★ Top Fifteen Tournament #8 - Darth Plagueis

I. TPM SUPREMACY QUOTES

@DarthAnt66

Unlike The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, the “errors” presented in the DK Readers series are not unintentional. For example, the expanded universe has held that Boba Fett survived the sarlacc for over two decades. It’s probably the most well-known fact of the expanded universe. Explicitly stating Boba Fett died is a *deliberate* parting from that/Lucasfilm Licensing chronology. And that *deliberate* parting is readily explained through the fact the source is in-universe. The in-universe author’s knowledge of events must have been *limited* to film-centric content. There’s no reason to think the TCSWE’s preface that “the author/editor is solely responsible for any errors of fact or interpretation” is a general precedent and not a necessary addendum considering the source is highlighted to be written by an “omniscient committee of historians.”

Um, yes there is a reason to think that in-universe authors are by default omniscient unless proven otherwise - I already explained this in my earlier post, yet you didn’t address it at all or offer any new substantive points in your argument. To reiterate, if we don’t assume this, then virtually everything in Star Wars becomes questionable. Not only most sourcebooks, but The Old Republic MMO and I’m sure other big stories also bear the famous ”A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….” text at the start. We’d have to treat them - not just the text but the cutscenes and seemingly real events transpiring before our eyes - as some non-omniscient being’s subjective point of view. How can we trust them, then? How do we know how closely something aligns to the actual truth of the Star Wars universe if it’s not explicitly stated to be from an omniscient perspective? The answer is we can’t, and therefore we must by default assume an omniscient narrator, and that all errata are simply mistakes by the real world author, not stains on the narrator’s credibility. This is not about propping up Plagueis; it’s literally about ensuring this hobby remains intact.

I know you probably don’t care--though others might and should--that DK Readers states that Plagueis died before Palpatine began to try Maul. Ironic that the specific sources being used to scale Plagueis, through Palpatine, above all past Sith holds that Plagueis died perhaps decades before Episode I. Coupled with the in-universe debacle, and it’s overall an embarrassment to act like this is debate-ending proof that Plagueis stomps Revan.

If others care about this, then I'm guessing Aristotle would spit on them as well. You’re committing the fallacy of composition by assuming that something is true for the whole because it is true for a part of the whole. Yet much like how a car is not made of rubber because its wheels are rubber, or how a group of runners all running faster does not win them all the race because it does for one of them, an entire source is not contradicted and dismissed because some parts of it are contradicted. Beyond just the fact that this is a clear fallacy debunked over 2,300 years before this very argument was even made, it’s also an entirely arbitrary standard with no basis in logical reasoning. Case in point: if we’re going to dismiss more than just the immediate sentences that are contradicted, then why stop at the paragraph or the source? Why not deem all sourcebooks invalid, or all books, period, for that matter? Shall we dismiss the entire Star Wars lore too and stop debating? Where is the line drawn? Arbitrarily saying it’s drawn at point X is not convincing or based on anything logical at all; everyone could then just designate their own cut-off point and dismiss whatever they want. The only way to approach this without committing a logical fallacy and stepping into a quagmire that would result in the hobby’s destruction is to simple go with the obvious: that only the specific parts that are contradicted can be dismissed and everything else in the source is still perfectly valid and usable in tandem with other sources. Sidious killing Plagueis decades before TPM and taking Maul afterwards may not be true, but TPM Sidious being the most powerful Sith ever is, as is Plagueis rivalling him extremely closely as of TPM.

However, and this is the real kicker, the Battle for Naboo sourcebook doesn’t even mention or reference Plagueis at any point, or state when Sidious took on Maul. Your entire point here was completely irrelevant and misleading. However, you might have been referencing the Darth Maul: Sith Apprentice sourcebook, but I don’t even use that as I don’t think that book’s accolade conclusively refers to pre-boost Sidious anyway, so even if your argument stood (it doesn’t), it wouldn’t affect Sidious’s paramountcy.

