Registered: Jun 2016
Location: The Throne of the Sheevites
Part 1
Yes, outliers exist. But unless you have something better than “I don’t think that Tenebrous can blah blah blah…” to substantiate the restrictions you are putting on his ability to use esoteric Force powers, you can suck his Bith cock. You have no evidence that Tenebrous lacks the talent for any of these abilities, nor have you evidence that some of the intermediary Banites who possessed these abilities had an unnatural aptitude for them that most other Force users lacked. The reason they aren’t common amongst Sith and Jedi because the Banite Order is a little more advanced than your average Jedi Knight or Sith Lord, and as such, have more advanced standards for what is the norm in terms of Force knowledge and mastery.
Tenebrous’ only canonical limitation in terms of lacking talent for something is Sith Sorcery. And note how simply lacking talent doesn’t mean he is incapable of Sorcery entirely. It simply means he learns and masters it slowly, and that it takes him significantly more effort to attain the same level of proficiency with it as a talented person. This is the case with any skill, really, and even Star Wars we have examples of some people having a higher Force potential than others, and thus having more talent to use the Force, whereas some people lack that talent, yet are still able to use the Force well and in some cases attain an equal level of ability with the talented person (Anakin vs Obi-Wan on Mustafar comes to mind immediately, where Kenobi is able to stalemate Vader in the Force despite his far lesser talent, which was so little in fact that he was sent off to the Jedi Agricultural Corps and was deemed to never become a Jedi until he met Qui-Gon, yet decades later he is among the legends of the Order’s entire history).
Why am I bringing this up? Well, I do indeed have proof that Tenebrous should be capable of some high level Sorcery (and high level Force abilities in general) despite his lack of talent for it. First of all, both Plagueis and Bane, as you’ve noted, lacked the talent for Sith Sorcery, yet we see both of them pulling off Sorcery feats on the fly:
Like a feline, Sidious leapt from the scree, his curled fingers aimed for Plagueis. But instead of vising themselves around the Muun’s slender neck, his hands went through thin air and met each other, leaving him to collapse face-first atop the outcropping. Off to one side he heard his Master laugh in scorn. Either Plagueis had moved faster than Sidious could discern or, worse yet, he had never been there to begin with.
“So easily tricked,” Plagueis said, confirming the latter. “You waste my time. More of this and the dark side will never take an interest in you.”
--Darth Plagueis
With his mind he tried to project an image of his hook-handled weapon resting just beneath his empty fingers. His apprentice didn't move. She stayed in her defensive stance, her brow furrowing as she weighed her chances.
--Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil
And yes, Force Illusions are identified under the umbrella of Sith Sorcery, in case you’re wondering:
But sorcery had been employed less to extend life than to create illusions, fashion beasts, and resurrect the dead.
--Darth Plagueis
Bane’s case is particularly interesting. He manages a Force Illusion, while drugged and as a consequence having his connection to the Force weakened, in the midst of combat, and successfully fools a more powerful Force user than him. His lack of talent didn’t seem to hinder him there – it’s only the really, really advanced stuff that he couldn’t properly understand, like Zannah’s Spells of Madness (which, for the record, are also more complicated than any Force ability even Vitiate ever showed in combat). Given the Banite mentality that you must master everything in order to fight and surpass your Master one day, as well as pass all your knowledge onto the next generation, I find it unlikely that Tenebrous wouldn’t have mastered Sith Sorcery as far as he could go with it – that is, being able to do Sorcery on the fly in the midst of combat and have it affect equally or more powerful Force users successfully, which is the level of proficiency Bane achieved, and Tenebrous has a far higher base potential and intrinsic aptitude than Bane.
Then there’s Plagueis, who also manged an Illusion casually. It should be noted that all that Plagueis knew came from Tenebrous, so we know for a fact that Tenebrous is also capable of Sorcery on the fly, casually, even if you don’t buy the Bane logic above. To that fact we can add another and Tenebrous becomes an even more impressive sorcerer; the fact that Tenebrous (in comparison to his overall Force knowledge and mastery) hadn’t actually taught Plagueis very much at all:
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.
[…]
Hmm-perhaps he should have invested some time in actually training the foolish Muun. Tapping Plagueis' Force powers would be more entertaining if they weren't so stunted from disuse.
--The Tenebrous Way
So Tenebrous, according to his own words, hadn’t “actually trained” Plagueis. While this is hyperbole, as Plagueis does muse about his training sessions (Sith Sorcery included) with Tenebrous, it does speak of the level of knowledge Tenebrous withheld from his apprentice, if what he taught to Plagueis doesn’t constitute as “actual training” in his eyes. So logically this would extend to Sith Sorcery as well, given that if what Plagueis showed regarding Illusions was all that Tenebrous knew himself, then that would mean that the latter would have given all of his illusory knowledge to the former, which would constitute as actual training, but that cannot be given what Tenebrous has stated. So it stands to reason that Tenebrous is a far mightier sorcerer than either Bane or (early-novel) Plagueis and his Illusions are top tier. He may even be proficient in other sorcerous Force powers, although that is mere speculation. Not that it matters, since the point here is to prove that even if he is lacking in talent in certain areas, or that if some of his predecessors were very attuned to specific Force powers (all of which remain completely baseless assumptions on your part), Tenebrous can still attain a very high level of mastery in said areas through sheer determination and intensive practice and study, possessing one of, if not the greatest mind out of all Sith Lords in terms of sheer brain power and IQ.
However, I am not done yet. Tenebrous not only has the capacity to make up for his lack of talent with sheer determination, but his own aptitude and talent for esoteric Force abilities is in itself higher than average, so your assumptions make even less sense. For starters:
More than a century before, when Tenebrous had been but a Sith apprentice himself, the magnificent computational power of his Bith brain had led him far beyond the simplistic Force studies imposed on him by his Master.
Registered: Jun 2016
Location: The Throne of the Sheevites
Part 2
So even as a mere apprentice, Tenebrous went “far beyond” anything his own Master could teach him, and labelled his Master’s knowledge that he imparted upon Tenebrous as “simplistic.” This is the Sith Lord who, for the record, can manipulate the Force on a cosmic scale, tear a hole in its fabric, manipulate time, among other things. If those are things Tenebrous considers “simplistic,” then one truly must wonder what he is really capable of with the Force – and it kind of boggles the mind as well. Another thing we can extract from this beautiful piece of text is the fact that Tenebrous did this as an apprentice. It means that his Master had yet to reveal all of his secrets, yet Tenebrous had nonetheless gone “far beyond” anything he had to teach. Given that basically the only major source of dark side knowledge was the Banite archives, we can conclude that Tenebrous did not venture anywhere else to learn, not that there would be anyone to teach him regardless. And finally, he credits his own brain as the sole source of his achievements, so the most likely and most logical conclusion here is that he invented every one of those Force abilities from scratch. As an apprentice, may I remind you. And as an apprentice, it stands to reason that he would not have studied the Banite archives in their entirety, yet surpassed the entire collection of knowledge and lore gathered over 800 years by nearly thirty consecutive Sith, containing much of the knowledge of the ancient Sith too, by basically starting from scratch in a timespan of presumably only a few decades. Then he had a hundred years to grow from there, during which he presumably developed and mastered more and more esoteric powers, culminating in this:
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.
