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The Adventurous Jedi
The Adventurous Jedi
Level Seven
Level Seven

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Empty SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

June 26th 2019, 7:41 pm
SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Banner11

---

-Darth Plagueis as of the end of Star Wars: Darth Plagueis - just prior to his death.
-Galen Marek as of the end of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II - after capturing Vader (assume no exhaustion).

There will be 3 posts per side, and a 5000 character finisher with a month for both debaters to write each post, and two weeks to write the finisher.

This thread follows all default stipulations listed in the "Guidlines" thread. Additional rules are as follows:

-Feats take precedence over directly and indisputably contradicted statements.
-Quotes are binding and have no expiration date unless directly or subtextually contradicted. For the latter, such a case must be made within the debate itself.
-All letter or number statistics ascribed to characters from C-Canon sources, including role-playing games and trading cards, are banned.

Judges are:

  • Xolthol
  • MasterCilghal


Last edited by NotAA3 on July 12th 2020, 1:24 pm; edited 8 times in total
Jake
Jake
Level One
Level One

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Empty Re: SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

June 26th 2019, 7:41 pm
NICE
The Adventurous Jedi
The Adventurous Jedi
Level Seven
Level Seven

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Empty Re: SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

June 26th 2019, 8:16 pm
NevesYtneves (DC77)
NevesYtneves (DC77)
Level Seven
Level Seven

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Empty Re: SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

June 27th 2019, 11:45 am
Message reputation : 100% (1 vote)
T4V and TAEP.
Blade_of_Dorin
Blade_of_Dorin
Level One
Level One

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Empty Re: SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

June 29th 2019, 1:43 am
Looks interesting SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) 3146861145
The Fallen Warrior
The Fallen Warrior
Level Four
Level Four

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Empty Re: SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

June 29th 2019, 2:54 am
This might be a good fight, seems to me luke Plaguies might be sub shadow guard. Shadow gaurds scale above majority of PT Jedi who are > anything we have ever seen before

By using G canon Logic Pt > pre pt > bt > tor 
Shadow guards are "too much for standard jedi knights" SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) 2668642404
The Adventurous Jedi
The Adventurous Jedi
Level Seven
Level Seven

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Empty Re: SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

June 29th 2019, 6:55 am
@Flunky Cyborg

The debate is between MP and I so please take your own opinions on the fight elsewhere.
avatar
MP
Moderator | Champion of Darkness
Moderator | Champion of Darkness

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Empty Re: SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

June 29th 2019, 6:57 am
Plagueis picture is bad and it’s not end of novel because he was dead SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) 1220391476
The Adventurous Jedi
The Adventurous Jedi
Level Seven
Level Seven

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Empty Re: SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

June 29th 2019, 8:44 am
I meant just before his death (I thought that would be fairly self-evident)...

As for his picture he doesn't deserve a good one.
Jake
Jake
Level One
Level One

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Empty Re: SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

June 30th 2019, 4:24 am
Might as well use a pic of dead Plagueis, Galen rips him in half.
avatar
MP
Moderator | Champion of Darkness
Moderator | Champion of Darkness

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Empty Re: SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

October 22nd 2019, 11:48 pm

DARTH PLAGUEIS: MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH


SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) 28243610

But there was an alternative path to those abilities, and it led from a place where the circle closed on itself and sheer will substituted for selflessness. Plagueis understood, too, that there were no powers beyond his reach; none he couldn't master through an effort of will. If a Sith of equal power had preceded him, then that one had taken his or her secrets to the grave, or had locked them away in holocrons that had been destroyed or had yet to surface.



Here is a piece to listen to whilst you read not only about Plagueis' position as one of the most powerful beings in the Star Wars Mythos, but also the deconstruction of some of the misconceptions about Starkiller as both a force-wielder and a lightsaber duelist.






INTROITUS

1.1 The prologue of Darth Plagueis provides perhaps one of the most remarkable and telling pieces of evidence for the sheer magnitude of power possessed by the Sith Lord who surpassed all before him: Darth Plagueis the Wise. It demonstrates that Plagueis and post-boost Sidious are approximately on the same power level. This is shown through Sidious’ abject fear and concern for his own safety despite receiving a boost in power a moment beforehand that realised his full potential in the Force.

(A) The burnished sill of an expansive translucency


A tremor took hold of the planet.

Sprung from death, it unleashed itself in a powerful wave, at once burrowing deep into the world's core and radiating through its saccharine atmosphere to shake the stars themselves. At the quake's epicenter stood Sidious, one elegant hand vised on the burnished sill of an expansive translucency, a vessel filled suddenly to bursting, the Force so strong within him that he feared he might disappear into it, never to return. But the moment didn't constitute an ending so much as a true beginning, long overdue; it was less a transformation than an intensification-a gravitic shift.

A welter of voices, near and far, present and from eons past, drowned his thoughts. Raised in praise, the voices proclaimed his reign and cheered the inauguration of a new order. Yellow eyes lifted to the night sky, he saw the trembling stars flare, and in the depth of his being he felt the power of the dark side anoint him.

1.2 In the novel Plagueis, Darth Sidious reached his biological force potential. His body, and to a further extent his midichlorians were not capable of channelling any more power, lest it damage Sidious’ body and bring him closer to death. In other words, if Sidious attempted to channel more power than his body could hold, it would quicken his body’s biological death. In the above text taken from the Prologue of Plagueis, the boost in power he receives upon his master's death causes Sidious to feel like “a vessel filled suddenly to bursting, the Force so strong within him that he feared he might disappear into it, never to return.” This exact sensation of “bursting apart” due to an influx of power was felt by none other than Luke Skywalker himself during The Joiner King:

The shuddering stopped. Luke continued to maintain both illusions, the Force pouring through him like fire, burning more fiercely every moment. He was drawing more energy than his body was conditioned to endure, literally burning himself up from the inside. It was not really a dark side act—to a modern Jedi, the dark side was more a matter of intent than deed—but it felt that way to him. According to Mara, this was what happened to Palpatine, and Luke believed her. He could feel himself aging—his cells weakening, the membranes growing thin and the cytoplasm simmering, the nuclei coming apart.
Star Wars: Dark Nest I - The Joiner King

1.3 The aftereffects of this use of the Force made him look like Palpatine, “Feeling in danger of doing just that, Luke started to rise—then caught a glimpse of himself in the mirrored section of the canopy. His face was puffy and wrinkled, his skin sallow and dry, his eyes sunken and baggy and rimmed in red. He was starting to look like Palpatine.” As Mara notes in the above quote, she believes that this is exactly what happened to Sidious, in that such intense use of the Force over extended periods of time ravaged the body. Luke felt the exact same sensation that Sidious did in the prologue of Plagueis, the feeling of breaking apart. So then, the question is how do we distinguish reaching one’s Force potential from simply using the Force in an intense way? How do we know Sidious wasn’t just experiencing a temporary influx of power, rather than reaching his biological Force potential? Surely, the effect of the dark side ravaging the bodies of those who used it is well known. The answer lies in Sidious’ career after the death of his master.

1.4 Sidious used Sith alchemy and the power of the dark side to mask dark side degradation (link). However, he was showing more and more strain in attempting to upkeep this visage as the Clone Wars progressed. The dark side degradation Sidious experienced so was great that he struggled to maintain his facade and alter-ego, Palpatine. It is only in Revenge of the Sith that Sidous’ body is damaged to the point where he would be unable to contain it any longer, and this is when he goes beyond his Force potential as he shoots lightning at Mace Windu. During the lightsaber duel, Windu was using Vaapad to redirect Sidious’ power back at him, equalising the two combatants. Here, the Emperor was still under the constraints of his body. This remains unchanged when he began his lightning barrage at Mace, but there is a clear point where Sidious’ power goes from being harmlessly redirected back at him from the effects of Vaapad to actually “going beyond Vaapad” and bending Mace’s blade back. This jump in power is also when Sidious’ face and body start to “deform”, or rather, unmask. This is not coincidental.

"Fool!" His voice was a shout of thunder. "Do you think the fear you feel is mine?"

Lighting blasted the clouds above, and lightning blasted from Palpatine's hands, and Mace didn't have time to comprehend what Palpatine was talking about; he had time only to slip back into Vaapad and angle his blade to catch the forking arcs of pure, dazzling hatred that clawed toward him.