For the record, here is the full statement from Battle for Naboo:

To recap, Plagueis has/scales from three "most powerful Sith" quotes, two of them about TPM Palpatine. Unfortunately, none of them are binding.

There’s another one too.



Yes, it says Sidious is ”probably” the strongest Sith in history, but consider that the dictionary definition of “probably” is “almost certainly; as far as one knows or can tell,” so Sidious is still the most likely candidate per the quote. In order words, the quote is literally saying it’s more likely for Sidious to be stronger than Vitiate than the converse. And even if Sidious weren’t the strongest ever (to be clear, he is, per the Battle for Naboo quote), this quote still means that he’d be as asymptotically close as possible.

All in all, Plagueis’s standing next to Sheev has been cemented in earlier posts in this thread: they’re near equals. Given Sidious is stronger than Vitiate, then Plagueis should be at least his equal, although technically nothing says Vitiate has to be close to Sidious. All is said that he is his inferior, but the extent is not specified. Plagueis therefore can be substantially stronger than Vitiate and, by extension, Revan.

II. SITH LORD VITIATE

@Syndiciate

After thinking it over, the main reason I held Plagueis above Vitiate and, as a result, Revan were the most powerful quotes and the unbalancing of the Force that he and a less powerful Sidious carried out together. I realized it's likely irresponsible of me to vote for a character based on the first stance as I have not given proper time to think about whether or not I truly believe most powerful Sith quotes apply to characters who are dubbed "Sith" but do not hold to Sith philosophy.

This leaves it so that the main comparison between Plagueis and Revan I'm left with is the idea that Plagueis and a less powerful Sidious are able to significantly alter the balance of the Force after months of meditation meaning the two would've been matching a significant portion of the galactic population's passive energy output whereas Revan seems to possess a degree of parity with Vitiate up to SOR as a result of their mental war. I lack knowledge of the true scope of Vitiate's abilities if I'm being honest and don't feel comfortable voting for any of the main contenders at this time.

My original act of switching from Caedus to Plagueis was somewhat politically motivated but after thinking it over I don't think it's fair to all the people who've put so much time and effort into arguing for stances that they truly believe in for me to vote for something I don't truly believe in.

Think of it this way: Vitiate is a Sith Lord. He is explicitly called that as of the vanilla Old Republic. That is his title and he is the Sith Emperor of the Sith Empire. Yet he does not believe in the Sith code or Sith teachings - does that sound familiar? A similar situation is present with Palpatine in the prequel trilogy, wherein he is the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, but himself secretly loathes democracy, does not believe in its ideals or merits in the slightest, and is all-around ideologically opposed to it. Would you then say that he is not in fact the Supreme Chancellor, despite the fact that that is his official rank and role in society, a title by which he is referred to time and time again by sources both in- and out-of-universe? If he is the Supreme Chancellor, then all broad statements encompassing Supreme Chancellors of the Republic should also refer to him. Likewise, if Vitiate is a Sith Lord, then all broad statements encompassing Sith Lords should also refer to him.

But let’s use another example. Think of any object, let’s say, a carrot. A carrot does not have consciousness - it cannot think, feel, or understand that it exists or is called a carrot by other life forms. In essence, a carrot does not think it is a carrot. But you would still call it a carrot, would you not? That is what the object is literally defined as, irrespective of its own thoughts or feelings on the matter. If you don’t call it a carrot, how could you ever refer to it? How could you refer to any inanimate object by their names if they are not in fact the thing which they have been designated to be by our language? Obviously I’m being a bit facetious here, but I hope you get the point regardless: we have names and classifications for all things for a reason, and when we use universal phrases like “all potatoes” or superlative phrases like “the longest cucumber is longer than all other cucumbers,” we refer to all objects that are categorized as that kind of object and aren’t excluding one specific cucumber because it is not really a cucumber yada yada...

Here’s a third example. Picture a human being ingesting psychedelic drugs or by some other means ending up in psychosis. Let’s say that they cease believing themselves human and start thinking of themselves as a three-headed rabbit. Would that then make them a three-headed rabbit, simply because they think so? Would that efface their human status completely, to the point where they wouldn’t taxonomically be classified as a human and you’d need to stop referring to them as a human, and all statements regarding humans wouldn’t encompass them? All that because the person doesn’t believe in their own humanity, even though nothing about them has externally changed?