[…]
Now wholly giving himself over to panic, Tenebrous turned his will upon undoing the damage he had done. With all his multiplied power, he yanked his maxi-chlorians back out from Plagueis' body in a spray of Force energy from his eyes, his mouth, the wound and every other cell.
--The Tenebrous Way
So to summarize, Tenebrous:
Managed to manipulate midi-chlorians, defying the will of the Force and using the Force on its most fundamental and advanced level.
Perfected midi-chlorians into maxi-chlorians, seemingly immortal midi-chlorians that do not merge with the Cosmic Force, further showing his defiance and dominance over the Force.
Created a retrovirus that could mutate midi-chlorians into maxi-chlorians. The virus could act independently without Tenebrous’ will to guide it, and midi-chlorians and the Force, who normally resist manipulation by mortals, could do nothing to stop it.
Could take control of his retrovirus, imprinting his consciousness into it, displaying dominance over the virus itself and the will of the Force also.
What’s described above is some of the most advanced and complex Force manipulations ever performed, far more esoteric than any Force Phantom or Illusion. The ability to manipulate midi-chlorians is the deepest stratum of the Force one can tap into:
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
Tenebrous’ capability to use midi-chlorian manipulation and defy the will of the Force on such a high level basically confirms his ability to use some of the more esoteric Force abilities of the preceding Banite Sith, not to mention his unparalleled aptitude for esoteric Force powers far surpassing anything in the Banite archives that his Master could teach him, and his drive and will to master arts he had no talent for. So things like Force Phantoms and Time Manipulation are absolutely fair game here.
Registered: Jun 2016
Location: The Throne of the Sheevites
Part 3
Yes, I understood your point fairly well. The problem here is that you completely and utterly failed to prove any of that. You have shown me that Vitiate is “an unparalleled prodigy” and possesses “unmatched knowledge” in his time. But how does that prove he is any better than Tenebrous, who lived after Vitiate in a completely different era? Nai, while using flawed arguments, at least had the sensibilities to first establish a connection between Tenebrous, Plagueis and the ancient Sith that bound the former two below the latter, before then comparing Vitiate with the ancient Sith, and thus a logical power chain of Vitiate > ancient Sith > Tenebrous was formed. You just jumped straight to the conclusion that Vitiate > Tenebrous based on Vitiate > ancient Sith, despite there being nothing that compared Tenebrous to the ancient Sith in your post.
In a debate, you must not just hype your character as much as possible, because the only logical conclusion to be drawn from there is that he is powerful in general, not that he is powerful in comparison to the opposition, because there is nothing binding the opposing character to your character in terms of power. In addition to listing feats for your character, you must also list the limitations of the opposing character, and then draw the conclusion that your character is superior and wins from there. That is exactly what I did: I chose a Force power that both characters had history with, and compared their capabilities in the field of Alter Environment, and concluded from the fact that Vitiate required multiple rituals to cause major changes in Dromund Kaas’ climate that he was incapable of it with his own power, and then proved Tenebrous’ ability to cause planetary weather phenomena without the need of rituals, with his own power, and then drew the conclusion that Tenebrous was the more powerful Force user; and I even listed Vitiate’s shortcomings in an actual fight and showed his lack of tactical awareness, and then explained how Tenebrous will be able to exploit these weaknesses in Vitiate, which further cement his chances of victory.
That is the kind of post that you should have made, focusing more on Tenebrous’ limitations than Vitiate’s accomplishments. And no, simply because Tenebrous hasn’t been shown to be able to do something, does not mean he cannot – or in other words, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence – and does not establish a limit on his Force abilities. That is the fallacy known as the argument from ignorance, and your opener relies on that exclusively, making it fallacious. Your above comment in your counter is also the same – “my point is, Tenebrous hasn’t shown or scaled to showing power surpassing someone who was [...] 'Brous has no raw power feats or accolades to compare, hence, he is inferior.” – making it and the conclusions drawn fallacious as well. Tenebrous isn’t lacking in feats either. You are simply ignorant on the character.
Regarding the Nihilus bit, you did fully read the quote you posted, didn’t you? I’d like to know why on Earth are you treating Meetra’s assumptions – Meetra was no expert on dark side sorcery, but it was safe to assume Vitiate not only survived the ritual but emerged more powerful than ever. – as fact? Is there a reason besides “Well, it supports my argument so whatever. I hope he won’t notice.”? Because, there is contradictory information regarding Vitiate’s power growth:
Lord Vitiate takes command of the Sith Empire, now in shambles following the Great Hyperspace War. He executes the Sith Council and consumes the life force of thousands of Sith Lords in a terrifying ritual that extends his life and vastly increases his capacity as a practitioner of the Force. Lord Vitiate declares himself Emperor of the Sith. Under his sovereign rule, the Empire retreats into deep space to rebuild its strength and prepare for vengeance.
--The Old Republic Encyclopedia
An ancient Dark Lord of the Sith named Darth Vitiate destroyed all life on Nathema with a ritual designed to grant him immortality.
--Force and Destiny
The ritual of Nathema was designed to make him immortal and extend his capacity as a Force user. Note that the definition of the word capacity – “the maximum amount that something can contain” according to Google – doesn’t allow for interpretations about him becoming more powerful on the spot. What it refers to is Vitiate’s potential to grow from there that was extended, alongside his age to make that growth possible. No quote besides Meetra’s mentions anything about an immediate power growth, and while you could say that that is not a contradiction, you’d have a point if only the statement declaring him to have grown more powerful was reliable in any way to begin with, which it isn’t, so it is worthless and has no value, and thus can be dismissed.
Even if we were to allow its use despite its heavily questionable nature, him becoming more powerful than Nihilus is utter hogwash, not to mention another baseless assumption on Meetra’s part in itself. And this time there is an actual contradiction in the lore to debunk that notion. As you know, Vitiate captures Revan at the end of the book, straps him into a machine and leeches off of his life energies:
Revan could feel the Emperor feeding on him, drawing on his power to sate his endless hunger. Though the two were physically separated by a dozen parsecs, there was still an unbreakable mental link, fashioned by the Emperor and sustained by the infernal machines powering the cell.
--The Old Republic: Revan
Despite common belief, Revan did not in fact hold out there for three centuries against Vitiate and the Dread Masters with his own power. That is simply a myth, one easily debunked by reading the passage of the novel that explains Revan’s fate:
She couldn’t speak with him; whatever arcane Sith sorcery the Emperor had used to bind Revan in his cell made that impossible. She doubted Revan was even aware she was there. Yet even though she couldn’t communicate with him, she was able to offer aid and support, her power trickling through the energy barrier that surrounded him, a lifeline he could cling to in the dark ocean of his imprisonment.
As the Emperor fed off him, Meetra was allowing Revan to feed off her. Her sustenance strengthened his resolve whenever he grew weak, refreshing and restoring him so he could continue his never-ending mental war.
