center of it, Plagueis's form became anamorphic, then resumed shape as the storm began to wane.

Sidious's eyes bored into the Muun's.

Darth Plagueis

Sidious at this point should then be substantially more powerful than Plagueis in the traditional measurement of Force power, yet the latter is able to keep himself alive in the face of the former’s full barrage of Sith Lightning without even erecting a Force defence. Of course this power is not limitless, as Plagueis did succumb to suffocation, but any elemental attack directly on his body should prove futile per his command over midi-chlorians preventing death. Should Plagueis choose to stack a conventional Force Barrier on top of this, he would be virtually invincible. Only beings who are powerful enough to override his own control of midi-chlorians or ragdoll him could theoretically defeat an all-out Darth Plagueis.

Other Force Feats

Plagueis does possess a plethora of displays of the more ordinary and less esoteric manifestations of the Force, some requiring special attention due to their impressiveness.

Alter Environment

During his visit to Naboo, Plagueis triggered a weather and tectonic event of global proportions with his power in the Force:

Later it would be said by Naboo and Gungan alike that they couldn’t recall a colder winter than the one that followed Hego Damask’s autumnal visit to their world. The rivers and even the falls below Theed froze; the rolling plains and tall forests were blanketed three meters deep with snow; plasmic quakes rocked the Gallo Mountains and the Lake Country, the Holy Places and the undersea city of Otoh Gunga; and many of the egresses of the underwaterways that hollowed the planet were blocked by ice floes.

Darth Plagueis

One could, of course, merely dismiss this as an example of the pathetic fallacy - that is when a story element is personified or its emotional underpinnings reflected in nature - exemplifying the first meeting of the two most powerful Dark Lords in galactic history, but that is simply not logical. Rivers and waterfalls do not simply freeze on their own on a mediterranean planet, nor does one naturally encounter three-meter-deep snow in such a temperate environment, and especially planet cores do not refrigerate randomly.

Naboo's surface consists of swampy lakes, rolling plains and green hills.

[...]

Climate: Temperate

[…]

Terrain: Hills, Plains, Swamps, Urban

Databank (2008): Naboo

The planet is a world of peculiar geology. It lacks a molten core, instead processing a honeycombed interior surging with luminous local plasma. Wide, shallow seas (the domain of sando aqua monsters and other giants) and soggy swamps separate flat plains of nola grass and scattered points of elevation, including the Gallo Mountains.

The Essential Atlas

Plagueis was the cause - it is the only logical explanation for such anomalous weather and geographical events. The snow and the frost would most likely be the result of planetary Cryokinesis, and the earthquakes that shook the planet underwater, over land and caused the mountains themselves to tremble could be telekinetic in origin. Thus, the feat does also reflect on Plagueis’ gargantuan levels of magnitude with Telekinesis and is an indicator of what he could bring to bear in a fight. Do note that this happened very early in Plagueis’ career, and he grew immensely afterwards. Planetary feats should then accordingly be considered low showings for peak Plagueis.

For comparison, Alter Environment showings have been performed by Vitiate as well, but they were much lesser in effect, yet required him great amounts of energy and multiple rituals to properly pull off:

Power hungry, the Emperor spent great energy discovering and perfecting esoteric rites of darkness – rituals that wrecked the atmosphere of Dromund Kaas, transforming the ionosphere into a swirling electric storm.

The Old Republic Holonet

Peak Valkorion is more powerful, yes, but he in turn lacks any showings in the same department. Save for, more rituals of course, which aren’t really reflective of his power as they are demonstrative of the lack of his power. The apocalypse of planet Ziost, for example, has been confirmed to be a ritual as well:

Global cataclysms are not unheard of. Whole worlds teeming with life have been rendered lifeless by meteorites, broken apart by instability in the planet's own core--even atomized by the destructive force of a supernova. But the eerie calm of a world stripped of life yet left otherwise intact is another matter altogether. Whispered rumors have persisted of planets snuffed out through intricate Sith rituals or by way of deadly, arcane machines--such as the device Revan sought to employ on Yavin 4--but Ziost represents a clear display of the corrosive power of the dark side of the Force taken to its extreme.

The Old Republic Codex: Death of a World

The codex entry states that "Whispered rumors have persisted [...] but Ziost represents a clear display of the corrosive power of the dark side taken to its extreme" regarding "intricate Sith rituals" and "deadly, arcane machines." It's quite simple: Vitiate used a ritual or a machine to eradicate the populace; it wasn't done under his own power. It seems Valkorion can’t devastate a planet the same way Plagueis can. What a shame.

Force Lightning

Plagueis does not possess any Force Lightning feats of great magnitude, but he has a remarkable showing of his range and area-of-effect when he sets an entire landscape aflame with a seemingly casual burst of Lightning:

Getting to his feet, Plagueis extended his long arms in front of him and loosed a storm of Force lightning that crackled over the landscape, igniting fires in the grass.