If it hasn’t become clear yet, I think this is all a bit silly. Vitiate is classified as a Sith Lord; that is what he ontologically is, and he is included in statements referring to Sith Lords, including Darth Sidious’s supremacy quotes. Arguing otherwise would also lead you down the path of defending the above examples, and while technically they aren’t illogical in themselves and I am appealing to reductio ad absurdum here… well, I mean, c’mon lol. If you seriously want to argue this then go ahead, but for me it’s always been a stupid, stupid point of contention.

I think I'm done here now. Over 20 hours of writing again and my brain simply can't take it. It's a shame I won't be able to rebut the anti-midi-chlorian manipulation arguments, but I trust @The Ellimist will do an adequate job.

As always, make sure to read through everything carefully. Weigh each argument fairly. Vote on who you think deserves the number 8 spot. Trust yourself, not what those around you might think. There's only like ten or so hours left to vote.

@lorenzo.r.2nd @NotAA3 @Jacen @Jake @IG @MasterCilghal @Cheth @KingofBlades @darthbane77 @DarthAnt66 @Praxis @Seturna @Quorian Debatist @Decaf_Beverages @Gueliston @Reynard (Ethanion) @Bart @Syndiciate @BoD @Blade_of_Dorin @AlexSerp

@Azronger Despite my views opposing and still disagreeing with around 99% of your post, I have to applaud it, excellent post.

What’s the 1%?

The IU stuff (long time ago) made sense to me

Good job @ both sides. At least for the effort. I have waited for a response to Sidious drawing on the Force more deeply than ever to zap drunk Plagueis. Never even came close to being convinced. Admirable attempts have been made for Revan, especially since Revan > Plagueis is such an outlandish opinion. At the end, history repeated itself once again. I only hope to see a correlation between vote count and quality of arguments.

@Azronger Your post was as always excellent and the rhetoric in itself is enough to greatly convince a non-native english speaker such as myself. I definetly agree that Sidious is Vitiate's canonical superior, always have. But since Sidious also is Plagueis's canonical superior according to the same quotes, I am just not convinced that Plagueis has to be Vitiate's equal or superior. At such a huge powerlevel that Sidious posesses, being close to him doesn't necessarily mean (at least for me) that there can't be a noticeable gap between the two. That Sidious was worried about Plagueis and feared him despite already being his confirmed superior, seems likely for me to be the cause of the natural fear that all sith posess and that is evident in Sidious in multiple occasions. Of course I'm not saying that Sidious is massively superior to Plagueis as of TPM, but I don't see why Sidious has to be massively above Vitiate or Revan either. 

As for you questioning Dark Revan's sanity per Spirit Revan, one has to remember that that also is just Spirit Revan's opinion. Spirit Revan claims he's insane, Dark Revan thinks he's sane. It seems doubtful that Dark Revan (Revan being a known military genious) made such intricate plans to ressurect and beat Vitiate without at all thinking about his chances in their fight. 

Obviously if you debate against me on my points you'll probably crush all my arguments somehow just because I don't compare to your skills as a debater, so think of this more of me explaining my thoughts on the situation (of course, I'm not saying you're not allowed to refute what I'm saying).

@Cheth Well, you can go back to my earlier posts to look at some quotes. Sidious is stated to have killed Plagueis "Upon receiving the skill and ability to do so," meaning that he did not possess "the skill and ability" to kill Darth Plagueis until very shortly before the latter's murder. This does in fact put the two very close in power.

And then the question goes both ways: why does Vitiate or Revan have to be close to Sidious/Plagueis? They're his inferiors but the extent is not specified, so why do so many people automically go for Vitiate being close? And you know my thoughts on Revan relative to Vitiate - not comparable at all.

I won't attempt to debunk your Revan argument per me and Ant's agreement.