--The Old Republic: Revan
It literally states that Revan faltered under the continuous mental torture Vitiate imparted on him, and based on this it is safe to assume would have been broken sooner or later. Yet it is explained that Meetra Surik was constantly lending her own power to replace that which Revan had lost and to renew his strength in the mental war. Surik at this point had become one with the Force, and as such had become “more powerful than ever” and “more powerful than [Vader] could possibly imagine (that includes Palpatine’s power)” among other statements such as these. Basically, as a Force Ghost, you have access to literally infinite pools of Force energy, as you are literally merged with the Cosmic Force that drives and governs the universe, one with it. Meetra could endlessly supply Revan with more Force energy, allowing him to hold on practically forever, and having his reserves restored over and over again. And of course on the other end is Vitiate, who was draining Revan’s life force for his own. Based on Scourge’s and Revan’s musings in the end, it had not been very long since the failed assassination attempt on the Sith Emperor, maybe a few days a week at best:
Registered: Jun 2016
Location: The Throne of the Sheevites
Part 4
The Dark Council would have to be rebuilt. It was inevitable there would be infighting and high turnover in the first few years as the new members vied with one another to curry favor with the Emperor. And he, in turn, would keep a close eye on the actions of the Council until the plots and schemes returned to a more normal and expected level.
It would be several decades, maybe longer, before the Emperor revisited the idea of invading the Republic.
[…]
Revan was certain of one thing, though: for however many centuries his body survived in stasis, he would fight to stop the Emperor from invading the Republic.
He clung to this certainty; it gave him hope. He knew there was no chance of escape from his prison. He knew it was inevitable that one day the Emperor would win their endless battle of wills.
But if he managed to delay him for fifty years, Bastila might never have to experience the horrors of another galactic war. A hundred and his son could live his whole life in an era of peace, never knowing the fear of facing utter annihilation.
--The Old Republic: Revan
Yet in that short a time, Revan had already been drained almost completely by Vitiate at least once, as per the passage posted above about Meetra giving him sustenance whenever he grew weak. So if we assume that in a week’s time, Vitiate can drain Revan completely, that would by 52 times a year. Multiply that by the amount of years Revan was imprisoned (308), and you get 16 016 times that Vitiate had devoured Revan’s full strength. Even if we assumed it was monthly, it would still be 3 696 times, which is an astronomical number in itself. So obviously by the time of The Old Republic MMO, Vitiate possessed the power of Revan dozens if not hundreds of times over, and given that Revan – although not truly comparable to Vitiate as a Force user – managed to somewhat give him pause in a fight, TOR Vitiate would also be many times more powerful than his novel iteration.
If he was truly stronger than Darth Nihilus at the time of the Revan novel, then he would be consuming multiple planets at once casually by the time of TOR. Yet as we see in the Rise of the Emperor update, Vitiate’s limit is consuming only a single planet with maximum effort:
And yes, this is his natural level. He was a spirit when he did this, so he would be weakened, but Ziost is also a very powerful dark side nexus, which would amplify Vitiate, balancing it out, making a rare display of Vitiate at his most powerful in his natural state. So at his peak, Vitiate is roughly at the same level as Darth Nihilus. Given his accolades of being the strongest Force user up to his time, we can infer that he is more powerful, although only barely, given that Nihilus also has the capacity to consume a planet. Regardless, Vitiate at the time of the novel was absolutely nowhere near this level of power.
“What is thy bidding, my Master?”
“There is a great disturbance in the Force.”
“I have felt it.”
“We have a new enemy. The young Rebel who destroyed the Death Star. I have no doubt this boy is the offspring of Anakin Skywalker.”
“How is that possible?”
“Search your feelings, Lord Vader, you will know it to be true. He could destroy us.”
“He is just a boy. Obi-Wan can no longer help him.”
“The Force is strong with him. The son of Skywalker must not become a Jedi.” --Vader and the Emperor, The Empire Strikes Back
But then the Emperor sensed a new current in the ever-flowing energy of the Force. It began as a subtle, barely perceptible power surge, but in a frighteningly short time grew into the bright light that he came to know as Luke Skywalker. Lord Vader had sensed it too, but he lacked the vision that the Emperor possessed. As soon as this new power became known to him, the Emperor began plotting to corrupt it. --Galaxy Guide 5: Return of the Jedi
“I can sense him, Grievous. That creature Savage Opress is growing stronger and stronger as each day passes.”
“You consider him a threat?”
“He is a threat to all of us, even the Jedi. With the Nightsister’s eradicated, there is no one left to control him. Something is rising. Something… sinister.”
--Dooku and Grievous, TCW Season 4 Episode 21
“I sense a disturbance… something sinister.”
“All the way out here?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what or who it is?”
“No… but whatever it is… it feels familiar.”
--Anakin and Ahsoka, TCW Season 4 Episode 21
“Feel the disturbance in the Force, do you?”
“Yes Master.”
“Fear you are in danger, I do. From the dead, an old enemy has awakened, seeking vengeance.”
“An old enemy?”
“Killed your master many moons ago, he did.”
“How can this be? I killed him myself.”
“It is so, I feared.”
“Darth Maul… alive?”
--Yoda and Obi-Wan
So Luke Skywalker is a bright light that shines all over the galaxy and greatly disturbs the currents of the Force with his mere existence and growing power; Savage Opress’ presence leaves a lasting impact on the the cosmological omnipresent energy field that can be felt for days and is growing ever stronger by the hour; and Darth Maul sends a galaxy-wide disturbance that is described by everyone as “sinister” even though he was nothing but a deranged half-spider thing. All just by them existing. Are they all > Plagueis, too, and can they affect the weather on a planetary scale as well? Or more importantly, are they all as powerful as Revan? A Revan, who, at this point, had grown a lot stronger than at the time he fought Vitiate, making all your claims about him being Vitiate’s inferior baseless. In fact, ”The Force roils and convulses like never before.” – SoR Revan > Vitiate confirmed. If you want to use causing disturbances as a measure of power, then Revan is the strongest TOR character, Valkorion included, making your argument backfire spectacularly, since no other TOR character has caused that kind of disturbance, and you yourself stated that causing a galaxy-wide disturbance > affecting the weather of a planet, and Vitiate [i]hasn’t even succeeded at that without rituals, a point of mine that you failed to address completely. Revan > Plagueis > Vitiate according to your flawless logic.
Or maybe, you might want to use your head a bit, and don’t go around equating completely different Force powers with each other, and coming up with retarded conclusions in the process. Luke can cause a disturbance, so he can also affect weather on a planetary scale, but Vader, per Luke’s own admission, can one-shot him, and he hasn’t caused any sort of disturbance and his best feat of Alter Environment is affecting some winds, not even close to planetary:
She pointed a finger at Luke, and before Luke even recognized her evil intent, a ripple of Force slammed into him. White lights exploded behind his eyes, and the right side of his face felt as if it had been smashed by a hammer. His left arm and right leg crumpled under their unbearable weight, and he dropped to the ground on one knee, stunned. All the noise and blaster fire and screams of pain died away, became a distant roaring. Gethzerion pointed at him again, twitched her finger, and his eyes lost focus. He felt the hammer blow to his left temple, dropped to his side and rolled over to his back, gasping. Luke stared up at the sky, watching streams of rocks hurtling above him—some propelled by the Force, others hurled by rancors.