Darth Plagueis

To out this into perspective, a “landscape” is usually depicted as a large field or a vast open area, like below:

Should Plagueis choose to, he could theoretically envelop the entire battleground in Lightning in a VS scenario, and nothing would be spared from its atomizing shocks. Considering where Plagueis sits as a Force users in terms of overall magnitude, it’s safe to say this would be lethal for most beings and could be used to incinerate entire armies of powerful Force users. It’s an unmatched feat in the entire mythos in terms of amplitude. Even Valkorion’s famous takedown of a small fleet - although impressive in its own right - does not compare:

Physical Augmentation

Plagueis, like any Force user, can augment his physical capabilities beyond their natural levels. Given how Plagueis is a Sith Lord of paramount power, it should stand to reason his applications of directing the Force through his body would be quite extraordinary, as he demonstrates when he slaughters the crew of the Woebegone during which he moves almost faster than a droid who is fast enough to react to and calculate the trajectories of blaster bolts can perceive, kicks a Zabrak hard enough to snap his spine, burst his pulmonary arteries, and crush his chest cavity, and renders himself completely immune to physical injury from the teeth and claws of a Kaleesh and a Quara as if he had turned to stone:

The face-off tableau in the cabinspace had endured for only a moment when Wandau, who had served as a bodyguard for a celebrated Hutt, leapt into action, drawing and firing his blaster even as he raced for cover behind one of the bulkheads. A split second behind, Maa Kaap raised his weapon and fired a continuous hail of blaster bolts at the Muun. In the same instant Zuto and PePe, crouched low to the deck, sprang forward in an attempt to outflank their opponent and place him at the center of a deadly crossfire.

From the passageway that led to the cockpit came the rapid footfalls of the pilot, Blir', and the ship's Dresselian navigator, Semasalli. 11-4D knew that they had been monitoring cam feeds of the cargo bay, and thought it likely that they had witnessed whatever sentence the Muun had levied on Captain Lah.

The Muun's reaction to the barrage of bolts that converged on him required almost more processing power than the droid had at its disposal. By employing a combination of body movements, lightsaber, and naked right hand, the agile sentient evaded, deflected, or returned every shot that targeted him. Slowly surrendering energy, the bolts caromed from the deck and bulkheads, touching off alarms, prompting a switch to emergency illumination, and unleashing cascades of fire-suppressant foam from the ceiling aerosols. No sooner had the Balosar and the Dresselian entered the cabinspace than hatches sealed the corridors, preventing any escape from the melee. Only 11-4D's ability to calculate trajectories and react instantaneously to danger kept it from being on the receiving end of any of the numerous ricochets.

Spying Blir' and Semasalli, the Muun hurled the lightsaber in a spinning arc that took off the Balosar's antenepalps and scalp and most of the wrinkled Dresselian's left shoulder, misting the already agitated air with teal-colored blood. As alarms continued to wail and foam continued to gush, Blir' folded and fell face-first to the slickened deck, while Semasalli, screeching in pain, collapsed to one side, reaching futilely for his severed arm with the other.

The lightsaber had scarcely left the Muun's grip when Wandau flew from cover to bring the attack to the Muun, triggering his blaster as ceaselessly as Maa Kaap was still doing. This time, though, the Muun merely stretched out his right hand and absorbed the bolts. Traveling up the length of his arm and across his narrow chest, the energy seemed to fountain from the hand awaiting the return of the spinning weapon as a tangle of blue electricity that hissed from his tapered fingers, catching Wandau full-on and lifting him to the ceiling of the hold before dropping him to the puddled deck in a heap, as if his bones had turned to dust.

In strobing red light, Maa Kaap's eyes tracked the rise and fall of his broken comrade. His blaster depleted, the Zabrak drew a vibroblade from a belt sheath and launched himself at the Muun, his large right hand intent on fastening itself onto the Muun's spindly neck.

The Muun caught the lightsaber, but instead of bringing it to bear against Maa Kaap, he danced and twirled out of reach of the vibroblade and commenced parrying the Zabrak's martial kicks and punches, until a side-kick to the thorax drove Maa Kaap clear across the cabin and slamming into the bulkhead. OneOne-FourDee's audio pickups registered the snap of the Zabrak's spine and the bursting of pulmonary arteries.

Now Zuto and PePe dived at the Muun from both sides and actually managed to get a hold on him. But it was as if the Muun had turned to stone. The Kaleesh and the Quara attacked with teeth and claws, but to no perceptible effect. And when the Muun had had enough of it, he positioned the lightsaber directly in front of him and gyred in their grasp, taking off PePe's tusked face and Zuto's blunt, whiskered snout. OneOne-FourDee's olfactory sensors detected an outpouring of pheromones that signaled the death of the Kaleesh. Zuto, on the other hand - though gurgling blood and moaning in pain - could perhaps be saved if treated in time.