Because Vaapad is more than a fighting style. It is a state of mind: a channel for darkness. Power passed into him and out again without touching him.

And the circuit completed itself: the lightning reflected back to its source.

Palpatine staggered, snarling, but the blistering energy that loured from his hands only intensified.

He fed the power with his pain.

"Anakin!" Mace called. His voice sounded distant, blurred, ; if it came from the bottom of a well. "Anakin, help me! This is your chance!"

He felt Anakin's leap from the office floor to the ledge, felt his approach behind-And Palpatine was not afraid. Mace could feel it: he wasn't worried at all. "Destroy this traitor," the Chancellor said, his voice raised over the howl of writhing energy that joined his hands to Mace's blade. "This was never an arrest. It's an assassination!"

That was when Mace finally understood. He had it. The key to final victory. Palpatine's shatterpoint. The absolute shatter-point of the Sith.

The shatterpoint of the dark side itself.

Mace thought, blankly astonished, Palpatine trusts Anakin Skywalker...

Now Anakin was at Mace's shoulder. Palpatine still made no move to defend himself from Skywalker; instead he ramped up the lightning bursting from his hands, bending the fountain of Mace's blade back toward the Korun Master's face.

Palpatine's eyes glowed with power, casting a yellow glare that burned back the rain from around them. "He is a traitor, Anakin. Destroy him."

"You're the chosen one, Anakin," Mace said, his voice going thin with strain. This was beyond Vaapad; he had no strength left to fight against his own blade. "Take him. It's your destiny.'"

Skywalker echoed him faintly. "Destiny ..."

"Help me! I can't hold on any longer!" The yellow glare from Palpatine's eyes spread outward through his flesh. His skin flowed like oil, as though the muscle beneath was burning away, as though even the bones of his skull were softening, were bending and bulging, deforming from the heat and pressure of his electric hatred. "He is killing me, Anakin-! Please, Anaaahhh-"

Mace's blade bent so close to his face that he was choking on ozone. "Anakin, he's too strong for me-"
Revenge of the Sith Novelisation

1.5 Note that as Sidious amps up his burst of lightning over the course of the text, Vaapad becomes incapable of fully redirecting it, and it begins to bend Mace’s blade back on him. This is Sidious harnessing power beyond the capabilities of his body. It’s stated in the above text that Vaapad is more than a fighting style, and it allowed Sidious’ lightning to pass through Windu without harming him. But as soon as the power ramped up to the point where Vaapad was unable to contain it was exactly the point when Sidious’ disfigurement happened. In fact, Sidious had to perform an elaborate Sith ritual consistently to maintain his appearance as Palpatine (linked previously); and it’s confirmed that the disfigurement he experienced wasn’t solely through his own lightning, but also from his use of the dark side destroying his body rapidly, "The backlash of energy combined with the sheer unrestrained potency of the dark side of the Force begins to twist Palpatine's visage... The end result is a sickening deformation, sparked by lightning and molded by darkness." (link)

1.6 Sidious is using his power “unrestrained”, and his disfigurement was “sparked by lightning and molded by darkness”. Like Luke in The Joiner King, Sidious was harnessing power his body wasn’t conditioned to endure, and it ravaged his appearance, destroying the Sith mask and aging him rapidly. But this time, it didn’t merely hasten the evaporation of the mask itself, but permanently crippled his appearance beyond even the power of Sidious to disguise; he could no longer simply perform the same ritual to restore his look, and the damage was irreversible in his current body (link). In other words: to harness energies beyond what his body was capable of withstanding without breaking apart (his biological Force potential) was to kill his own body from the effects of too much power.

1.7 When Sidious received an influx of power on the death of his former master, the energies running through his body were so potent and beyond the capabilities of his midichlorians to contain that they started to damage Sidious’ body, just as Luke’s feat in The Joiner King started to alter his appearance. Thus, Sidious reached his biological Force potential after killing his master.

---

(B) Fear


Also sprawled there, Plagueis: his slender limbs splayed and elongated head turned to one side. Dressed in finery, as for a night on the town.

And now dead.

Or was he?

Uncertainty rippled through Sidious, rage returning to his eyes. A tremor of his own making, or one of forewarning?

Was it possible that the wily Muun had deceived him? Had Plagueis unlocked the key to immortality, and survived after all? Never mind that it would constitute a petty move for one so wise-for one who had professed to place the Grand Plan above all else. Had Plagueis become ensnared in a self-spun web of jealousy and possessiveness, victim of his own engineering, his own foibles?

If he hadn't been concerned for his own safety, Sidious might have pitied him.

Wary of approaching the corpse of his former Master, he called on the Force to roll the aged Muun over onto his back. From that angle Plagueis looked almost as he had when Sidious first met him, decades earlier: smooth, hairless cranium; humped nose, with its bridge flattened as if from a shock-ball blow and its sharp tip pressed almost to his upper lip; jutting lower jaw; sunken eyes still brimming with menace-a physical characteristic rarely encountered in a Muun. But then Plagueis had never been an ordinary Muun, nor an ordinary being of any sort.

Sidious took care, still reaching out with the Force. On closer inspection, he saw that Plagueis's already cyanotic flesh was smoothing out, his features relaxing.

Faintly aware of the whir of air scrubbers and sounds of the outside world infiltrating the luxurious suite, he continued the vigil; then, in relief, he pulled himself up to his full height and let out his breath. This was no Sith trick. Not an instance of feigning death, but one of succumbing to its cold embrace. The being who had guided him to power was gone.

1.8 After Sidious received an influx of power that brought him beyond his biological Force potential, his internal thought process and subsequent actions in relation to the prospect of Plagueis cheating death are not indicative of someone who is vastly superior. He imagines that perhaps the tremor that “shook the stars” was equally likely to have been caused by either himself, or Plagueis. He prepares himself combatively, “rage returned to his eyes.”; is wary of approaching the corpse and holds his breath as he manipulates the body from afar. Taking extreme caution in inspecting the corpse, he lets out a sigh of relief when he concludes Plagueis is truly dead. If Plagueis wasn’t a threat to his newfound power, the clear and utter fear Sidious displays makes absolutely no sense. The threat was clearly conventional in nature as well, since Sidious prepares himself combatively for another fight. Thus, Plagueis’ power level is approximately on par with that of Sidious post-boost.

1.9 Although Sidious grows in power on a consistent basis throughout the SW trilogy all the way to Dark Empire (he admits this himself), his ability to manifest that power without damaging his body remained constant; it was restrained by the limit of his body’s midichlorians to effectively channel that power. This explains why Sidious can lose a duel to Luke (who can achieve a higher level of augmentation due to higher biological potential) yet still hold back his “full potency” in the form of Force Storms. So, during the death of his master, Sidious received an influx of energy that overloaded his body’s midichlorians, reaching his body’s potential to harness the power he had. Despite this, he still feared for his life in potential combat against his master, and this is indicative of a comparable power level that Starkiller does not match.

CONCLUSION


2.1 Sidious reached biological Force potential during the events of Plagueis, after receiving a boost of power on the death of Darth Plagueis. Yet Sidious remained in abject fear of the prospect of facing his former master again and was in fear of his safety; a reaction that would not make sense unless Plagueis could threaten him in combat. Since Sidious reached his potential in the Force, the power he could unleash in battle without damaging his body would remain consistent as long as he remained in his body. Thus, the Sidious we see in Plagueis is also comparable to the one in RotS who fought Yoda, the one in TFU who toyed with Starkiller, and even the one in Dark Empire (in terms of conventional power applicable). Of course, later iterations of Sidious became more powerful but were still limited by the body. Since there is no indication that TFU drew beyond his body against Starkiller, his unquestioned superiority over him would be exactly the same as if it had been Plagueis instead.

2.2 Thus, Plagueis is on a whole other power level to Starkiller.
xolthol
xolthol
Level Five
Level Five

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Empty Re: SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

October 23rd 2019, 3:31 am
@Meatpants Good post ! And the music in the background perfectly feat with it !
The Adventurous Jedi
The Adventurous Jedi
Level Seven
Level Seven

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Empty Re: SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

November 7th 2019, 5:23 pm
Message reputation : 100% (1 vote)
I hope you're ready, cause I've got a lovely word salad coming right up for you Meatpants.