Time seemed to slow. His head throbbed, pounding to the same rhythm as the beating of his heart. His face had gone cold, numb, and Luke realized distantly that Gethzerion’s spell had ripped open blood vessels in his brain, and he was about to die, one among hundreds of fatalities on this battlefield.
So this is how it would have been, if Vader had tried to kill me.
--The Courtship of Princess Leia
[i](please log in to view the image)
So what’s next? I can only imagine you equating Force Drain with Telekinesis and then try to argue Vitiate can TK a planet. Or how about Force Disturbances with Lightning? Oh yes, Revan can totally envelop the entire galaxy in Force Lightning
Registered: Jun 2016
Location: The Throne of the Sheevites
Part 5
The only thing in your rebuttal that’s not total retardation is you questioning whether Plagueis even caused the weather phenomena, to which I say, yes. Let’s take a look at the quote again:
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
This isn’t some typical winter; this is a miniature ice age. The climate of Naboo is like that of a Mediterranean country, and Naboo itself was filmed in Italy. The entire planet is green, even in the North and South poles, and the only biomes on the entire planet are swamps, plains and lush forests:
Naboo's surface consists of swampy lakes, rolling plains and green hills.
[…]
Terrain: Hills, Plains, Swamps, Urban
--Databank: 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
A planet with a sub-tropical climate isn’t suddenly going to have its lakes, rivers and waterfalls frozen over, much less underwater passages that are warmed by the plasma-spewing core of the planet, blocked by ice floes, which would indicate the presence of kilometers-deep glaciers (given that ice floes usually float so they’d have to be very deep underwater), which aren’t normally present on Naboo at all, and form naturally over the course of centuries, not to mention the plasmic quakes all over the planet. It is only logical Plagueis caused it with his presence in the Force. But why didn’t it happen on other planets? Well, a simple answer would be that Plagueis restrained himself more than he did on Naboo. Another would be that Naboo is a dark side nexus:
“On my first visit to your homeworld I recognized it as a nexus in the Force. And I remember thinking how appropriate it was that the dark side should be hiding on such a beautiful planet.”
--Darth Plagueis, Darth Plagueis
But wouldn’t this eliminate the argument, if Plagueis required a nexus to do it? No, not really. Valkorion, a far superior version of the Vitiate you’re now debating, sat around on Zakuul for centuries and no such weather phenomena ever occurred. And yes, Zakuul is a Force nexus, too:
“On Odessen, light and dark exist in perfect balance, forming a nexus in the Force. There is another world like it… Zakuul.”
--Satele Shan, Knights of the Fallen Empire Chapter 12
Another thing is that we are not looking at Plagueis here; we are looking at Tenebrous, who is far more powerful than Plagueis was at that point, so any dark side nexus that Plagueis may have required does not necessarily apply to Tenebrous. So I’m not shifting my stance; this is a direct comparison of power and ability between Tenebrous and Vitiate, and the latter comes up pitifully short given that he required multiple rituals to do something that would be child’s play for Tenebrous, and you’ve not managed to refute that point at all. Even Valkorion doesn’t compare to a being enormously below Tenebrous; Novel Vitiate wouldn’t even register on his radar.
We know he tore a hole in the fabric of the Force in less than a year, given Plagueis’ musings that it happened exactly a century before said musings:
One hundred years earlier, Tenebrous's Twi'lek Master had opened a small rend in the fabric of the Force, allowing the dark side to be felt by the Jedi Order for the first time in more than eight hundred years.
--Darth Plagueis
And looking over the text, I have come to the conclusion that the above and the Force bubble thing are in fact the same feat. The Force bubble is described as preventing the infiltration of the dark side, or in other words, the dark side was practically nonexistent in the galaxy. This aligns with the above piece of text, which stated that no Jedi had felt any dark side presence or anything related to it in over eight hundred years. The below passage states that the dark side had stayed out of the bubble until Tenebrous’ Master did his thing, and the above also states Tenebrous’ Master’s actions were the first time the Jedi had felt the dark side in over eight centuries, so the conclusion I have reached is that the two are in fact one and the same.
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
So now we know that Tenebrous’ Master achieved his feat in less than a year. We also know that there exists a gargantuan gap between Tenebrous and his Master (see my response to your first point), so it is likely to be assumed that Tenebrous could achieve the same result in far less time. But how was this achieved in the first place? What methods were used? Well, we know that Plagueis is aware of what Tenebrous’ Master did, and that it is a feat of cosmic scale. We also know that Plagueis has read through the Banite archives and studied them intensively, and that Tenebrous’ Master likely stored all that he knew in the archives. With that in mind, Plagueis went ahead and attempted the balance shift feat, which is essentially the antithesis of what the Jedi Order had done (suffuse the galaxy in the light side), and an “upgrade” on Tenebrous’ Master’s accomplishment. The feat itself is described 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
If there had been some ritual, or anything, in the Banite archives, that would have helped with this monumental task, I believe Plagueis would have utilized it instead of risking his own life in an “etheric war” with the Force. As such, given that such a ritual does not exist, I believe Tenebrous’ Master achieved his feat solely via his own strength in the Force and not through any ritualistic aid, and as such Tenebrous would be capable of it, too. However, Tenebrous gets even better scaling from the above feat of unbalancing the galaxy that Plagueis and Sidious enacted. Let’s take a look at how powerful the pair was before and after:
Registered: Jun 2016
Location: The Throne of the Sheevites
Part 6
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
So before the shift, Plagueis had not been powerful enough to manipulate midi-chlorians, because the Force resist such efforts, and to manipulate midi-chlorians is the equivalent of dominating the Force’s will. So Plagueis and Sidious had to combine their efforts and as a singular being they overpowered the Force, forcing it to yield, and in the process turning the entire galaxy into a dark side nexus, amplifying their powers. Only after bring amped and having made the Force yield, could Plagueis manipulate midi-chlorians at his leisure. Tenebrous, on the other hand, could manipulate, mutate, and sever midi-chlorians from the Force, no amps or galactic unbalancing required. Tenebrous, at his natural power level, is more powerful than Plagueis merely ten years prior to The Phantom Menace and possibly just as strong as 42 BBY Plagueis and Sidious combined, capable of performing the galaxy unbalancing feat on his own. The only way we know that Plagueis and Sidious eventually surpassed Tenebrous individually during TPM at their natural power levels is due to the Banite scaling quotes and Sidious’ strongest Sith quotes. Feat-wise, Tenebrous is King.
And yes, the ability to manipulate midi-chlorians is credited to power by Darth Sidious, an expert in the ability:
“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.”
--Chancellor Palpatine, Revenge of the Sith
Tenebrous’ Master, Tenebrous, Plagueis and Sidious are all galactic powerhouses, and not only stronger than planetary Force users like Valkorion and Nihilus, but in another league entirely. Novel Vitiate? Forget it, bro. Tenebrous one-shots.
Now, could you please be so kind as to tell me where in your quotes does it say that the Force spawned the HoT? What was that, nowhere? Oh, alright, then.