Straightening out of a wide-legged stance, the Muun deactivated the lightsaber and scanned the beings he had killed and those he had maimed with chilling exactitude. His yellow eyes fell on 11-4D, but only for an instant; then he fixed the lightsaber to his belt and went quickly to his nearest victim, who happened to be Doo Zuto. Dropping to one knee alongside him, the Muun gazed intently at the Quara's twitching body, but precisely at what the droid couldn't surmise. Zuto's bulging marine eyes seemed to implore his assailant for help, but the Muun did nothing to stanch the flow of blood or offer palliative aid.

He remained by the Quara's side for a few moments, then moved quickly to Maa Kaap, from whose crushed chest cavity blood bubbled with each shallow breath. Again, the Muun ran his eyes over his victim, from Maa Kaap's tattooed face to his large feet. Eyes closed, the Muun adopted a posture that suggested intense concentration or meditation, and Maa Kaap snapped back to panic-stricken consciousness. OneOne-FourDee tuned in to the Zabrak's pulse and found it regular - but only for a moment. Then the rhythm of Maa Kaap's heartbeat grew ragged and breaths began to stutter from his lungs.

Soon he was dead.

The Muun appeared to be frustrated, and his disappointment increased on finding that Blir' was deceased, as well. He spent only moments appraising Semasalli before going to Wandau, who was conscious though obviously paralyzed from the waist down.

"You dishonor your heritage and your weapon, Jedi," Wandau managed to say. "You could have used... the Force to compel us to do as you wished. I've not only seen that, but experienced it."

The Muun's face contorted in distaste. "If you've so little will," he said in the tongue of Wandau's species, "then you're of no use to me, Klatooinian." And ended Wandau's misery with a click of his thumb and middle finger.

Gradually the spray from the ceiling abated and the klaxons fell silent. His examinations completed, the Muun stood and turned slowly to the droid.

Darth Plagueis

Another great demonstration of Plagueis’ physical capabilities would be when, during an assassination attempt on him, he sustains grievous injuries such as having a portion of his face removed, having his trachea and several blood vessels severed, sustaining multiple heart failures, paralyzing pain and losing gallons of blood, yet endures the agony and unleashes a fierce counteroffensive of snapping necks and punching through armored torsos, crushing skulls and smashing windpipes with his unarmed strength, and speedblitzes and stomps the Maladians in close quarters combat with his speed:

At the same instant Hill's right knee touched the polished stone, a jangle of foreboding laddered up Plagueis's spine. Turning ever so slightly, he saw that 11-4D had rotated its head toward him in a gesture Plagueis had come to associate with alarm. The dark side fell over him like a shroud, but instead of acting on impulse, he restrained himself, fearful of betraying his true nature prematurely. In that instant of hesitation, time came to a standstill, and several events happened at once.

The high official gave a downward tug to the pendant he had placed around Hill's neck, and the old Muun's head toppled from his shoulders and began to roll down the tipped stage. Blood geysered from Hill's neck, and his body fell to one side with a thud and began to jerk back and forth as one after another of his hearts failed.

Yanking their hands from the roomy, opposite sleeves of their robes, the hooded members of the order made sidelong throwing motions, which sent dozens of decapitator disks screaming through the air. Muuns to both sides of Plagueis fell to their knees, their last breaths caught in their throats. A disk buried deep in his forehead, one of the Sun Guards twirled in front of Plagueis like a crazed marionette. Blood fountained, turning to mist. Struck in at least three places and leaking lubricant, 11-4D was trying to limp to Plagueis's side when another disk whirled into its alloy body, touching off a storm of sparks and smoke.

Plagueis pressed his right hand to the right side of his neck to discover that a disk had made off with a considerable hunk of his jawbone and neck, and in its cruel passing had severed his trachea and several blood vessels. He cupped the Force against the injury to keep himself from lapsing into unconsciousness, but he fell to the floor regardless, with blood pumping onto the already slick stone circle. Around him, slanted in his faltering vision, the assassins had drawn vibroblades from the other sleeves of the robes and were beginning a methodical advance on the few Muuns who were still standing. A hail of bolts streaked from the blaster cradled in the arms of the remaining Sun Guard, sweeping half a dozen hooded beings off the rim of the circle, before he himself was butchered.

Tricked, Plagueis thought, as pained by the realization as he was by the wound. Outmaneuvered by a group of inferior beings who at least had had sense enough to place artfulness above arrogance.

[...]

Slumped on his right side, knees drawn up to his chest, eyes open but unmoving, Plagueis watched the second Echani succumb to multiple stabs from the assassins' vibroblades. With blood welling out from under Plagueis's cupped right hand and glistening in a pool on the floor beneath his neck, they had taken him for dead. But now they were moving from the body of one fallen Muun to the next, checking for signs of life and finishing what they had begun. A few had lowered their black hoods, revealing themselves to be Maladians - the same group Sidious had employed to deal with Vidar Kim.