Last edited by NotAA3 on February 8th 2020, 2:34 pm; edited 1 time in total
The Adventurous Jedi
The Adventurous Jedi
Level Seven
Level Seven

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Empty Re: SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

November 7th 2019, 5:24 pm
*Links Google Doc.*
IG
IG
Level Four
Level Four

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Empty Re: SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

November 7th 2019, 6:16 pm
Bruh, put the damn post here.
The Adventurous Jedi
The Adventurous Jedi
Level Seven
Level Seven

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Empty Re: SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

November 7th 2019, 10:17 pm
Message reputation : 100% (2 votes)

Opener


1) Preface


And it begins. In your opener you stated:

Plagueis is on a whole other power level to Starkiller.

Which I fundamentally disagree with. So, with that in mind, my opener will be dedicated to proving Galen’s power edge, and we can delve into other categories e.g. Force Mastery, Lightsaber Skills, etc, later in the debate to see if Plagueis can compensate in other areas. Anyway, let’s get into this.

2) A Challenge: Galen’s Power Advantage


A) Introduction


Galen Marek is a prodigiously powerful Force Wielder who possesses power obviously significantly greater than Plagueis. To chart Galen’s power, we can look at his early game feats, holistic standing, ridiculous growth, and scaling, thus this section of my post will be split into 3 sections:

1) Darth Vader’s Secret Apprentice
2) Galen Marek
3) Scaling

With that out of the way, let’s start at the beginning.

B) Darth Vader’s Secret Apprentice


When we consider Galen’s potential and training it should be clear that even as of the start of the game he’s an immensely powerful Force Wielder. According to Sidious Galen’s full potential is at least comparable to his own, he stated Galen could have been his “successor,” his “equal.” This is backed up by Insider #100 which testifies Galen “had the potential to be the most powerful Force user ever.” This alone is enough to show Galen’s potential is incredible, but the source only goes further, stating Galen is “the photo negative of Luke Skywalker” and that he is “what Luke would have become if he had joined his father.” Possessing potential comparable to that of Luke’s should make it clear Galen’s potential is immense, and when we look at how he was trained it should be clear he obviously became unfathomably powerful.

The Apprentice is the photo negative of Luke Skywalker. He's been raised by Darth Vader, and is what Luke would have become if he had joined his father. Vader's not a very nice daddy. This guy has been raised to be a Jedi. When the Jedi use the Force, they respect it and don't overuse it. The bad guys - the Sith - keep testing their limits. Vader discovered this person who had the potential to be the most powerful Force user ever. He's up there with the top tier. He's extremely powerful. Vader has trained him in such a way that he just kept pushing his limitations, seeing how far he could use the Force. So, where a normal Jedi might use the Force to trick his way past a few stormtroopers, the apprentice might use the Force to bring down an adjacent building on top of those stormtroopers. He's extremely confident in everything he does. He's been trained by Vader to be an assassin, an unstoppable force.
-Insider #100

You had such promise. You could have been my successor, my equal. But now…
-The Force Unleashed Videogame, Darth Sidious

Galen’s training was a “harsh and unforgiving” “decade and a half of torture and abuse” during which he endured “rigorous physical tests” and “punishing exercises” which were designed to keep “pushing his limitations, seeing how far he could use the Force.” Vader made sure he was “mercilessly schooled in the ways of the Dark Side” to the point whereby his teenage years Galen was already “more powerful than many Jedi Knights had been during the Clone Wars” and by the time he reached adulthood was “among the most powerful Force-users in the galaxy.” Under Vader, he “learned to wield many fearsome dark side powers” and “all but perfected the fine art of lightsaber combat.” In summary, Galen’s a mega prodigy with Sidious+/Luke Skywalker tier potential who was trained relentlessly for like 15 years straight to maximize his potential and have incredible raw power. Considering Luke himself after a short spell on Dagobah was capable of giving Vader a relatively solid fight (he pushes him back and tags him on the shoulder), the amount of raw power Galen is boasting should certainly be immense.

The Apprentice’s training was harsh and unforgiving: Vader subject the boy to rigorous physical tests bordering on torture. He first controlled the boy through fear, and then taught him to embrace hatred and other base emotions. As the boy grew older, Vader promised him greater power - through the dark side. Under Vader’s relentless tutelage, the Apprentice all but perfected the fine art of lightsaber combat and learned to wield many fearsome dark side powers.
-The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia

Then the Dark Lord laughed.

It was an awful sound, empty of humor and full of mockery. In it, the apprentice heard a decade and a half of torture and abuse.
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

Nothing, therefore, prepared him for the sudden deviation from the day’s punishing and predictable exercises.
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

Vader’s apprentice was both strong in the Force and incredibly aggressive. As a teenager, the apprentice was already more powerful than many Jedi Knights had been during the Clone Wars, and it was only Darth Vader’s incredible power and skill that allowed him to defeat the boy in combat.
-The Force Unleashed Campaign Guide

By the time he reached adulthood, Vader’s apprentice was among the most powerful Force-users in the galaxy thanks to the tutelage of his Sith Master.
-The Force Unleashed Campaign Guide

As apprentice to Darth Vader, Starkiller was mercilessly school in the ways of the dark side and groomed for the ultimate Sith power play: assassination of the Emperor.
-The Force Unleashed 2 Novelization Blurb

Indeed, it’s stated Galen’s power is “up there with the top tier” and that as of the start of the game he was “a dehumanized warrior, angry, unleashed and virtually unstoppable” who could “use the Force at its most extreme.”

Constantly tested in battle by his droid aide, PROXY, he trusted few other beings. This lack of love led to a dehumanized warrior, angry, unleashed and virtually unstoppable.
-Insider #106

The Jedi use the Force with care and respect, but the Sith test its limits, craving unlimited power. Vader trained his apprentice to use the Force at its most extreme.
-Insider #106

This is represented in the events of TFU where Galen performs some of the best environmental feats in the mythos at the start of the game such as:

Powering a Corvette:

On moving to another vantage point, the apprentice ascertained that the starship had at least one engine still in its housing, a bulky hyperdrive that seemed to be undamaged. Perfect.

[...]

He hurried by, into the bowels of the corvette. A ramp had been added to aid the Jawas in their exploration and evisceration of the ship. It led up at a shallow angle into a stack of collapsed levels that had once been the crew midsection. He ran lightly along it, making no sound at all.

[...]

A herd of Jawas ran by, squeaking, their glowing yellow eyes flashing on and off. He let them go, not having a second to spare, and followed the most likely route to the hyperdrive. When a pair of Rodians stepped out of a hole in the wall ahead of him, he didn't give them a chance to raise their blasters. He sliced one in two while the other fell back clutching his throat.

"Are you having fun down there?" came Juno's voice over the comlink.

"I'm making progress," he said as his objective came into sight. The turbines of the massive hyperdrive lay dead ahead, their shielding removed in preparation for extraction elsewhere. Naked conduits and cable bundles snaked into the walls or hung limp, severed, on the floor.

[...]

Another Rodian came running up the corridor behind him, firing at his back. He deflected the shots with his lightsaber and brought the ceiling down on the raider, effectively sealing himself into the hyperdrive access room. No matter. The walls were weak with metal fatigue. He could punch out in an instant when he was finished.

Kneeling in front of the turbines, he took a handful of cables in both hands and called on the Force. Energy surged through him, making him stiffen. Sith lightning sparked from his skin and snaked through the ragged metal walls, floor, and ceiling. Distantly he heard screams as the many beings inside the wrecked corvette suffered from the aftereffects. He ignored them, along with the smell of smoke rising from his own tattered uniform.

Focus, he told himself. Undirected power was power wasted. Gritting his teeth, he gathered the energy and directed it down his arms, into his hands. Blue light strobed across his vision as the lightning flowed into the wires and from there into the hyperdrive turbines. Groaning, then shrieking, the massive engine came alive. Damaged, completely out of alignment, and barely controllable, the turbine shook with propulsive power, then strained against the braces still holding it to the corvette's warped chassis.