And with that your argument crumbles like a card house on a windy day. All Revan states and Scourge saw was that a guy would eventually strike down Vitiate, and you’re stretching it to that the Force spawned the HoT to restore balance to the Force in an Anakin-esque fashion? You yourself posted a quote that stated the balance shifted constantly, stated by Scourge, a citizen of the Sith Empire, basically Vitiate’s neighbor, during the events of the novel, so that already debunks the theory that Vitiate had somehow permanently shifted the balance á la Plagueis and Sidious. Thanks for shooting down your own argument
And even if he had, please take note that in the last fifty years leading up to the novel, the galaxy had suffered four galaxy-spanning wars in a row and a systematic purge of the Jedi Order, something which has been noted to make the dark side stronger:
Still smiling, Darth Sidious leaned back, picturing the scenes all over the galaxy. Jedi on jungle planets, crystal worlds, water worlds, in the heat of battle and safe in their command centers, all dying at the hands of their own clone troops. He could sense it happening, though not in detail - but he could feel the dark side growing stronger with every Jedi death.
--Revenge of the Sith junior novelization
Led by a woman named Kreia, the rogue Jedi turned to the dark side teachings uncovered by Malak and Revan. Kreia took the name Darth Traya, and her followers called themselves the Sith after the long-lost species that had invaded the Republic a millennium before. They began a systemic purge of the galaxy, hunting down those who still held fast to the Jedi Code, killing them by the tens of thousands. Their relentless pursuit virtually wiped out the Order, and only those few who managed to flee or hide survived.
--The Old Republic: Revan
Given the constant galactic wars and the systematic huntdown of the Jedi by the tens of thousands with each death making the dark side stronger, even if Vitiate did shift the balance, he sure had a fuckton of aid, as opposed to Tenebrous’ Master piercing the bubble on a massive light side nexus on his own or Plagueis and Sidious doing it on their own as well and extinguishing the light side nexus completely, simply with their own power in the Force, and then Tenebrous being very close to the combined power of the pair. But Vitiate didn’t even shift the balance in the first place, so it doesn’t matter, and he gets stomped by any one of the aforementioned names.
Registered: Jun 2016
Location: The Throne of the Sheevites
Part 7
What a way to completely miss a point. I was lowballing Vitiate for his terrible combat showings, because they’re terrible. Tenebrous performed either unknowingly in all his showings, so I have every right to call Vitiate terrible and not come off as a hypocrite, because my point has nothing to do with the number of showings but rather how they performed. And I said, you are so damn ignorant on Tenebrous that you neglect to mention his best combat feat: defeating his own Master in personal combat:
"How often you said that the old order of Bane had ended with the death of your Master. An apprentice no longer needs to be stronger, you told me, merely more clever. The era of keeping score, suspicion and betrayal was over. Strength lies not in the flesh but in the Force."
--Darth Sidious, Darth Plagueis
As I said with Nai, what Sidious is repeating there is what Plagueis has told him before, that the Banite system had ended with Tenenbrous’ death because Plagueis killed him via misdirection (cleverness) rather than combat (the need to be stronger in order to actually defeat your master), implying that every member before Plagueis had needed to be stronger than their master in order to usurp the mantle of Master and that would obviously mean that they actually fought them. Then there’s Sidious’ musings which further confirm all Banites dueled their masters:
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.
--Darth Plagueis
And Tenebrous himself notes how he disposed of his Master with his “customary efficiency”:
Once his analysis had been parsed to its nth degree, polished into a gem perfect beyond the possibility of flaw, Tenebrous had devoted every second of every day of his life to fulfilling his plan. Nothing would be left to chance. He had exterminated his doddering Master with his customary efficiency, and had embarked immediately on a decades-spanning quest for an apprentice of his own.
--The Tenebrous Way
Being efficient is defined as “achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense” and “working in a well-organized and competent way” so from what I can gather, every action that Tenebrous takes is to further his own goals. He always goes for the kill and uses his lightsaber and Force powers to the max and applies them in such a way that isn’t wasteful and doesn’t leave anything in his arsenal unused. If a method of attack does not work he immediately switches to try another and does not waste his time or energy on something that isn’t viable.
Then we take into account his lightsaber skills, which far surpass those of Plagueis, you know, the guy who taught Sidious everything he knew about lightsaber combat; all his conventional and esoteric Force powers including but not limited to Force Drain, Death Field, Cryokinesis, Pyrokinesis, Blind, Dominate Mind, Midi-Chlorian Manipulation, Force Phantoms, Force Illusions, Time Manipulation etc.; his insane physicals like being able to move faster than a droid who can calculate the trajectories of blaster bolts can perceive, casually being able to smash skulls and punch through armored torsos, stamina to fight for hours without breaking a sweat, immunity to pain etc.; and his massive Bith brain with processing power that dwarfs any human’s, that can calculate the future with mathematics, perceive individual nanoseconds (only Grandmaster Luke has been credited with similar reaction speed) without Force augmentation, and comprehend entire galactic eons; and we have an exceedingly deadly combination culminating in possibly the greatest 1v1 combatant in all of Star Wars in terms of efficiency, skill, and applied knowledge (surpassed only by the likes of Sidious, Luke and Yoda due to their far greater Force power). And you have the audacity to compare fucking Mandalorian Wars era Revan with Darth Tenebrous?
It’s honestly a mystery to me as to how someone like novel Vitiate or even Valkorion could ever hope to stand against something like that, especially when Tenebrous is also far more powerful than them to boot. Regarding your point about Vitiate dominating Revan and Malak, I wonder how it paints a good picture of Vitiate’s combat skills when his two opponents didn’t even have a chance to do anything before the former unleashed his Telepathy upon then. A showing like that doesn’t have anything to do with skill, especially when we look at the context:
By the time Revan and Malak approached the Emperor in his throne room, they were already at the precipice of the dark side. It took only a fraction of the Emperor's loathsome power to complete their fall. The Jedi succumbed utterly to the Sith leader's domination and returned to the Republic to spark a new conflict: the Jedi Civil War.
--The Old Republic Encyclopedia
It took Vitiate a fraction of his power to complete their fall to the dark side, which the pair was already at the precipice of. The mental domination Vitiate did is completely different from him turning them to the dark side, and it required far more than merely a fraction of his power to pull it off:
“The last time you were here?” Scourge said, pouncing on the phrase. “Have some of your memories returned?”
“Seeing my old mask triggered something. I remember everything now,” Revan admitted. “Malak and I learned the Sith still survived. We came here to Dromund Kaas to investigate. Posing as mercenaries, we spent months learning everything we could about the Emperor and his people. Even back then he was already planning his invasion of the Republic. When Malak and I learned of his preparations, we tried to stop him. We found a member of the Imperial Guard who was willing to sneak us inside the citadel.”
“Impossible,” Scourge declared. “The Guard are bound to the Emperor’s will at the end of their training by a powerful ritual. They would never betray him!”
“True, but we didn’t know that at the time,” Revan explained. “We were being led into a trap; the Emperor wanted us to come to him. When we got to his throne room, he was ready and waiting.” His voice dropped low. “We underestimated his power. When we confronted him, he didn’t even have to fight us. Instead, he broke our wills. He dominated our minds, turning us into puppets to do his bidding. He sent us back to the Republic as the vanguard of his invasion, with instructions to report back when all resistance was crushed.