For an instant he wondered if Sidious had secretly taken out a second contract, but he immediately dismissed the thought - born as it was of his not wanting to admit to himself that the Gran had bested him. He wondered if the Maladians had actually been bold enough to kill the prominent Canted Circle members they were impersonating. Unlikely, given that the assassins were known and respected for their professionalism. The members had probably been rendered unconscious by gas or some other means.

Not a meter away stood 11-4D, five decapitator disks protruding from his alloy body and telltale lights blinking, in the midst of a self-diagnosis routine. Having run himself through a similar test, Plagueis knew that he had lost a great deal of blood, and that one of his subsidiary hearts was in fibrillation. Sith techniques had helped him perform chemical cardioversions on his other two hearts, but one of them was working so hard to compensate that it, too, was in danger of becoming arrhythmic. Plagueis moved his eyes just enough to fix the locations of some of the two dozen assassins that had survived the Sun Guards' counterattack; then he dug deep into the Force and catapulted himself to his feet.

The closest of the assassins swung to him with raised vibroblades and rushed forward, only to be flung backward off the canted stage and against the room's curved walls. Others Plagueis felled with his hands by snapping necks and putting his fists through armored torsos. Spreading his arms wide, he clapped his hands together, turning every loose object in the vicinity into a deadly projectile. But the Maladians were far from run-of-the-mill murderers. Members of the cult had killed and wounded Jedi, and in response to confronting Force powers, they didn't shrink or flee but simply changed tactics, moving with astounding agility to surround Plagueis and wait for openings.

The wait lasted only until Plagueis attempted to unleash lightning. His second subsidiary heart failed, paralyzing him with pain and nearly plunging him into unconsciousness. The assassins wasted not a moment, throwing themselves at him in groups, though in a vain attempt to penetrate the Force shield he raised. Again he rallied, this time with a ragged sound dredged from deep inside that erupted from him like a sonic weapon, shattering the eardrums of those within ten meters and compelling the rest to bring their hands to their ears.

In blinding motion his hands and feet smashed skulls and windpipes. He stopped once to conjure a Force wave that all but atomized the bodies of six Maladians. He spun through a turn, dragging the wave halfway around the room to kill half a dozen more. But even that wasn't enough to deter his assailants. They flew against him again, making the most of his momentary weakness to open gashes on his arms and shoulders. Down on one knee, he levitated a Sun Guard blaster from the floor and called it toward him; but one of the assassins succeeded in altering its trajectory by hurling himself into the path of the airborne weapon.

With nothing more than the Force of his mind, Plagueis rattled the floor, knocking some of the assassins off their feet, but others rushed in to take their places, slashing at him with their vibroblades from every angle. He knew that he had life enough to conjure one final counteroffensive. He was a moment from loosing hell on the Maladians when he sensed Sidious enter the room.

Sidious and Sate Pestage, in whose hands a repeating blaster fashioned a hell of its own, a barrage of light that separated limbs from torsos, hooded heads from cloaked shoulders. Hurrying to Plagueis's side, Sidious lifted him upright, and in unison they brought swift death to the rest.

Darth Plagueis

You can also witness nice feats of Force Healing, Telekinesis, Force Bellows, and Force Barrier in the mix, proving that even in a physical condition most horrendous, Plagueis is still one of the most devastating and capable combatants and Force wielders to ever have existed, decades before his prime. At the pinnacle of his powers he should have far more command over the Force and thus an even greater capability to function under usually debilitating injuries and destroy his enemies with insane strength and speed. Not to mention his ability to turn himself to "stone," bolstered by midi-chlorian manipulation, which he could use to rejuvenate his body on the fly. Truly, you have to be something special to put Plagueis down for good.

Powerscaling

Of course, Plagueis is not solely defined by his own feats, but also feats of others, and general statements about his power as well. Welcome to the realm of powerscaling.

Supremacy among all previous Sith

Thus stated the backcover blurb of the Darth Plagueis novel. Of course, the legitimacy of novel blurbs has fallen under scrutiny many times, many dismissing them on the basis of merely being marketing material to promote the book and appeal to the customer, or some other explanation. Leland Chee, the maintainer of continuity at Lucasfilm Ltd. had this to say regarding the canonicity of novel blurbs:

"'Lucasfilm canon' refers to anything produced by any of the Lucas companies, whether it be movies, books, games, or internet."

--Leland Chee
Star Wars.com forums

As products of Lucasbooks, blurbs at the back of the novels would fall under Chee’s classification of canon. However, the man’s most recent comments have painted a different picture:

“License to be subjective” is ultimately a rather vague term that comes down to one’s interpretation. I will not be offering one here, as Plagueis has more than enough going for him to warrant a position second only Palpatine himself among the Sith, including his own musings:

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.

[...]

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

Plagueis is clearly aware of Vitiate’s existence, yet proclaims that he does not know of anyone from the ancient texts and holocrons who has matched his own level of power. Whether this proves he is definitively above Vitiate is up for debate, but what I find more fascinating are the other things Plagueis has read about in his studies:

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.