@Azronger Those are fair points, and you might even have convinced me to hold Plagueis above Revan in terms of pure power throughout your debate with Ant. But I also think they're close enough for Revan's skills and esoteric abilities to give him the advantage.

Edit was changing "fair posts" to "fair points"

@Cheth

Note that Plagueis as a Banite Sith would be familiar with a wide array of esoteric abilities, including Ramage’s time manipulation - the same ability that allowed a fodder Jedi to completely fool a far more powerful Vader. The reason why a lot of these esoteric abilities aren’t used is because they just don’t have that much of an impact on a fight, or else we’d see Sidious use them more often. As ILS was saying earlier, Revan‘s abilities happened to be very well suited to fighting a team of enemies, but that whole dynamic changes when it’s replaced with a singular opponent.

In other words, Plagueis would be more than capable of dealing with esoteric techniques, he knows many of them himself. Even Bane could resist Zannah’s esoteric Sith sorcery. Anyway, what esoteric abilities does Revan have that clinches the victory for him? He’s never been shown to teleport without being on a Force nexus; hell I doubt even his Force in balance attack would phase Plagueis, who like all Banite Sith have studied the Jedi arts extensively, compared to Vitiate.

Very good argument! One of Palpatine's adepts can teleport without a nexus, yet Revan can't!

Yeah, don’t speak unless you know what you’re talking about.

@Meatpants 

Isn't it fairly plausible that Ramage's time manipulation could have been lost during Gravid's destruction of sith lore/knowledge? And your example of time manipulation seems to be contrary to your point; a weaker forceuser managed to fool a far more superior forceuser by the use of an esoteric ability. And in the case of Revan and Plagueis, I don't consider the gap in power to be significant, so esoteric abilities would be far more useful. 

Revan's force in balance attack would be different in nature than simply knowing of the lightside and darkside seperatively. And I'm not an expert on Zannah and Bane, but didn't he struggle to fight against attacks from her dark tendrils? And there are several other examples of forceusers claiming superiority over others by esoteric abilities; Vitiate dominating Revan and Malak in their first encounter was partly attributed to his mind techniques. Exar Kun's spirit and Kyp Durron beat Luke so easily since he simply had no counters to their sith serpents.

Edit: nvm about Ramage's technique being destroyed since I just realised that then they couldn't have used it post-rots.

Meatpants wrote:Yeah, don’t speak unless you know what you’re talking about.

If we're not allowed to speak unless we know what we're talking about then I have no clue why you're continually posting in this thread.

Good dodge though, nicely not bothering to address the point.

@Cheth

If esoteric abilities were battle clinchers, we’d see Sidious and Yoda trying to use them against each other. I was just giving an example of the potential uses of Ramage’s time manipulation to show that Revan doesn’t have an exclusive monopoly on esoteric abilities.

The tendrils were summoned using the locked dark side power on Ambria, I was referring to Zannah’s spells of madness.

Luke isn’t really a good example, because he didn’t get the same standard of training that an average Jedi from any era would. His lack of knowledge is a real downside for him.

Vitiate’s TP is impressive, but note that Kaan could telepathically influence thousands of combat experiences and mentally trained Sith Lords on the drop of a hat, and Bane resisted that easily before decades of growth. Slap on Banite scaling and Plagueis shouldn’t be telepathically f’ed with by anyone really.

The point of me referencing that the Banites study the Jedi is to point out that they’re a lot more well-rounded and would be a lot better off countering such an unorthodox attack.

Remember that Sidious surpassed Plagueis as he became the most powerful Sith in history (roughly speaking), so Plagueis must have been the most powerful before Sidious, scaling him above Vitiate. Not to mention he already has a quote saying he’s the most powerful, and Elm has done an excellent job showing why that quote is useable.

Considering Revan was no match for Vitiate’s spirit in SOR, I highly doubt Revan is gonna be able to harm Plagueis, he’s just much more powerful and should be able to bat aside any esoteric attack with ease. The question is whether Revan would be able to withstand a consistent barrage of Plagueis’ lightning?