The deck kicked underneath the apprentice. He swayed as the entire corvette shifted. With a terrible sound, it began to move, plowing a brutal furrow through the surrounding rubbish. He could picture it clearly in his imagination and through the vibrant flow of the Force. As lightning poured through him and into the engine, it pushed the stricken corvette physically out of his path. The way to the Temple was now clear.

When he sensed that it had gone far enough, he relaxed his concentration. Smaller discharges of energy skittered across his skin. Somewhat shakily, he stood, then almost toppled over as the engine continued to fire, sending the corvette onward, out of his control.

He hadn't expected that. There was enough residual potential in the turbine to keep it running for dozens of seconds. He had to get out of the corvette before it dragged him any farther from his goal.

Straining, he blew a hole in the side of the downed ship wide enough for a TIE fighter to pass through. The wall of a junk canyon was gliding by, raining rubbish. With one smooth leap, he caught hold of dangling cable and swung free of the wreck. It roared on, dragging itself through the dregs of the galaxy on its disintegrating belly, sending waves of disturbed filth radiating outward from its path.
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

Blasting away thousands of droids:

Soon the foyer was full of the twitching, smoking bodies of the temple's hapless guardians. He began to tire, not from exertion but from the tedium of knocking down droid after droid, to no apparent end. There might have been thousands of them.

Deactivating his lightsaber, he took a deep breath. With one mighty exhalation of power, he blasted all of them - those in pieces and those approaching with needle-tipped fingers and vibrosaws upraised - out of the foyer doors. Then he blasted the rubbish piles after them. He kept pushing until a dark cloud toured out over Raxus Prime's hideous landscape - an artificial hurricane full of droid golems.

When the foyer was clear, the apprentice straightened. He was no longer pushing with the Force, but the floor beneath him shook nonetheless. A heavy booming sound came from deeper in the Temple, and was getting louder. He had certainly attracted someone's attention now.
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

Destroying Shaak Ti with a Force Repulse:

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Galen_12

I could obviously mention more, but that would be a waste of time. The point is Galen’s raw power is remarkable, and this is just the beginning. What Galen does at the end of the novel makes these feats look like horseshit by comparison and his growth is quite frankly enormous. This is just to establish a baseline for Plagueis to compete with, for you to understand that in this match, he’s totally out of his league power-wise.

C) Galen Marek


While Galen’s raw power at the start of the novel is already at a very high level in comparison to the rest of the mythos, his power seemingly fluctuates at the start of the novel, he’s given good fights by generally shit tier Jedi like Paratus and Kota despite his insane environmental feats and holistic standing. To understand why Galen operates like this we must first look at relevant examples of characters with insane raw power. In this case, I think AOTC Anakin’s case is the most reminiscent of Galen’s, so let’s look at him.

Per the Galactic Campaign Guide, Anakin circa AOTC is “perhaps even more powerful than Yoda” yet he “doesn’t have Yoda’s experience and, as a result, has a much harder time controlling all that power.” The source goes onto state that “sometimes” Anakin “uses the Force in ways much more potent than he had planned,” which would explain some of his high-end feats e.g. pressing Count Dooku, the CIS dreadnought feat, the Theta Storm feat, etc. Nick Gillard backs this up when talking about AOTC when he states Anakin sometimes has “flashes of brilliance” which these moments likely constitute as. These high ends demonstrations can be brought on through emotion (he was rage amped vs Count Dooku) or prolonged exertion (see the Dreadnought and Theta Storm feats). When we look at Anakin failing to manifest his incredible raw power due to emotional instability and lack of mastery+control, I see no reason why the same shouldn’t logically apply to Starkiller due to his mental state.

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Aotc_a10

To preface, we see numerous times at the start of TFU that Galen believes he is as powerful as he is due to him being Vader’s apprentice along with having the Dark Side of the Force on his side, he almost never attributes this to his own doing.

The general was wily and strong and possessed some moves the apprentice had never seen before. But he was older and willfully ignorant of the dark side of the Force.
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

The dark side is inexhaustible.
-The Force Unleashed Novelization, Galen Marek

The power of the dark side filled him. Strength coursed through his veins, swelling his heart with resolve. He would not fail. And how could he? He was Darth Vader's apprentice.
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

A slow smile crept across his face. Why be coy? He was the apprentice of Darth Vader and a servant of the dark side. It didn't pay to creep about in fear of raising his head.
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

A slow smile crept across his face. He didn't need anything like that. He had the dark side of the Force on his side.
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

Given that Galen explicitly does not acknowledge the raw power within himself as his own and views his Master as the one with the power, it should be fairly obvious he has absolutely no control over this power whatsoever as one obviously can’t utilise/control something one does not realise they have. Starkiller was specifically conditioned in such a way that he’d have the most minimal command over his power so that he’d be able to perform titanic Force feats, yet be unable to defeat his master. Vader even acknowledges such stating to Galen: “You are only as powerful as I have allowed you to become.” Overall, Galen is definitely in the same boat as of AOTC Anakin, very powerful, but lacking mastery and focus. With that in mind, let’s look at the feats I cited in Section 1 of my case for Galen, the corvette feat, the droid feat, and the Ti feat. Both of the first two fall under the category of “prolonged exertion” and the Ti feat falls under the category of an “intense situation.” These feats are incredibly impressive, yet do not accurately reflect what Galen is capable of at the start of the game, combatively speaking, however they do give us a glimmer of what an in-control Galen would look like.

To further strengthen my comparisons between AOTC Anakin and Galen let’s look at C in more detail. According to the beginning of the novel, Galen’s “only fear was of failing his master.”

The apprentice wasn’t afraid of dying. His only fear was of failing his master, and that fear he put to good use. The dark side rushed through him, made him strong and resilient. He felt more powerful than he ever had before.
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

Now, when he fights Shaak Ti, Galen rivals her conventionally in the novel, yet in the comic, he completely destroys her with a Force Repulse. The reason why is perfectly indicated in the dialogue with Galen screaming about how he “promised Darth Vader he would not fail." This follows from his previous comments, Galen was utterly devoted to Vader and he feared to fail him, so when he was placed in an intense situation where he was about to die, bringing his one fear to fruition, his power manifested beyond his base output, as Anakin’s did vs Dooku. To summarise, this scene perfectly exemplifies Galen is far more powerful than every foe he faces at the start of the novel (similarly to Anakin in AOTC/the early CW), yet in his normal emotional state he cannot effectively channel that power in order to destroy them as he should, but can when emotionally charged (similarly to Anakin).

Now, this has been quite a length side tangent, so now onto the actual relevance. Galen’s power is hampered and locked away by Vader’s mental conditioning, but what happens when we remove that conditioning and unleash that 15 year-long build-up of raw power? Let’s find out.

As I mentioned before, Galen being solely dedicated to Vader and not acknowledging himself is the key reason for him not being able to effectively utilise his power in combat. On Kashyyyk, Galen finally begins to accept he’s something greater than Darth Vader’s Apprentice when he visits his childhood hut and finds out he had a family, a life before Darth Vader, and he becomes “much more powerful” as a result. The comics scan is reinforced by the novelization where we see Galen wrestling with this newfound knowledge and whether it matters or not. Galen later reflects on Kashyyyk and concludes what he was feeling was a “swelling bubble of self-doubt” indicating he was indeed conflicted, and this was when he first began to see himself as something beyond Vader’s student.

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Galen_13

THE APPRENTICE BLINKED. HE WAS standing, frozen, staring at the very spot where the bodies had once lain. There was no sign of them now, not even a bone. Scavengers must have carried them nil, or they had been thrown free when the platform the hut had fallen onto had in turn collapsed. There was only the crystal, winch had somehow come to be folded tightly in his hand. It looked just like one of those from the fallen Jedi Knight's lightsaber, which the boy might have liked to play with when he was younger, for comfort.

His face twisted into a snarl. Looked just like . . . might have ... He was trying to validate the vision, when it was nothing really but a dream. A fantasy. The truth was that he had been bothered by something ever since he had arrived on Kashyyyk-an irrational feeling that something was wrong, which probably related more to his alliance with Kota than anything to do with his own past. Darth Vader had raised him; he didn't need to imagine parents or a home to give himself meaning. He was just fabricating a story out of thin air.
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

A BEDRAGGLED FIGURE EMERGED FROM the ruined hut, eyes wild and jaw set. With determination, he set off along the dry creekbed, following the directions he had been given in another age, another life. Empty of thought, he let duty sweep him forward. Duty to his Master, to Juno, to Kota, to the Wookiees . . .