[...]

Still in safekeeping on Aborah were texts and holocrons that recounted the deeds and abilities of Sith Masters who, so it was said and written, had been able to summon wind or rain or fracture the skies with conjured lightning. In their own words or those of their disciples, a few Dark Lords claimed to have had the ability to fly, become invisible, or transport themselves through space and time.

Darth Plagueis

Yet Plagueis ultimately concludes none of that equals his own power based on the fact he could master any ability through sheer willpower. It should then be assumed that none of the powers described above - mass paralysis in crowds, global Force corruption, manipulation of solar flares to induce supernovas, flight, invisibility, teleportation and time manipulation - are beyond his ability to replicate in his prime, even if one does not wish to absolutely declare him the strongest who ever lived based on his own opinion.

Banite scaling

As the penultimate member of the Order of the Sith Lords first instituted by Darth Bane a thousand years prior, Plagueis would benefit from a linear generational power growth among the successors to Darth Bane. In other words, the Banite Sith grew more powerful each successive generation and Plagueis was the second to last recipient of their accumulated power:

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 each 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

"Bane's power has been passed down for a thousand years. I vow to be its last recipient."

--Darth Sidious
Book of the Sith

“Descended from Darth Bane, we are the select few who refuse to be carried by the Force and who carry it instead - thirty in a millennium rather than the tens of thousands fit to be Jedi.”

[...]

He sometimes wondered: Was he a level behind? Two levels behind? Such questions were precisely what had driven generations of Sith apprentices ultimately to challenge their Masters. The uncertainty about who was the more powerful. The need to test themselves, to face the definitive trial.

[...]

"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 Plagueis

Prominent members in the line preceding Plagueis included Darth Bane, Darth Zannah, Darth Cognus, Darth Vectivus, Darth Gravid, Darth Gean, Darth Ramage, Darth Tenebrous’ Master, and Darth Tenebrous. From most of these Sith Lords, Plagueis would have inherited notable feats or accolades that could be ascribed to him in full. I will now go over the members I deem noteworthy and what Plagueis gains from them.

From Bane, Plagueis gets another novel blurb declaring him to be the most powerful darksider, an accolade where his power is compared favorably to those ancient Sith who had created holocrons (which would include Darth Nihilus and Vitiate), a statement declaring his mastery and knowledge of Sith techniques and power to be superior to all before him, a feat ravaging the surface of a planet and killing armies of Force users with a firestorm, and a feat of deflecting a lightsaber blade with a full-body Force Barrier:

He had read the histories of the great Sith Lords; many were filled with feats almost too incredible to be believed. Yet even if these accounts were true, even if some of his predecessors had had the ability to use the dark side to destroy entire worlds or make a sun go nova, Bane still felt that his power measured up to the described abilities of many of those who had successfully created Holocrons of their own.

Darth Bane: Rule of Two

She was less than a meter away, her blade already slashing in for the killing blow, when she felt all the hair on the back of her neck rise. A shimmering purple cocoon of dark side energy enveloped Bane, a fragile shell holding back a storm of pure power.

She tried to pull back but it was too late. As her blade bit into the cocoon the energy was released in a sudden burst that sent both of them flying backward. Bane slammed hard into the wall against his back and crumpled to the ground. Zannah was tossed ten meters farther, landing hard on the stone floor.

Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil

Kaan, Githany, and the rest of the Dark Lords had gathered atop a barren plateau overlooking the vast forests where Hoth and his army were hiding. They had come on their fliers: short-range, single-person, airborne vehicles front-mounted with heavy blaster guns. The fliers were parked at the edge of the plateau, fifty meters away from where the Sith sat in a loose circle. The ritual had begun.

They were communing with the Force, all of them slipping into a meditative trance as one. Their minds drifted deeper and deeper into the well of power contained within each individual, drawing on their strength and combining it through a single conduit. Bane stood in the center of the circle, urging them on.

"Touch the dark side. The dark side is one. Indivisible."

The night sky filled with dark clouds and a fierce wind swirled across the plateau, tearing at the cloaks and capes of the Sith. The air shook with the thunder and crackle of a mounting electrical storm. Bolts of blue-white lightning arced through the air, and the temperature suddenly dropped.

"Give yourself over to the dark side. Let it surround you. Engulf you. Devour you."

The Brotherhood slipped deeper into the collective trance, barely even aware of the storm now raging about their physical selves. Bane stood at the eye of the storm, drawing the bolts of lightning into himself, feeding on them. He felt his strength surge as he channeled and focused the dark side from the others.

This is how it should be! All the power of the Brotherhood in one body! The only way to unleash the full potential of the dark side!

"Do you feel invincible? Invulnerable? Immortal?"

He had to shout to be heard above the howling wind and thunder. A web of lightning spiraled out from his body, connecting him to each of the other Sith. He shivered then suddenly went stiff, arms spread out at his sides. Slowly, his rigid body began to rise into the air.