HP chucking barbs with zero arguments to make.

@Archibald: Plagueis still didn't know any time or space manipulation powers eight years after the galaxy unbalancing feat. That knowledge must have been lost with Gravid. Revan teleported on the Foundry while on the brink of death, on the Temple of Sacrifice after having been defeated and while his life essence was being "violently stripped" from him by a planetary superweapon, and on the Forgotten Terrace as he was wearing down towards the end of the fight. Moreover, based on the Dread Masters and Master Force Adept teleporting rapidly and frequently, the ability is likely not that super taxing to use. Instead, the difficulty is likely integrating it effectively in combat. As most of Revan's other opponents are also amped, so far more so than him, I see no reason to consider Revan's performance unreliable. I'll have out a post soon reviewing Revan's stuff, but I advise you to join the pact with myself/Azronger/The Ellimist against trying to attack the other's characters so late in the game.

Ramage's experiments with those two substances I forget the names of dates him as being Tenebrous' masters' master.

Azronger wrote:
Think of it this way: Vitiate is a Sith Lord. He is explicitly called that as of the vanilla Old Republic. That is his title and he is the Sith Emperor of the Sith Empire. Yet he does not believe in the Sith code or Sith teachings - does that sound familiar? A similar situation is present with Palpatine in the prequel trilogy, wherein he is the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, but himself secretly loathes democracy, does not believe in its ideals or merits in the slightest, and is all-around ideologically opposed to it. Would you then say that he is not in fact the Supreme Chancellor, despite the fact that that is his official rank and role in society, a title by which he is referred to time and time again by sources both in- and out-of-universe? If he is the Supreme Chancellor, then all broad statements encompassing Supreme Chancellors of the Republic should also refer to him. Likewise, if Vitiate is a Sith Lord, then all broad statements encompassing Sith Lords should also refer to him.

But let’s use another example. Think of any object, let’s say, a carrot. A carrot does not have consciousness - it cannot think, feel, or understand that it exists or is called a carrot by other life forms. In essence, a carrot does not think it is a carrot. But you would still call it a carrot, would you not? That is what the object is literally defined as, irrespective of its own thoughts or feelings on the matter. If you don’t call it a carrot, how could you ever refer to it? How could you refer to any inanimate object by their names if they are not in fact the thing which they have been designated to be by our language? Obviously I’m being a bit facetious here, but I hope you get the point regardless: we have names and classifications for all things for a reason, and when we use universal phrases like “all potatoes” or superlative phrases like “the longest cucumber is longer than all other cucumbers,” we refer to all objects that are categorized as that kind of object and aren’t excluding one specific cucumber because it is not really a cucumber yada yada...

Here’s a third example. Picture a human being ingesting psychedelic drugs or by some other means ending up in psychosis. Let’s say that they cease believing themselves human and start thinking of themselves as a three-headed rabbit. Would that then make them a three-headed rabbit, simply because they think so? Would that efface their human status completely, to the point where they wouldn’t taxonomically be classified as a human and you’d need to stop referring to them as a human, and all statements regarding humans wouldn’t encompass them? All that because the person doesn’t believe in their own humanity, even though nothing about them has externally changed?

If it hasn’t become clear yet, I think this is all a bit silly. Vitiate is classified as a Sith Lord; that is what he ontologically is, and he is included in statements referring to Sith Lords, including Darth Sidious’s supremacy quotes. Arguing otherwise would also lead you down the path of defending the above examples, and while technically they aren’t illogical in themselves and I am appealing to reductio ad absurdum here… well, I mean, c’mon lol. If you seriously want to argue this then go ahead, but for me it’s always been a stupid, stupid point of contention.

The problem I have with this argument is that there is a difference between an ontological classification like "a mineral" and a looser more subjective classification like "a Christian." For many, if somebody called themselves a Christian, went to Church every Sunday but didn't believe in the core ideas or follow the tenants of the Christian faith, they would not consider that person a Christian. 

I feel the term "Sith" tends to align more closely with a term like "Christian" than it does "mineral."