What duty he owed himself, he didn't know. He hadn't realized that there had even been a him to think of outside his relationship with Darth Vader. He had imagined himself simply made, somehow, one of his Master's stranger biological experiments, with no parents and no home but the one he remembered. What if the visions he had endured were real and he had had a family, here on Kashyyyk? How did that affect his place in Vader's schemes? Did it change everything, or nothing?
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

All my life I've thought of myself solely as Darth Vader's apprentice. Now I find I might have had a past before that-a father, a name, a history. Who was this Galen? What were his dreams, his hopes, his fears? What made him laugh? What made him cry?

It seemed inconceivable that he could have forgotten something as traumatic as the death of his father, but he knew that intense trauma could cause partial or complete amnesia. He couldn't therefore rule anything out.

And the question remained: did it matter? Whoever he had once been, that being was forgotten, and his purpose now was unchanged. He was his Master's apprentice; they would be victorious; and Juno would learn, in the end, that she had not betrayed the Empire after all. If only, he thought, I could tell her now . . .
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

He didn't dare imagine that PROXY could sense the swelling bubble of self-doubt that had formed when he had experienced his strange epiphany on Kashyyyk.
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

However, while the “fault lines” in Galen’s conditioning started showing on Kashyyyk, Galen didn’t fully break Vader’s hold until Raxus Prime (as I’ll elaborate on later), though we do see him develop substantially on Felucia. During his first confrontation with Shaak Ti, Galen attributed his power to the Dark Side of the Force (as cited previously) claiming it was “inexhaustible” and when Shaak Ti responded with, “Light, Dark... These are just directions. Do not be fooled that you stand on anything other than your own two feet." Galen originally dismissed her claims saying: “Spare me the philosophy lesson Jedi.” However, when he comes back to Felucia, he begins to consider their meaning, once again displaying that he’s breaking Vader’s hold over him.

"You can't keep this up forever," he taunted Shaak Ti as they dueled.

"Neither can you," she said. "You are wasting your strength too quickly."

"The dark side is inexhaustible."

"Your strength is prodigious," she admitted, "but that is your doing. Light, dark..." She paused to aim a blow at his head that he barely deflected. "They are just directions. Do not be fooled that you stand on anything other than your own two feet."
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

Her eyes blazed red as she rained blow after blow upon him. He staggered backward, weakened by more than just his battle with the bull rancor.

He was fighting himself-but not in some flashback-inspired hallucination, where the Jedi and the Sith warred in him for control of his future. This time the fight was real, and his opponent was as joyously rich in the dark side as he had ever been. She, too, had lost someone she cared deeply about; she, too, had been sent out into the hard galaxy to fend for herself. They should be helping each other, not fighting each other. But with Bail Organa watching, he couldn't even raise the possibility of a truce. He was even using Soresu moves against her raw, unpredictable lunges, just as the vision of himself had done in Jedi robes. And yet. . .

As he defended himself, he saw nothing but self-pity and fear in her eyes. Both were inferior to pure anger, although both could be potent gateways to the true mastery of the dark side that his Master had demonstrated to him. Maris was a newcomer, barely beginning her journey-as he, too, was journeying along a path toward full mastery. For the first time, he understood that the Force didn’t come in two shades only: dark and light, distinct and combative, never meeting in the middle to form gray. Those were ideals, and ideals existed solely for philosophers and theoreticians to argue over. In the real world, dark and light coexisted in varying proportions; nothing was ever static. Thus this former Jedi Padawan could turn to the dark side after a lifetime serving the light-and she could just as easily turn back to the light afterward, if she survived.

Light, dark, Shaak Ti had tried to tell him, they are just directions.

We're always moving, he thought, toward the dark or toward the light. It's impossible to stand still. Some, like Darth Vader and the Emperor, had been descending through the dark side for so long that the light must have become a faint and distant memory. Some hovered eternally in the gray, never entirely choosing a side. There were, in fact, no actual sides, just the direction in which one happened to be moving. It was all relative.

Coming to that understanding gave him a new kind of strength. When Sith betrayed one another, it wasn't because they were enemies. Their paths had simply diverged. So fighting Maris wasn't turning his back on the dark side. She was simply in his way, like so many other people before him.

Do not be fooled, Shaak Ti had also said, as so many have before you, that you walk on anything other than your own two feet.
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

Then, finally, we have Raxus Prime. As I mentioned before, Galen clearly doesn’t break Vader’s hold over him till Raxus Prime, as he notes even by this point in the story that the idea he could ever rival Vader is “preposterous.” Yet, when he pulls down a Star Destroyer he clearly changes, his mindset, questioning whether even Vader could perform such a titanic Force feat, attempting to call on Galen for strength and finally accepting afterward he’s “stronger than Darth Vader.” The fact that this was the pivotal moment where he broke his mental conditioning is reinforced later when he forms his own ideas for the Rebellion, and on the Death Star when he states that he “possessed the strength to do what he needed to do. He always had.” and that he can channel it via drawing on his love for Juno: “It was Galen as much as Darth Vader's apprentice who had invoked the thought of Juno to make him strong.”

My Master is not a coward, he had told Shaak Ti.

Then why are you here in his place? she had responded.

Because he could do things his Master could not. That was the only answer he would accept. He was anonymous and less likely to attract attention. He might even, one day, become stronger than his Master-although that thought seemed almost preposterous. How many people had challenged the infamous Lord Vader, Jedi or otherwise? All had failed. What made him special?

And then there was the vision he had received of a gravely injured Darth Vader. Past, present, or future, it clearly demonstrated that the Dark Lord was not invulnerable. Human tissue lay behind that mask and armor. Tissue died eventually.
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

Had his Master ever done anything like this? Had the Emperor? Had any Sith or Jedi in the history of the galaxy?
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

What was the point of being stronger than Darth Vader if he couldn't save his best friend?
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

On Raxus Prime, when he had tried to call on the naive audacity of the boy he had once been to bring down the Star Destroyer, nothing had stirred in him. No memories, no buried personalities, no hidden strength. He had worried at that fact ever since, wondering if his vision on Kashyyyk had been mistaken after all, or if Galen had been so thoroughly erased that no vestige of him remained.

But now he understood. When he had turned to Juno at the base of the cliff and told her his name, it had been him telling her, not the ghost of his former self. Galen had ignored his summons on Raxus Prime because he was already there. He had possessed the strength to do what he needed to do. He always had. It was Galen as much as Darth Vader's apprentice who had invoked the thought of Juno to make him strong. They were one and the same person.
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

Overall, Galen at the start of the novel, has raw power of the highest tier, yet has absolutely no control over it, but by the end of the novel he has broken his master’s conditioning and can freely draw upon it at will by “invoking the thought of Juno to make him strong.” So, to answer my original question: “What happens when we remove that conditioning and unleash that 15 year-long build-up of raw power?” You get a being capable of “moving Star Destroyers with nothing but his will” and telekinetically dominating Darth Vader.

Can't you see it, he wanted to say, then realized who he was talking to. He described the scene in as few words as he could, unable to tear his gaze away from the sight of the disintegrating shipyards. Huge, molten chunks were tearing free and tumbling either out into deep space or down into lower orbits while further explosions continued to tear the facility apart. The scaffolding around the nearly completed Star Destroyer had bent and torn completely away, leaving the ship free to power down into the atmosphere of Raxus Prime. Already it was visible as a distinct triangle glowing orange around its leading edges and conning tower. It was coming directly toward him.

It was aiming for him.

"Juno can't fly the ship at the moment," said Kota firmly, "and neither can PROXY. We have to find another solution."

"What's wrong with Juno?"

"Concentrate on what's important, boy. That Star Destroyer is coming down fast. You'll never get clear in time. You need to pull it into the cannon."

The apprentice was temporarily lost for words when he realized what Kota was suggesting.

Kota wanted him to move the Star Destroyer using nothing but the Force.

"You're insane," he gasped. "It's massive!"