"Can you feel it?" he screamed, feeling as if the raw power of the Force roaring through him might rip his very flesh asunder. "Are you ready to kill a world?"

There was very little in the galaxy that could scare a man like General Hoth. Yet as he sat looking over the latest situational reports from his scouts he felt the first glimmers of real fear gnawing away at the base of his skull.

The rift between himself and Farfalla had been mended, but now there was no way to get the reinforcements down to Ruusan's surface. Small messenger ships with a crew of one or two had been able to slip past the Sith blockade undetected, though on occasion even these vessels had been spotted and destroyed. Anything larger would never make it.

But his fear was more than the result of his frustration at having help so near yet so impossibly far away. There was something sinister in the air. Something evil.

Suddenly an image leapt unbidden to his mind: a premonition of death and destruction. He sprang to his feet and ran from his tent. Even though it was the middle of the night, he was only mildly surprised to see that most of the rest of the camp was up and about. They had felt it, too. Something coming for them. Coming fast.

They were looking to him for leadership, waiting for him to take command. He did so with a single, shouted order.

"Run!"

The storm rolled down from the plateau and rumbled across the forest. Hundreds of forks of searing lightning shot down from the sky-and the forest erupted. Trees burst into flames, the blaze racing through the branches and spreading out in all directions. The underbrush smoldered, smoked, and ignited; and a wall of fire swept across the planet's surface.

The inferno consumed everything in its path.

Heat and fire. There was nothing else in Bane's world. It was as if he had become the storm itself: he could see the world before him, swallowed up in red and orange and reduced in seconds to ash and embers by the unchained fury of the dark side.

It was glorious. And then suddenly it was gone.

There was a jarring thump as his body dropped from where it had been hovering five meters above the ground. For several seconds he was completely disoriented, unable to figure out what happened. Then he understood: the connection had been broken.

He rose to his feet slowly, uncertain of his balance. All around him were the forms of the Sith, no longer kneeling in meditation but collapsed or rolling on the ground, their minds reeling from the sudden end to the joining ritual. One by one they also regained their composure and stood, most looking as confused as Bane had been only seconds before.
Then he noticed Lord Kaan standing off to the side, over by the fliers.

"What happened?" Bane demanded angrily. "Why did you stop?"

"Your plan worked," Kaan replied curtly. "The forest is destroyed, the Jedi have fled to open ground. They are exposed, vulnerable. Now we go to finish them off."

Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

He knew that the first army to truly unite as one would be victorious, and he eventually brought the Sith Lords together and showed them how to focus their dark side energy into a lethal blast of power that scoured the surface of Ruusan. Most of the Jedi and the Sith were utterly destroyed, but the war was far from over.

The Official Star Wars Fact File #22

Darth Bane has his own plans… To use the Brotherhood of Darkness as one in a devastating blow against the Army of Light. Meanwhile, Rain, lost in the woods, wakes up to the tremors of a dying world...

Jedi vs Sith #4

Bane’s world-crushing strategy almost worked but Lord Kaan, fearing Bane’s power, balked and chose to finish the Jedi with a direct attack.

Jedi vs Sith #5

The ancient forests of Ruusan have been reduced to ash, the shock of which has driven most of the native “bouncers” mad, and the final battle is about to start…

Jedi vs Sith #6

Bane reached inward to call upon the dark side, drawing it not only from himself but also from the orbalisks fastened to his chest and back. Feeling an incredible surge of power beyond any he had known before, he released it in a burst of energy. The hallucinations that had plagued his wounded mind ever since the detonation of the thought bomb vanished, instantly and utterly annihilated by his newfound power. He was stronger now than he ever had been, and he knew the visions of the dead Sith would haunt him no more.

Darth Bane: Rule of Two

From Zannah, Plagueis receives the ability to shield himself from a planetary, army-busting firestorm:

The fires had killed most of the other bouncers. The survivors had all gone mad. All except Laa. Somehow Rain had saved her. She'd used the Force, shielding them both from the burning death and destruction, though she wasn't quite sure how she'd done it. It had just sort of… happened. Now she and Laa had nobody left but each other.

Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

From Gravid, Plagueis inherits a feat of erecting a Force Barrier over an entire fortress, and from Gean, he gains the power to penetrate said fortress-spanning Force Barrier:

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

From Tenebrous’ Master, he gets the feats of penetrating the Jedi Order’s Force bubble mentioned earlier, and the stuff he gets from Tenebrous himself is significant enough to warrant its own section.

Darth Tenebrous scaling

Unlike all others of his line before him, Plagueis was not more powerful than his Master at the time of the latter’s death; far from it in fact. This gap and the wonders it does for Plagueis are best accentuated by their respective abilities to manipulate midi-chlorians prior to the galaxy-wide unbalancing of the Force Plagueis and Sidious orchestrated:

On the fulcrum they had fashioned, the light side had dipped and the dark side had ascended.