--The Old Republic: Revan
So if Vitiate requires “powerful rituals” to bind even non-Force sensitives to his will, then how would he be capable of doing this to Revan and Malak, much less with a fraction of his power? The answer is that he wouldn’t; he was prepared and likely had set up the ritual beforehand, and activated it once the pair stepped into the throne room. Revan and Malak broke free later on anyway, and when Revan confronted him a second time, this time with Vitiate caught unawares, the latter couldn’t do jack shit with his Telepathy and was knocked on his ass, despite being on a hilariously potent dark side nexus which amped him and weakened Revan. And in their first fight, according to Revan, Vitiate “didn’t even have to fight [them]” so tell me how this reflects well on his combat skills when he wasn’t even engaged in combat in the first place?
Registered: Jun 2016
Location: The Throne of the Sheevites
Part 8
And also Tenebrous’ Illusions and Force Phantoms. Darth Vectivus, someone with only infinitesimal power compared to Tenebrous, could conjure several Force Phantoms at once while as a vastly weakened Force spirit. So Tenebrous – also a master of the technique – would also be able to produce Phantoms in the hundreds, perhaps even in the thousands.
”Oh, that's simple. Kill me." He took a bounding, gliding step forward. "Sweep your lightsaber blade across my neck, topple my head from my shoulders. The mynocks will go away, and you'll be able to find your way back to your friends.”
[…]
Vectivus shrugged. "Perhaps I did. I wouldn't know." Then he faded from sight, and as he disappeared, the susurrating noise of the mynocks wheeling overhead also vanished.
--Legacy of the Force: Betrayal
Even a single one would be enough here, though. If Vitiate is focused on anyone other than Tenebrous, he dies via saber throw. And given that there are multiple Phantoms and Illusions surrounding him, he’ll be left completely scrambling in utter confusion, given that even Meetra was enough for him to “step back” and provoke “hesitation and uncertainty” “as he tried to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of his new foe,” so just imagine dozens of “new foes” that could come in any form imaginable. And yes, he’ll be tricked very easily, since he is not only infinitely weaker than Tenebrous, but power has never been a determining factor in Illusions anyway, since people have managed to trick their far superiors despite a massive power gap. For example, Bane tricked Zannah despite being less powerful, and Darth Caedus managed to trick Luke Skywalker despite the latter being so much more powerful than the former that he could effortlessly dominate him just by thinking about it:
Luke Force-leapt after him, knowing that this Jacen - the Jacen he had caught torturing his son - would not hesitate to take Ben hostage... or to kill him. Luke landed half a meter in front of Jacen's lightsaber and quickly beat down his nephew's guard - too quickly. When he did not glimpse a face in the light of his own blade, Luke knew something was wrong and stopped.
Which was exactly what Jacen was waiting for, of course.
Luke had barely started to turn before a loop of thin tendril slipped over his head and tightened around his throat, oozing toxin and cutting deep into the flesh. The wound swelled and burned as if it were on fire. Luke whipped his lightsaber around, trying to cut Jacen off his back, but Jacen was already spinning away, tightening his garrote and placing Luke's body between himself and the deadly blade.
"Should have let me go when you had the chance, "Jacen snarled. "Now you're done."
[…]
In the next instant, Caedus found himself flying across the cabin toward his observation bubble.Luke had not gestured, had not flinched, had not even shifted his gaze; he had simply grabbed Caedus in the Force and hurled him five meters into his chair.
"Don't lie." Luke started across the cabin. "I'm getting tired of it."
Caedus sprang out of the chair... or attempted to. Instead, he found himself struggling against an invisible weight. He felt as if he were accelerating to lightspeed with a faulty inertial compensator.
"Luke, you've gone mad." Caedus reached for the controls on the arm of his chair and discovered he couldn't even do that much. "You can't do this. I know you're having trouble dealing with Mara's death, but..."
"This has nothing to do with Mara," Luke said. "And you're lucky it doesn't. If she were here-if she had known what you were using Ben for-there'd be pieces of you scattered along the entire length of the Hydian Way."
The irony of the statement was far from lost on Caedus, but he was too astonished-and too frightened-to take any pleasure in it. While it was true that Luke had taken him by surprise, it was equally true that he had done so with no visible effort-and that he was continuing to hold him with no apparent exertion.
Keenly aware that all that stood between him and a quick death was Luke Skywalker's much-strained sense of decency, Caedus let a little of his very real fear seep into the Force, just enough to seem properly alarmed.
[...]
"Then I'll take it for what it's worth," Luke said.Leaving Caedus Force-pinned in his chair, he started toward the door. "I'll show myself out."
Caedus knew he would be freed as soon as Luke turned his concentration to something other than Force-pinning him-but that might take minutes, and Caedus needed to send in the Home Fleet now. Besides, he was the Chief of State of the Galactic Alliance, and he could not allow anyone, even Luke Skywalker, to humiliate him and simply leave. He had to assert some sort of authority."
--Legacy of the Force: Inferno
And Palpatine similarly managed to trick Yoda, his near-equal:
And Tenebrous lacks sufficient telepathic resistance and willpower, and thus will be mind stomped by Vitiate? It’s not only your childlike ignorance at play here, but you have failed to prove any of that. Given your mindset and arguments in your earlier points and opener, I’m guessing it’s “Tenebrous hasn’t done it, so he can’t do it!” – the all-too-common argument from ignorance. So, allow me to educate you a bit on the topic of Tenebrous’ telepathic resistance and willpower. Let’s first establish the absolute base of Tenebrous’ telepathic prowess:
[I]He could sense his Master's summons in the Force, and he could not resist the beckoning much longer. Lord Kaan was calling them all, the entire Brotherhood.
--Darkness Shared
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."
Kaan had broken the connection, and somehow he had managed to drag the others out along with him, as if he had some hold over their minds.
[…]
Bane stayed in the position of supplication until the Dark Lord was well out of sight, then stood up and brushed the dirt from his knees with a grim scowl. He had felt Kaan's efforts to dominate his mind, but they had had no more effect than a rusted knife scraping against the hide plates of a Halurian ice-boar. Yet he had seized on the opportunity and delivered a performance worthy of the greatest dramatist on Alderaan.
--Darth Bane: Path of Destruction
Approaching the globe, he reached out with his bare hand and pressed it firmly against the surface. It seared his palm with cold fire, but he was oblivious to the pain, enthralled by the object's mesmerizing call. Beneath his touch the dark swirling shadows within coalesced into a single mass. The thoughts of those trapped inside rushed up to meet him: faint whispers in the dark recesses of his mind, the words unintelligible but full of hate and despair.
Instinctively Bane's consciousness recoiled. He resisted, fighting the urge to pull his hand back. Instead he thrust his awareness forward, penetrating the surface of the orb to plunge into the unfathomable depths of its black heart. The hateful whispers erupted into shrieks of torment. But these were not the screams of sentient beings: they were bestial howls of primal, mindless fury. The identities of those the thought bomb had consumed-Lord Kaan, General Hoth, all their Sith and Jedi followers-had been destroyed, ripped apart by the thought bomb's explosion. Only torn bits remained, broken pieces of what once had been spirits, no longer capable of conscious thought, wailing in the shared suffering of their eternal madness.