"What is mass?" Kota said. "It's all in your mind, boy. You're a Jedi! Size means nothing to you!"

Kota's voice had changed. The surly, drunken slur was completely absent; in its place was the durasteel bark of the seasoned combat veteran the apprentice had first met.

"Can you hear me, boy? Reach out and grab that ship, or you'll die on this trash heap!"

The Star Destroyer was growing visibly larger and hung like a burning, triangular moon low in the sky of Raxus Prime.

You're a Jedi! Size means nothing to you!

He wasn't a Jedi but the message was the same. The Force didn't recognize big or small, heavy or light, hard or easy. The living flows of the galaxy encompassed all scales, from the very small to the extremely large. The Star Destroyer was part of it, and so was he. The Force bound them as surely as gravity. He could make its invisible muscles flex, if he dared.

Had his Master ever done anything like this? Had the Emperor? Had any Sith or Jedi in the history of the galaxy?

He doubted anyone would ever know about his success or failure in the next few minutes. "Be quick about it, boy!"

Fast or slow were also irrelevant to the Force, but the apprentice took Kota's point. The sooner he started, the sooner it would be done.

Deactivating his lightsaber and attaching the hilt to his belt, he adopted the opening stance of the Soresu form, with his right arm and fingers outstretched, pointing at the Star Destroyer. His empty left hand he tucked in next to his heart. With his legs braced firmly in the trash, he reached as deep as he had ever reached into the Force, and then went farther still, feeling as though a mighty chasm had opened up under him and his mind and will plunged down into it. The chasm filled. His mind opened. The physical existence of the Star Destroyer slid painlessly inside.

Nearly sixteen hundred meters long and capable of carrying a crew in excess of thirty-seven thousand, the ship was a familiar design. Its engines and armament weren't fully installed, but its Class One hyperdrive would have taken it anywhere in the Empire at speed, there to deploy walkers, fighters, barges, and shuttles. Armed with a host of turbolaser and ion cannons, plus no less than ten tractor beams, it could have blockaded an entire system on its own. The reinforced durasteel hull was solid enough to rip a gouge in Raxus Prime that might take centuries to fill. Scavenger droids would have a field day when it came down. Wherever it went down . . .

There is no wherever, he told himself. There is only where I tell it to.

Focus.

The tip of his right index finger and the Star Destroyer became as one in his mind. Every nut and bolt and plate and wire of the massive machine was contained within that tiny space. It wasn't hard to move an arm, a finger, a single human cell. He could direct one barely without thinking, so why not the other, too? Instinct was clearer on that point than the workings of his mind. Ignoring perspective, the two were about the same size in his field of vision.

Except the Star Destroyer was growing larger with each passing second, and waves of TIE fighters and TIE bombers were pouring forth from its brand-new hangar decks. Laserfire cut huge super-hot channels through the atmosphere ahead of them.

The apprentice ignored it all. While the illusion held, he moved his hand a very slight distance to his right. The sensation of containing a vast, million-ton machine in the tip of one finger was deeply disorienting. He felt as though every muscle fiber, nerve, and bone groaned along with the metal seams and joints of the ship. What it felt, he felt, too, and even a small acceleration had a profound effect on such a large scale. It resisted with all the momentum it possessed. Hatches swang open; rivets popped; bulkheads twisted; pipes burst.

The Star Destroyer didn't appear to have moved much in the sky. It was still coming in low on the horizon, aiming to pass over him and strafe him from above. He shifted his hand a second time, but instead of changing its course he mistakenly gave it a slight tumble. He needed to apply the Force the right way for this to work, taking the growing forces of friction and the shifting of its center of gravity into account. A spinning Star Destroyer would do more damage than one burying itself nose-first into the cannon and its superstructure. Damage was good, when it came to destroying the Emperor's handiwork, but too much damage could destroy him and perhaps the Rogue Shadow as well under a deadly rain of molten shrapnel.

Bring it down in one piece, he told himself. Bring it down hard.

The ship growled and squealed in metal torment. He was getting the hang of it; he could see how its course was slowly shifting. As wide across as his outstretched hand now, it was hitting the atmosphere at a steeper angle than he had intended, burning bright red and already gouting a trail of black smoke and sparkling debris. He became aware of a sound communicated through his feet: a rumbling much deeper and more sustained than the pounding of the cannon, which had fallen silent after the firing of the third projectile. The Star Destroyer's incomplete frame was acting like a giant tube, and the atmosphere was resonating inside. His whole body sang with it.

More. The Star Destroyer was really picking up speed now. The thickening atmosphere had a slight braking effect, but nothing could prevent the inevitable. It was going to hit soon. A wild exodus of droids ran past him, fleeing the crash site. The TIE fighters it had launched raced ahead of the chaotic atmospheric waves it generated. He ignored them and concentrated on shifting ground zero as close to the cannon as he could.

Sparks danced in front of his eyes. The edges of his vision faded to black. Light and dark swirls spun around him, wraithlike. He felt momentarily faint and wondered if it was possible to dissolve into the Force. He was a speck caught in the updraft over a forest fire - yet somehow he had the audacity to try to command the fire to do his will.

Who did he think he was?

A sudden panic almost made him lose control. The Star Destroyer, now a burning, shrieking meteor, filled his entire forward vision. The hull was peeling away in fiery, golden strips, each one weighing hundreds of tons, exposing the darker skeleton beneath. It looked like a death's head, a ghastly mask not dissimilar to his Master's, but one molten like lava. This could well be the end of everything, he thought distantly. Of him, of his plans, of his feelings for Juno, and of the boy called Galen who had lost a father a long time ago and whose grief had already been effectively erased.

But his name had survived, and names had power. The apprentice clutched at it with desperation, needing to regain control of the Star Destroyer lest it tear itself apart and disperse the impact. He needed to find his focus again, to ignore the feeling of dissolution eating at the edges of his self, and to tip the balance of power back toward him.

Galen had stood up to Darth Vader as little more than a child. Galen had wrested the lightsaber from a Dark Lord of the Sith and stood bravely in the face of death. Galen may have been ground down by years of training and darkness since, but was he truly gone - or had he just gone into hiding until the opportunity came to emerge back into the light?

Are you there, Galen? I need your help!

No answer came.

The Star Destroyer's catastrophic reentry made the world shake. There was no time to try again. For Juno, then.

He gritted his teeth and snarled at the sky. The dead weight of the Star Destroyer shifted one last time, changing its angle of descent just enough to hang together those last few hundred meters, but not enough to risk bouncing. Only seconds remained before it hit and it was still getting bigger. It was impossible that the sky could contain so much metal!

Abandoning his control over the ship, knowing there was nothing now that he could do to alter its course, the apprentice staggered backward, dazed. The Force fled from him, leaving him wrung out and drained. With a sound like the world ending, the Star Destroyer completed its first and final journey. It hit the cannon, exactly as it was supposed to, and the sky turned white. The ground buckled beneath the apprentice's feet. He pinwheeled, unable to find his balance, as a tsunami of junk and waste rose up ahead of him and blotted out the sun.

[...]

Kota shouted as though the static were a personal affront.

"Answer me, boy!"

A clicking rose up out of the white noise, followed by a weary but familiar voice.

"Relax, General. I'm still here."

[...]

He was Darth Vader's secret servant, capable of moving Star Destroyers with nothing but his will - yet what else was he? Was he a freedom fighter, a friend, a lover? Was he still the master PROXY was programmed to serve?
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

Vader prepared for combat again. His power over the apprentice, however, was gone. His lightsaber went skittering and sparking across the floor, twisted out of his grip by telekinesis. The Force wrenched him into the air, as he had once lifted the apprentice's father, and a barrage of missiles struck at him with increasing strength. He raised his gloved hands to defend himself, but the battery continued until, with a crash, the apprentice ripped the energy field generator in the center of the room right out of the floor and hurled it at his former Master.

The generator exploded with greater force than he had expected, throwing him and everyone else to the floor. The transparisteel dome shattered. Debris rained everywhere. The sound of the explosion rang in his ears for an unnaturally long time afterward.