On the same day they had allowed Venamis to die. Then, by manipulating the Bith’s midi-chlorians, which should have been inert and unresponsive, Plagueis had resurrected him. The enormity of the event had stunned Sidious into silence and overwhelmed and addled 11-4D’s processors, but Plagueis had carried on without assistance, again and again allowing Venamis to die and be returned to life, until the Bith’s organs had given out and Plagueis had finally granted him everlasting death.

Darth Plagueis

Amidst the billions upon billions of individual midi-chlorian deaths in Tenebrous' cells were a tiny fraction of midi-chlorians that were not dying. That would not die so long as they inhabited a living host. These especially tenacious midi-chlorians - Tenebrous had privately labeled them with the indeed the jesting sobriquet maxi-chlorian - had been altered. Improved. It would not be an overstatement, in Tenebrous' opinion, to use the word perfected. These maxi-chlorians would indeed migrate, but not into the Force.

They would migrate into Plagueis.

To detect this infinitesimal percentage would require the precision of a Bith; it was far beyond his apprentice's limited perceptions - and indeed, Tenebrous had gone to considerable trouble to ensure it would always remain so.

Instead of actually training his doltish apprentice, Tenebrous had flattered Plagueis' mysticism while pricking his insecurities, sending him off on one useless, doomed-to-fail mission after another. In turn, Tenebrous had invested every available second of the freedom this afforded into designing, creating, and deploying the one weapon that Plagueis would never suspect.

Could never suspect. His own prejudices about the Force ensured Plagueis wouldn't believe such a thing was possible.

Tenebrous created a retrovirus that could infect midi-chlorians.

Midi-chlorians were, after all, merely symbiotic organelles that contribute to the organic processes of the living cells they inhabit. Due to their role in Force interactions, altering them was singularly challenging - they had an unsettling tendency to spontaneously express unexpected and unfortunate side effects - but by applying the full analytic prowess of his vast Bith brain and the preternatural power of his Bith senses to detect and resolve sub-microscopic structure, he eventually succeeded in creating a retrovirus that would transform normal midi-chlorians into long-lived maxi-chlorians.

But that was only the beginning.

With the patient, painstaking attention to the slightest, most insignificant detail that was his hallmark, Tenebrous had encoded his custom retrovirus with his most potent weapon: his own consciousness.

Once completed, Tenebrous had released the virus into his own bloodstream. It had spread throughout his body, infecting midi-chlorians in every one of his cells with gratifying alacrity. Not all his midi-chlorians, though, as the infected maxi-chlorians no longer fully functioned; to infect them all would have cut off his own connection to the Force. A partial severance of this connection was a necessary sacrifice, however, and through an extended process of trial and error, he was able to fine-tune the effect and confine it to the one sector of his Force powers he no longer needed - his ability to sense the motion of the future.

Of what possible use was the ability to see a future he already knew?

Now, dead at last, he could begin to enjoy the fruits of his lifelong labor. In the Force, he could feel that his body had already suffered irreversible brain-death, yet his consciousness remained, fully aware, fully functional, and connected to the Force in a manner more intimate than he had ever believed possible. Freed now of the crude biological processes that mark the passage of time, Tenebrous found he could perceive the measured tick of each individual nanosecond while simultaneously comprehending the entire sweep of galactic eons.

Beside Tenebrous' corpse, as Plagueis carefully observed the vanishing of Tenebrous' midi-chlorians, maxi-chlorians were being subtly and invisibly carried across the intervening space to settle in Plagueis' eyes and mouth, on his skin and into an open wound on his back, where they entered the apprentice's bloodstream and slipped into his cells, releasing their viral cargo of Tenebrous' mind.

Perfect. And what made it even more perfect was that his apprentice would never comprehend the ironic pun of the name Tenebrous had given him: Plagueis.

The diseased one.

Driven by the dark side-powered will of the Sith Master, the retrovirus propagated with incredible speed. As it carried his consciousness throughout his apprentice's body, Tenebrous found himself becoming pleasurably aware the he was gaining access to Plagueis' sensorium. He could literally feel what Plagueis felt, both the coldly clinical satisfaction at having successfully engineered Tenebrous' murder.... and the Force-perception that let Plagueis monitor the last vanishing remnants of Tenebrous' uninfected midi-chlorians.