The problem with your argument for me is that guys like Vitiate and Sidious aren't signing forms and documents which verify that they are a Sith. It's not like a Democrat or Republican voter who legally changes their party affiliation in order to vote for the other side's weaker candidate. Even if they do that and hold ideological views that are completely opposed to the party they've switched to, they would still legally be considered a member of that party. 

Unlike "Democrats" and "Republicans" though, the term "Sith" isn't an official status ( I'm sure Darth Bane wasn't considered a Sith by the Brotherhood of Sith after he left their ranks ) meaning the only thing we have to base it off of is whether that individual considers themselves a Sith or not. Arguments have been made in the past that make me believe Vitiate cares nothing for the Sith or their ideals as an institution, only as a means to accomplish his goals.

I think a stronger potential argument is that being a "Sith" is a mindset as Bane eschewed many teachings of the Sith in favor of his own ideas but still considered himself one with the core of his beliefs rooted in ensuring the Darkside's supremacy through the accumulation of power by any means.

My final post Revan will be out in a few hours, so if you're still reserving judgment @ anyone wait until then.

I think to be a Sith you need to have been inducted into the Order by someone who is, however distantly, linked to the original Sith Order. For example, some random asshole cannot just claim to be a Sith when they have no affiliation with any Sith and have never received any Sith training.

Now, providing someone does have some link to the original Sith Order, even if it breaks the Rule of Two, e.g the Lost Tribe, Maul and Savage, then they are Sith. The only way out of this that I see is an explicit resignation from the Order. If we use Maul as an example, even though Sidious disavowed him, Maul was still a Sith Lord in his own right and thus took Savage on and made him a legitimate Sith apprentice. But as we see in Rebels he is "formerly Darth, now just Maul" - that was his choice.

It's not really related to how much they believe in "true Sith doctrine", because that doctrine has been chopped and changed plenty of times. There are some basic things which unite the Sith, such as the will to power and to destroy the Jedi, but after that the means by which they accomplish this is up in the air. Sidious and Gravid for example both studied the light side, and it did not make them any less Sith for it. Same with Kreia who despite heavily criticising the Sith Order is still referred to as a Sith Lord in all of the material that talks about her.

There's very little reason to believe that Vitiate, as he appears in SWTOR, is not a Sith: it's what he is referred to as through and through in all of the material. Valkorion is another story because he actively renounced the Sith Order and tried to destroy and replace it with the Eternal Empire.

To me, it's as simple as saying that in KotFE and KoTET, while he is assuming the body of Valkorion, Tenebrae is not a Sith, and when he is otherwise inhabiting the body of Vitiate he is a Sith. He's very malleable with what identities he likes to take on, but really that's all we're talking about here: an identity.

One thing that is clear to me is this: while Valkorion is fundamentally a new entity (which we can see from how Tenebrae's spirit is represented with Valk's physical appearance), there's no evidence that at any time prior to him taking this new identity he was anything but a Sith, and even after he did, he still had all the trappings of one.

So yeah TLDR I'd apply the Sith quotes to anything Tenebrae did as Vitiate the Sith, and I would only apply quotes that talk about "the dark side" to Valkorion.

I vote Revan

ILS wrote:
There's very little reason to believe that Vitiate, as he appears in SWTOR, is not a Sith: it's what he is referred to as through and through in all of the material. Valkorion is another story because he actively renounced the Sith Order and tried to destroy and replace it with the Eternal Empire.

Would we not consider Bane a "non-Sith" then since he renounced the Brotherhood, destroyed it, and replaced it with his own order? Or is it because Bane actively created a new philosophy/order under the umbrella term of "the Sith" with the primary goal still being the destruction of the Jedi and ascendancy of the Darkside which ultimately would have us consider him to be "a Sith" where we would not for Valkorion.

Edit: I.E. like a Christian denouncing Lutheranism/Calvinism/Mormonism/some other sect of Christianity but still following the core beliefs of "Christianity" as opposed to a former Christian denouncing the religion and its tenants as a whole.

Revan gets my vote.