He was the first to his feet, striding across the rubble to where Darth Vader lay face-forward, gravely wounded and stripped of his armor in places. Flesh and machinery showed through the gaps. Finally, some real blood was flowing.
-The Force Unleashed Novelization

The former is impressive for obvious reasons, I don’t recall Plagueis performing feats even close to it. Though, I can already picture your rebuttals to that:

1) I don’t understand the nuance of Plagueis’s power, he’s obviously on a different tier from Starkiller. Yeah, MP, I have to say, I really don’t understand, all his best wank involves taking non-literal statements hyper-literally *cough* *cough* FILLED SUDDENLY TO BURSTING. Very nuanced.

2) A-Game moments don’t reflect Starkiller’s normal combative capabilities. Well, why don’t you try fucking proving it?

As for the latter feat, I’m going to require some “arguments of nuance” to truly explain the magnitude of its impressiveness, so that segways nicely into section C.

C) Scaling


Darth Vader is one of the most powerful Force Wielders in the mythos, so ragdolling him is an incredibly impressive feat, definitely significantly beyond Plagueis. To establish Vader’s power we need only look at his vast superiority over early-TCW Asajj Ventress:

None would be trained sufficiently to be a threat to Darth Bane's insistence that there only be two Sith, nor would they be a threat to Darth Sidious or his apprentice Darth Vader. The most powerful of these agents were 'only' Sith adepts but would appear to be almost as dark Jedi - the likes of Asajj Ventress, Mara Jade or Inquisitor Valin (in fact a fallen Jedi). The lesser agents were reduced to still-deadly faceless minions. Amongst their ranks were the Shadow Guard.
-Starships and Vehicles Collection #63

Now, I know what you’re thinking, “the quote has been debunked,” but I’ve seen the debunks and none of them have any relevance to my argument whatsoever. The prerequisites for the quote are the following:

1. Loyalty to Sidious: Some members have argued she gives this up after S3 of TCW, but this has no bearing on my argument at all given that the feat I’m going to cite happens, pre-TCW S3.

2. A threat to Sidious and the Rule of Two: Some members have argued that Ventress was a threat to Sidious and the Rule of Two, ergo the quote is emphatically false in its assessment that she wasn’t… but once again it has no bearing on my argument. Ventress explicitly became a threat to the Rule of Two and Darth Sidious by becoming Dooku’s apprentice and gaining more power than she was intended by Sidious to by doing it. However, the feat I will cite clearly happens in the events before Yoda: Dark Rendevous during which Ventress had yet to be taken on as Dooku’s apprentice, and had only learned “scraps, lesser arts.” Ergo, it has no effect on my argument.

So, anyway, what is this demonstration of power you are probably wondering?

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Mace_w10

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Mace_w11

Mace Windu had to use all his skills to defeat the dark side fighter Asajj Ventress.
-Star Wars Fact File #108

Giving Mace Windu a relatively solid fight. Near immediate comparisons can be drawn between Mace and Vader using this fight, Mace explicitly needs to use “all his skills” to defeat Ventress, whereas she isn’t even a threat to Vader.

This establishes Vader as >> Early-TCW Mace Windu whose weaker TPM self is > Jedi Dooku in Force Power who is superior to TPM Darth Maul:

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) Source10

Overall: Vader>>TCW Mace Windu>>TPM Mace>Jedi Dooku>Darth Maul.

So what is the relevance of this? Well, it’s rather simple based on showings from Plagueis probably can’t replicate this feat due to the scaling above.

To elaborate, Sidious grew extensively from TPM (by which point he was already better than Plagueis) to TCW (elaborated upon in later section), yet he couldn’t ragdoll TCW Maul whereas Galen can ragdoll TPM Maul’s significant superior without effort. Now, while Maul obviously grew from TPM to TCW I doubt it’s enough to offshoot the significant gap between himself and Vader, Sidious’s growth, and the vast difference in performance between Galen and TCW Sidious.

So MP, who’s it looking like has the advantage in Force Power: Galen or Plagueis? My answer is definitely Galen.

And this is the problem with trying to match Galen’s raw power. It simply isn’t possible for most characters barring the greats, and you’ve played wonderfully into my hands by arguing power; laying the foundation for your own destruction. Now, onto your (lol-worthy) attempt at a case for Plagueis’s power.

3) Plagueis vs Sidious: A Small Case Study


A) Introduction


There are several things here to refute and I’ll try to make this (relatively) concise.

Anyway, there are really two main points to be addressed here regarding Sidious vs Plagueis which are:

1) The reason why Plagueis is comparable to Sidious (circumstantial fear).

2) The reason why Plagueis being comparable to Sidious is impressive.

So, let’s get to it then.

B) Circumstantial Fear


Sidious’s irrational fear of Plagueis is clearly circumstantial given that he boasted seconds earlier about how he was more powerful than Plagueis. The reasons are noted in both the passage you posted and other quotes throughout the novel:

Was it possible that the wily Muun had deceived him? Had Plagueis unlocked the key to immortality, and survived after all?
-Darth Plagueis

Sidious knew that his own powers had increased tenfold over the decades, but he couldn’t be certain he had learned all of Plagueis’s secrets—“his sorcerer’s ways,” as the Sun Guards referred to them—including the ability to prevent beings from dying. He sometimes wondered: Was he a level behind? Two levels behind?
-Darth Plagueis

As can be seen by the above quotes, Sidious’s fear of Plagueis is largely based on the fact that Plagueis potentially could have become immortal (which would basically make him impossible to defeat), and the fact that Sidious has no clue what tricks are up Plagueis’s sleeve. He doesn’t know what knowledge his master possessed, nor how far Plagueis advanced with Midichlorian Manipulation. Of course Sidious was scared, not of Plagueis’s power though, but the unknown.

Overall, I see no reason why Sidious and Plagueis are comparable (your shoddy case aside).

C) Full Potential Sidious: FILLED SUDDENLY TO BURSTING… cause that’s totally literal


The idea that Sidious hit his full potential circa TPM is utterly laughable and relies solely on taking an obviously non-literal quote over several concrete statements. Read the following:

Beyond the vision of the Jedi Knights, somewhere within the darkness, the greatest master of evil ever to use Sith power bides his time. As his strength grows, his plans begin to shape the course of the galaxy, and his snares await the unsuspecting.
-The Complete Visual Dictionary

To Mace's Force perception, the world crystallized around them, becoming a gem of reality shot through with flaws and fault lines of possibility. This was Mace's particular gift: to see how people and situations fit together in the Force, to find the shear planes that can cause them to break in useful ways, and to intuit what sort of strike would best make the cut. Though he could not consistently determine the significance of the structures he perceived—the darkening cloud upon the Force that had risen with the rebirth of the Sith made that harder and harder with each passing day—the presence of shatterpoints was always clear.
-Revenge of the Sith Novelization

Strong, this Sith Lord is, Yoda thought as their lightsabers whirled and clashed and whirled again. It should not have been a surprise. With the strength of the dark side growing, the Sith must, logically, have grown stronger, too.
-Revenge of the Sith Junior Novelization

To refute the idea that any of these quotes don’t refer to combat applicable power:

Quote 1: Self-explanatory. It notes Sidious “bides his time” and only “as his strength grows” do “his planes begin to shape the course of the galaxy” i.e. Sidious is biding his time and gathering strength before he initiates his plans. Why would Sidious bide his time in order to gather strength if he’s only going to use that power in extreme moments given that it will severely damage his body, and it isn’t even necessary for said plans?

Quote 2 and 3: Sidious was the source of the Dark Side shroud meaning the Dark Side increasing denotes a power increase for him as well. And given that it’s actively affecting the Jedi’s ability to see the future it’s clearly combat applicable and not just power locked inside Sidious. Furthermore, Yoda even thinks it’s logical the Sith increased based on his fight with Sidious indicating Sidious’s growth quotes do refer to combat applicable power.

There is nothing more to say on the matter. Cases arguing that Sidious did grow, but can’t use that power due to the limitations of body, don’t look at the obvious intent of the quotes in question, and how they clearly semantically back my interpretation.

As for Sidious hitting his full potential, the quote saying he hit it as of TPM obviously isn’t literal. Filled to bursting is one of the most commonly used phrases in the English language (examples provided below), and I’ve never once seen it used literally.