The Tenebrous Way

Plagueis before the amplification of his powers he acquired by way of the unbalancing of the Force and the dark side nexus it transformed the galaxy into, could only moderately manipulate his midi-chlorians to little effect. Tenebrous on the other hand is an absolute master who is able to alter the very existential functions of the midi-chlorians and create a retrovirus to mutate them as he designed, and also to sustain them in the physical world rather than allowing them to subsume into the Cosmic Force, as well as sever their connection to the Force entirely. When Plagueis attempted to do this prior to the unbalancing amp, he failed utterly and the midi-chlorians were unresponsive to his commands, and thus he was unable to prevent the midi-chlorians from merging with the Cosmic Force, keep beings from dying, resurrect them, or sever their connection to the Force. He could not do this alone, nor with the combined power of Sidious, which leads me to believe Tenebrous was more powerful than Plagueis and Sidious were combined prior to the unbalancing, and as the pair succeeded in tipping the balance of the Force and bathing the galaxy in the dark side, Tenebrous could most likely accomplish that on his own. And given that peak Plagueis scales above Tenebrous per Banite scaling, it would also mean Plagueis himself at the height of his powers could replicate the unbalancing by himself, most if not all of his post-amp feats without the aid of his amp, and every feat he did prior to his amp should at least be doubled to accommodate for prime Plagueis’ vast power growth.

Where do you people find the time for all of this?

Summary and final words

To condense the contents of this essay, here is a summary of the most predominant things Darth Plagueis’ is capable of and has to his name:
[list]
[*]Tilting the balance of the Force to the dark side on a galactic scale and manipulating midi-chlorians, in the process dominating the will of the Force and replacing it with his own.
[*]Telepathically influencing the minds of every living organism - possibly sextillions of beings - all over the galaxy, an act which warranted direct and personal intervention from the Force, proving he would have succeeded, and also forcing the creation of the Chosen One, a walking plot device, to take him and his associates down.
[*]Severing others' connection to the Force, bypassing any Force-generated defence they have be it mental or physical with no way to resist him; being able to give, prolong or take life at will, with the victims having no defence against having their midi-chlorians manipulated unless they know how to manipulate midi-chlorians themselves.
[*]Mastering any Force ability by willing it so.
[*]Becoming immune to claws and teeth with nothing more than his baseline Force-augmented durability as if turning to stone, and being able to withstand brutal and mutilating injuries with little difficulty, on top of which being able to infinitely revitalize his midi-chlorians faster than the most powerful Sith Lord ever could kill him with Force Lightning without even erecting an active Force defence, and then stacking a real Force defence on top of all that, which is powerful enough to casually deflect lightsaber blades and planetary, army-busting infernal firestorms, which he can also extend to encompass a huge fortress; basically rendering himself unkillable
[*]Moving faster than hyper-advanced droids able to calculate the trajectories of and instantanously react to blaster bolts, could perceive with his speed, and possessing the strength to effortlessly smash skulls and punch through armored bodies.
[*]Freezing an entire planet to its core with Cryokinesis and razing its surface with planet-wide Pyrokinesis.
[*]Covering an entire landscape in Force Lightning with a casual burst.
[*]Telekinetically atomizing armored assassins and shaking a planet to its core, causing even mountains to tremble.
[*]Statements proclaiming him more powerful than any Sith before him both directly and via scaling.
[*]Statements comparing his power favorably to the ancient Sith being able to ravage worlds, compel stars to go nova, manipulate space and time etc. both directly and via scaling
[*]Among other things...
[/list]

In the end, Plagueis has all the chops to be Valkorion’s superior: feats, accolades, scaling, and arguably even thematic intent. James Luceno name-dropped Vitiate, yet had Plagueis declare himself superior to all before him, on top of pulling off absurd cosmic feats and coexisting with canonically the most powerful Sith Lord of all time, yet according to Luceno would have beaten Sidious in a fight regardless of the latter’s status.

In addition to being Sidious’ actual mentor, Plagueis is in many ways a proto-Palpatine himself: a mystic, all-powerful egomaniac, learned of the Force in all its aspects and most fundamental natures, hellbent on overturning all previous traditions and pave the way for his ascension as the next step in the evolution: the immortal, eternal, divine entity residing over not only all life, civilization and the universe, but also the Force itself as the supreme arbiter of reality.

Plagueis goals, the measures he took to and the successes he had when trying to achieve them, and his overall presentation mark him as far more than a run-of-the-mill Sith with delusions of grandeur. To me, there is no question that Emperor Palpatine is the grandest and strongest of all Sith, but of equally little contention is that Darth Plagueis deserves the second spot. I would say it’s not even debatable at this point. Even if you personally disagree, at least I hope you have raised your opinion of Plagueis and come to appreciate him more as an absolute Force titan, a terrifying beast worthy of embodying of the dark side of the Force.

Thank you for your time.

Originally posted by Kurk
Where do you people find the time for all of this?

You ruined my posting spree. Die.

That. . . is just about all I expected. Nothing I didn't already know and that can't be debunked pretty solidly. I'll get started soon.

Originally posted by Kurk
Where do you people find the time for all of this?

Originally posted by AncientPower
That. . . is just about all I expected. Nothing I didn't already know and that can't be debunked pretty solidly. I'll get started soon.

Know that I won't be wasting time on your incoherent ramblings even should you make a response, AP. Nobody cares about you at this point, and everyone is tired of your dishonesty, lies and general stupidity.

👆

Excellent thread, all hail Hego.

Oy vey, anyone who doesn't agree with the Sheevite's are dishonest and stupid.