They swarmed over Bane's consciousness, cleaving to his still-whole identity like parasites attaching themselves to a fresh host. The keening spirits enveloped him, clutching and clawing at his sanity as they tried to drag him down with them into their dark abyss.
Bane tore free with contemptuous ease, shredding the already frail and tattered spirits as he cast them aside, and let his mind drift back to the surface. An instant later he was free, leaving behind the prison from which the others would never escape.
Registered: Jun 2016
Location: The Throne of the Sheevites
Part 9
So Lord Kaan is able to telepathically call out to the entire Brotherhood of Darkness to all corners of the galaxy (a feat only replicated by peak Darth Krayt, and Grandmaster Luke Skywalker), and then wrench their minds off of a ritual, bordering on telepathic domination. Then comes in Bane, who laughably easily blocks Kaan’s attempts to influence his mind. Then we have Bane resisting “ with contemptuous ease” the Thought Bomb and the spirits trapped within, which is kinda similar to how Vitiate’s own mind was described:
Staring into the hollow darkness of the Emperor’s gaze, Scourge’s mind flashed back to Nathema, and he shivered at the memory.
[…]
There was something strange about the Emperor’s voice. It didn’t sound like the voice of a single being. It had an unusual echo and resonance, almost as if a great multitude were speaking his words in perfect symphony.
A grim theory passed unbidden through Scourge’s mind: was it possible all those that had been consumed by the ritual on Nathema still existed in some form within the Emperor himself? Nyriss said he’d devoured them, but what if she was only partially correct? What if he had imprisoned their spirits inside his own corporeal form, slowly feeding on their life energy over a thousand years to keep himself young and strong?
[…]
As he spoke, the dark circles of his eyes seemed to fill with a swirling red mist, and for a brief instant the Emperor gave Scourge a glimpse of his true self.
Scourge cried out in anguish as the Emperor’s mind brushed against his, then he collapsed to the floor, shaking like a child. The touch lasted less than a second, but in that time he witnessed indescribable horrors that dwarfed anything the dark side could conjure even in his worst nightmares. And beneath the formless terrors lurked the unbearable Void, the pure emptiness of total annihilation.
--The Old Republic: Revan
In fact, the Thought Bomb was based on Vitiate’s Nathema ritual, so the similarities aren’t just a coincidence. Rather than binding the spirits if the victims to another person, it instead bound them to an object, and it didn’t annihilate the Force entirely, only the Force sensitives, so minor discrepancies aside, I’d still assume the basic mechanics are the same:
An ancient Dark Lord of the Sith named Darth Vitiate destroyed all life on Nathema with a ritual designed to grant him immortality. A transcription of this ritual was recorded by Darth Revan and served as the inspiration for Lord Kaan's thought bomb on Ruusan.
--Force and Destiny
So given that Bane resisted the “dark abyss” of the Thought Bomb with its hundreds of screaming souls rather easily, I doubt Vitiate’s “unbearable void” with its trapped spirits would cause nearly as much trouble to Bane as it did to Scourge, especially when Vitiate actually requires rituals to dominate even non-Force sensitives. This is of course just PoD Bane. If you can prove Vitiate can mind stomp him, we can move up to DoE Bane. Tenebrous, with his galactonic dark side will, is just reaching for the stars, with feats like dominating the will of the Force by being able to manipulate midi-chlorians, and crediting his own consciousness as his most potent weapon; or being comparable to the combined power of the duo of Plagueis and Sidious with them dominating the Force themselves on a galactic scale; and Plagueis in his own being able to touch the minds of every living being in the galaxy, only failing because the Force intervened, which, to have merited the Force’s attention in such a manner as to directly try to stop you, is more than it ever cared about Valkorion’s or Nihilus’ plans and actions, and if it’s any indication that the one getting mind stomped here is Vitiate.
So according to you it’s “only logical” that Vitiate has to break his focus on Vtiate if an “unknown combatant sporting an unknown array of weaponry” enters the fray? Good, because he’ll be doing that quite a lot then when dozens of unknown Force Phantoms each sporting an unknown array of weaponry materializing out of nowhere are attacking him from all possible directions.
Tell me where in my post I said that was Tenebrous’ maximum output. Tell me. And as if Nyriss was even that powerful. Darth Bane has enough power to ash people with casual bursts; Nyriss can only char corpses on a dark side nexus with such attacks, and requires 20 second of focusing to actually incinerate someone. Bane alone is far more powerful than Nyriss, and a couple of generations down it starts moving into the “infinite” territory that Vitiate resides in, and Tenebrous’ Lightning is so far above that it’s not even funny, and then becomes funny once more when you see the look on his face when Tenebrous gives him the same treatment that Revan gave to Nyriss.
Probably because Vitiate’s showing there has nothing to do with power, so him being weakened is irrelevant. Unless you can prove to me Vitiate got increasingly more retarded as the centuries flew by, all of Vitiate’s combative failures in his later iterations are fair game.
I was never arguing that he couldn’t react to lightsaber swings of characters who are basically fodder to him in terms of the Force, you dolt. I was arguing that Vitiate has a hard time reacting to attacks from his equals (in this case, himself), and given that you’ve failed to prove any of the characters Vitiate faces are as fast as Force Lightning bolt, you’ve no ground to stand on. I’d say it’s a pretty fair indicator that Vitiate’s Lightning is significantly faster than someone like Revan, when the latter was running up to the Sith Emperor at full speed yet Vitiate managed to stand up to his knees and fire a Force Lightning Storm at him, yet was unable to do anything as a speeding bolt of Force Lightning came at him. We don’t assume that everything we see operates at the same speed and thus can dismiss any blunder as a low showing. No, if a character reacts to something but fails to react to something else, it is a fair indicator that the latter is faster. Yes it is just a single showing on Vitiate’s part, but it is the only showing, so it’s the only thing we have, or would you argue that guys like Agen Kolar and Saesee Tiin could go toe-to-toe with Yoda because of “a single instance where [they] get tagged” by Sidious doesn’t actually mean they aren’t able to react to him?
That said, Tenebrous can very well blitz Vitiate with his Force Lightning as soon as the fight starts and obliterate him then and there.
Registered: Jun 2016
Location: The Throne of the Sheevites
Part 10
This is probably the only fair point you’ve made so far, so I guess I’ll concede the point that they weren’t literally moving at lightning speeds. One should still note that Plagueis and Venamis managed this speed while fighting in a forest, dodging trees, their roots, rocks and other obstacles, which you’d know is quite difficult sometimes, if you’ve ever run in a forest. So the pair was significantly hindered in how fast they could go, yet still managed to be as fast as they did in a duel. I don’t know how many Force users you’ve seen attain that level of combat speed, but to my knowledge Revan isn’t one of them. Then we have Plagueis’ other showing, which is moving almost faster than 11-4D, a droid capable of calculating the trajectories of blaster bolts can perceive:
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.