Prisons and jails are filled to bursting with nonviolent offenders.
-The New York Times

The only rational plan for Haiti is to disperse the population of a city that filled to bursting years ago.
-The New York Times

Special refugee trains, filled to bursting when they set out, suffered repeated ambushes along the way.
-The New Yorker

Training centers and community colleges are filled to bursting.
-The New York Times

In fact, it doesn’t really make sense Sidious hit his full potential/was about to burst apart in that passage given that the passage itself makes note of that for a single sentence. Surely if he did hit his full potential it would be more emphasised? I mean, just take a look at the passage you contrast it with (Luke in Dark Nest), where far more extensive descriptions are provided.

The shuddering stopped. Luke continued to maintain both illusions, the Force pouring through him like fire, burning more fiercely every moment. He was drawing more energy than his body was conditioned to endure, literally burning himself up from the inside. It was not really a dark side act—to a modern Jedi, the dark side was more a matter of intent than deed—but it felt that way to him. According to Mara, this was what happened to Palpatine, and Luke believed her. He could feel himself aging—his cells weakening, the membranes growing thin and the cytoplasm simmering, the nuclei coming apart.
-Dark Nest: The Joiner King

Overall, Sidious did not hit his full potential as of TPM (I couldn’t care less about the rest of your post, given that it’s all about ROTS, and it’s possible Sidious could have hit his full potential in the interim, however if it becomes relevant I can always address it next post). Ergo, none of the later Sidious feats you mention e.g. his fights with Yoda and Starkiller can be scaled to Plagueis.

4) Unsubstantiated Bullshit


Throughout your post, you said I would witness “the deconstruction of some of the misconceptions about Starkiller as both a force-wielder and a lightsaber duelist,” but so far you’ve failed to do this besides making some vague allusions to Sidious “toying” with Starkiller. My response: Prove it happened, because so far it’s a hollow, unsubstantiated claim.

5) Conclusion


Galen: Scales to Vader who is significantly above PT titans, wields incredible raw power on par with the high tiers, and can redirect a falling ISD.

Plagueis: Has non-literal statements and unsubstantiated bullshit.

I know who my money is on.


Last edited by Word Salad on November 8th 2019, 3:55 pm; edited 4 times in total
lorenzo.r.2nd
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November 7th 2019, 10:45 pm
looking pretty good.
The Adventurous Jedi
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November 7th 2019, 10:53 pm
Anyway, now that this is done, I'm probably gonna take a break from SW debating (for a while). Got a few others to respond to first though.
Syndiciate
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November 8th 2019, 12:24 am
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The Adventurous Jedi
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November 8th 2019, 7:15 pm
@Meatpants

Sorry, forgot to mention, I finished transferring hours ago. Also, PM me on Discord, so we can discuss time limits regarding the debate.
NevesYtneves (DC77)
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November 9th 2019, 9:07 am
Good post.
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MP
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November 9th 2019, 9:09 am
Yeah, his use of cringe cheap Vader scaling was solid.
NevesYtneves (DC77)
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November 9th 2019, 9:11 am
MP, are you just going to throw shade as usual or will you actually respond?
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November 9th 2019, 9:19 am
Syndiciate wrote:SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) 2668642404
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November 25th 2019, 11:42 pm
Message reputation : 100% (1 vote)
The clone watched the shadowy figure before him. Taller than Vader, his black robe and cowl disguised whatever lay underneath. Like his master, this person was seemingly as inhuman and masked; but unlike Vader tremors of the Dark Side surged from him effortlessly. It was almost as if he was standing in the presence of the Emperor again, the memories of the long-dead Starkiller once again flooded his mind with the pain of that confrontation, how the Emperor had casually influenced his mind and almost brought him back to the Dark Side effortlessly. It was only because of Kota that the Emperor had pulled back that suggestive power over him, yet he knew that the person standing before him could do just the same had he wished. Fear began to really flow into his being now, spurned on by the memories of Starkiller and the hopelessness of facing the Emperor – of facing the person in front of him.


Igniting his lightsabers and dashing forward in one fluid motion, he charged at the figure, who still hadn’t even moved. But he had no time to self-doubt himself. Just as he was about to cut down the figure, it moved to the side, impossibly fast. He’d never seen Vader move like that. He landed awkwardly and almost fell off-balance. In that brief moment, before he could adjust and turn to face the figure, he felt something peculiar… something, not quite right. As if a phantom had dragged out a part of him. Perhaps this was yet another side effect of the cloning process? Perhaps this was just spurred on by the doubt he felt. Ignoring it, he was now fully turned to face the figure.


A red beam emerged out of the black recesses of the figure’s black robes, slowly raising it in his left hand in front of him, angled slightly down from horizontal, almost in the style of a Makashi practitioner.


He was feeling even more drained now, like something invisible was eating at his connection to the Force. This was his only chance.


Never before had he moved this fast, this hard, this skillfully, this artfully against someone, not even against Vader. But his opponent was like the mirror image of himself – there was nothing this figure wouldn’t know what was happening as soon as the clone knew – it was almost like… Vader!


Another flashback, a boy still in his formative years. His knees buckling, hands shaking, lightsaber cuts in various places on his body. He attacked yet again, harnessing his anger into willpower, lashing out at the man who amounted to the father figure in his life. But the emotionless mask parried every blow with marked disinterest. Elbows locked tight, there was no way of getting past that defence. Unless…


Allowing the Force to guide him, giving fully into the hate and rage he felt, he made an abrupt change in tempo and swung at his master’s boot. The boot moved a fraction of a second too slow, and sparks flew as it grazed his tormentor. A noise amounting to what was possibly pain echoed out in the training chamber. The boy, now fully immersed in the Force, not even thinking at all, but merely observing himself, didn’t relent. He had his master at a full retreat. But why stop there? In an incredible display of acrobatics in the Ataru manner, he leapt over his master, slashing at his panel, and his legs, and his throat… Vader only barely keeping ahead of this relentless onslaught. 


But something felt… odd. Although he was moving faster and more skillfully than ever before, it wasn’t holding long. He was slowing, his body struggling to maintain what he had accomplished. And now he was moving even slower than at the start of the training session. But Vader hadn’t slowed at all.


He moved to step back and reevaluate himself, but it was too late. As he disengaged his blade, it fell from his hands, his master’s overbearing strength having ripped the lightsaber from hand. Vader then cut him in the thigh and the arm, and he fell to the floor. He didn’t even feel the pain now. It dawned on him that Vader had let him cut through his boot, and let him believe he was winning, and when the boy had exhausted himself, all his master had to do was merely disarm him.


The clone didn’t let this vision slow him down, but he knew he had it for a reason. The Force was with him. This was just like the training exercise; the figure was like a marionette, letting his opponent wear him out. He let out bolts of lightning and jumped out of range to rethink his plan, but as he landed on his feet, he was instantaneously hit by his own lightning reflected on him. His knees gave way momentarily, but he straightened back up. Vader’s training still had its uses.


The figure had already switched his lightsaber off, and the clone did the same for his own. If he didn’t come up with something new, he was dead. He opened himself up, and the Force rushed through him like a torrent, gathering inside him like never before. He felt the familiar tinge of destiny, itt was now or never. He directed a storm of lightning at his opponent, but it amounted to little more than what he was usually capable of with the ability, and the figure swept is aside effortlessly.


What?


The sensation had returned to the front of his mind, but it was stronger now. He felt the Force being drained from him, his vision blurred, and he struggled to maintain any focus at all. All he could hear now was a laugh, cold and robotic, as if through some sort of mask.


Mask. He heard Vader’s laugh now, the Emperor’s laugh. He heard Starkiller laugh at him. Was it all for nothing?


The clone woke up. Many minutes passed before his mind could fully remember what had happened. Opening his eyes, he saw blue, and past it a background of computers, tanks and animals. He realised he was in a Kolto tank. Turning his head, painfully, he saw what looked like a Muun, his hand stretched out before him, pointing directly at his specimen. But just as he felt his body revitalizing, it suddenly reversed again, and he felt the Force draining from him yet again.


It played repeatedly, waking and then dying. Was he in some sort of dream? Had the figure forced him to relive his resurrection through an illusion somehow? How many days, years, decades, centuries had passed when he finally felt his organs give out under the stress? He would never know.


This, is the power of Darth Plagueis the Wise.
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