--Darth Plagueis
So we know that Plagueis is vastly faster than a blaster bolt, which should honestly be approaching or even matching the speed of your average Force Lightning, which may not be quite as fast as that which Vitiate was unable to react to, but it’s relatively close, and we know that Revan caps out at or below this level, given that he was massively slower than Vitiate’s Lightning, and that this is only just Plagueis’ combat speed and not actual running speed. Then we factor in that Tenebrous should logically be significantly faster than Plagueis was at this point, so he just might be able to speedblitz Vitiate. Probably actually, since he doesn’t have his nexus to amp him, and maximum running speed is way faster than combat speed, the latter of which already is bordering on Vitiate’s reactionary limit.
Even if Tenebrous can’t outright blitz Vitiate (which I doubt he can’t), his Lightning will do the trick for him regardless. And Time Manipulation is a thing, too. Tenebrous can slow time around him to a crawl, a split second is all he needs to maintain it for, since Vitiate will surely be blitzed when time is slowed but Tenebrous isn’t.
No, it proves that he’s not willing to take big risks, not that he thought Vitiate would win more often than not:
He had to choose, but there was no way to know which was the most likely outcome, or what actions of his would lead to which results. Revan had said visions could guide a Jedi, but for Scourge they brought nothing but confusion.
--The Old Republic: Revan
We can go with your speculation, that no matter how many times Vitiate or the team won out of those million, even if only 10 %, it would still leave him confused as heck, which will lead us nowhere, since we have no idea how many times out of ten Vitiate would have won, or we can go with my speculation, that Scourge saw both kinds of visions an equal amount and thus was unable to determine which outcome was more likely, which leaves us with 5/10 for either side. Whatever the case, the fact remains that Vitiate was going to lose to three people each of which he could ]one-shot, which quite frankly doesn’t speak well for his tactical ability to think in combat.
Seems like a one-shot to me, both times:
A dozen bolts of purple lightning arced from the Emperor toward him. Revan tried to draw them in and contain them, but the Emperor was infinitely more powerful than Darth Nyriss had ever been.
Revan’s body was engulfed in agony as the electricity coursed through his body. His skin began to boil and blister, the flesh of his face melting and sticking to the superheated metal of his mask as the Emperor poured more and more power into him.
[…]
Meetra gasped and toppled forward, dead before she hit the floor. Revan’s head snapped to the side, shock and horror emanating from him even though his mask hid his expression. The distraction gave the Emperor the opportunity he needed, and he unleashed another blast of lightning into the Jedi’s chest.
Scourge could smell burning flesh as Revan screamed once then collapsed to the ground, unconscious.
--The Old Republic: Revan
Probably the fact that if Vitiate has a very real chance of losing to foes that he can one-shot, then he’s even worse off against foes he can’t, like Tenebrous.
Registered: Jun 2016
Location: The Throne of the Sheevites
Part 11
All you’ve proven here is that Vitiate can break Bane’s Barriers, not Tenebrous’ given that he’s infinitely above Bane. Then there’s the fact that Vitiate was on a dark side nexus, which he doesn’t have here. That would be enough to be a sufficient rebuttal to your scaling, but I’ll proceed to tear it down anyway, just ‘cause.
What was it you said about some Force users having unique talents in certain Force abilities? Given that Satele, while amped, is only capable of blowing up a few rocks with a charged Force push, I’m inclined to believe she has a special knack for Tutaminis. PoD Bane’s Temple of Lehon feat is far superior to Satele’s own, yet two decades later, being infinitely more powerful than in PoD, Bane can barely block a lightsaber blade. So Satele can’t be used for scaling Tutaminis, debunking your entire powerscale. If Vitiate’s Lightning was more powerful than a lightsaber blade, then this would never have happened:
(please log in to view the image)
If Vitiate’s Lightning was truly more powerful than a lightsaber blade, then the blades would have bent backwards like Sidious managed with Windu. Instead, even a humongously more powerful version of Vitiate fails at it, so novel Vitiate would have his attacks no-sold by even Bane, much less Tenebrous who probably wouldn’t even feel them.
Mate, what? You said that you wouldn’t bet against novel Vitiate one-shotting Tenebrous, yet have Plagueis on par with the former? Plagueis, who is only one generation from Tenebrous; does that mean that you think every Banite Sith can one-shot the previous generation Sith? But in this thread you said Plagueis on his own can give a good fight to DE Palpatine, so clearly Palpatine can’t one-shot the previous generation, and here you’ve said Revan takes a majority over Plagueis, who you have on par novel Vitiate, who you just admitted destroyed and emphatically bested Revan, and whose far superior incarnation, Valkorion, you had only a month ago below DE Sidious, who apparently would be challenged by Plagueis… Just where is the consistency, bro? Do you honestly have no clue what you’re talking about or are you just intentionally lowballing Tenebrous and Plagueis to piss me off? Not that it has anything to do with the debate, but I’m just curious.
Palpatine would shit on Vitiate in Sorcery
Anyway, I honestly have no reason to believe he can pull that off in the midst of combat given that he never ever replicated it, even against far, far weaker opponents than the combined power of the Dark Council, much less on a non-nexus environment. It was likely a ritual.
Except it doesn’t. Vitiate, on a dark side nexus, charging his TK for a more powerful blast, failed to do jack shit against a weakened Revan:
His opponent stood perfectly still, focusing and channeling his power. At the last possible instant, the Emperor unleashed a wave of energy that swept Revan off his feet and sent him flying backward.
Revan twisted in midair so that he was able to roll with the impact when he landed. He quickly sprang back to his feet and advanced again, moving more slowly this time.
--The Old Republic: Revan
It seems like Vitiate’s TK is inferior relative to his other powers.
________________
So now, a brief summary of why Tenebrous godstomps:
Tenebrous will fight as efficiently as possible, using everything at his disposal to his advantage
Tenebrous is much more powerful than even Valkorion:
●He is able to defy the Force’s will and manipulate midi-chlorians, the deepest strata of the Force in existence
●He is very close in power to a duo who could overpower the Force in a contest of wills and use the Force on a galactic scale, individually and collectively, and the Force directly intervened at times with their efforts and spawned a godlike champion to combat the threat the presented; Valkorion never merited that kind of attention from the Force
●He is able to use the Force on a galactic scale per his parity with Plagueis and Sidious; Valkorion could only do so via rituals that required centuries of prep and was pushed to his limits doing only planetary feats
●His vast inferior in pre-prime Plagueis has a casual planetary feat of altering the climate to a massive degree; Valkorion requires conscious effort to use the Force on a planetary scale and his passive Force presence never caused extreme weather phenomena on a planetary scale, and has only been displayed accomplishing that with the aid of rituals
●Valkorion is enormously more powerful than novel Vitiate, and even he doesn’t really compare to Tenebrous
Tenebrous can kill Vitoate laughably easily while he’s distracted by Illusions or Phantoms via saber throw
Tenebrous can outright blitz Vitiate from the get go, and can slow down time at any point in the fight and casually slaughter Vitiate then
Vitiate is a retard who walks into lightsaber blades
Aug 6th, 2017 07:16 PM
You yourself posted a quote that stated the balance shifted constantly, stated by Scourge, a citizen of the Sith Empire, basically Vitiate’s neighbor, during the events of the novel, so that already debunks the theory that Vitiate had somehow permanently shifted the balance á la Plagueis and Sidious. Thanks for shooting down your own argument 
