SS - Darth Caedus (The Ellimist) vs The Alliance Commander (xSupremeSkillz)

OK ngl the actual write-up was very rushed, but the main argument is fleshed out, so hey, hope this is fun.

Fighting Luke

Pre-prime Caedus famously fights Luke in Inferno. While he loses, he puts up a more impressive fight than anyone ever has on a serious GM Luke, and ever would until Abeloth.

But Jacen thrived on pain, fed on it to make himself stronger and faster. He simply completed his pivot and landed a rib-crunching roundhouse.

Luke stumbled back, his chest filled with fire. Jacen had caught him on the barely healed scar from his first fight with Lumiya, and now his breath was coming in short painful gasps.

-which Jacen ducked. He came up under Luke's guard, holding his weapon with one hand and driving a Force-enhanced punch into Luke's ribs with the other, striking for the same place he had kicked earlier. Luke's chest exploded into pain, and he found himself croaking instead of breathing.

Jacen kicked at Luke's legs, catching the side of a knee. Something popped and Luke felt himself going down.

Luke spat out a mouthful of blood and Force-leapt after his nephew, at the same time reaching out to drag him back. They came together in a blinding flurry of sparks, their blades colliding faster than the eye could follow, filling the dark chamber with flashing fans of color. Blows came out of nowhere. Luke caught another kick in his knee and found himself calling on the Force to keep his balance. He landed an elbow and felt a bone in Jacen's face shatter.

(Note here also that they’re exchanging blows at a high rate, with implied relative parity)

That’s four physical hits Jacen got in; and they weren’t mild taps either. He made Luke “croak instead of breathing”, “feel himself going down”, and landing “rib crunching” attacks.

C3P0’s assessment after the fight:

the last time you two fought, you were forced to spend your nights in the bacta tank for an entire week

There are a few common attempted retorts to this:

“Jacen drew on his pain to make him stronger”

This is only stated to be the case with his very first hit against Luke, and while true:

He has that ability in this fight too, so it’s a legitimate part of his overall skillset.
Luke also had the advantage in catching Jacen by surprise - he was leaping at him from behind, and going for his kidney’s in a way that Jacen did not expect from Luke’s character (see the first quote above).

“Jacen would’ve died if he hadn’t Force pulled himself to a tendril rack”

This one doesn’t make much sense - there’s no reason he couldn’t have Force pulled himself towards the wall, or some point on the ground at an angle, etc.

There’s also no reason to think that this was the only defensive move Jacen had - it’s moreso that he was setting things up to spring the tendrils rack on Luke.

It should also be noted that this entire first part of the exchange is literally Luke leaping at Jacen from behind in fury and then Jacen standing his ground and defending.

“Jacen took advantage of the Vong tendrils”

Well, yeah, but none of the hits he got in that I just referenced relate to that.

"Luke does better against Jacen in other showings."

Eh, kinda. This is only true in pure battles of Force power, but this SS isn't about pure battles of Force power. Some of those can be dissected anyway if they're invoked.

”Luke was hindered/not using his full power”

Ah, here’s the big one.

Is the Luke we see fighting in Inferno indicative of his full powers as of Legacy of the Force? That’s not necessary to believe. But this doesn’t mean that Luke doesn’t have parity with earlier versions of himself.

Firstly, it’s pretty clear that Luke is intent on killing Jacen in a way that he basically never is in any fight. There would be no reason for him to hold back his “conventional” level of power, even if perhaps he isn’t drawing on the level that he may be against, say, Abeloth. You can try to argue that this anger hinders him...but there’s almost no precedent for this being the case. The number of cases where using your anger makes you more powerful dramatically outnumbers the cases where it makes you weaker (are there even any?); TPM Obi Wan, Anakin on several occasions, Luke in RotJ, Savage, Maul, etc. It’s a pretty ubiquitous trope.

Now anger can be a hindrance in other ways; namely, it can shroud one’s longer term foresight and also cloud their judgment. This may factor into why Luke was duped tactically on a few occasions during the fight, but it doesn’t pertain at all to his direct melee combat performance, a category in which anger is pretty much always an amp for a Force user.

So why would Luke hold back his power? The default assumption should be that he wasn’t. The issues with scaling Luke in general tend to come from his Jedi restraint, not from the idea that he can’t access his power even when he’s trying with fury to kill someone.

But anyway, let’s go to reaction scaling.

Reaction scaling

The two steps here are:

Did Jacen think Luke was using his real power?
Is Jacen aware of Luke’s real power (as of some earlier incarnation)?

Here’s Jacen’s reaction to the fight:

And she was almost right. Caedus hurt everywhere. Mere days before, he had waged the most ferocious, most terrible lightsaber duel of his life. In a secret chamber aboard his Star Destroyer, the Anakin Solo, he had been torturing Ben Skywalker to harden the young man's spirit, to better prepare Ben for life as a Sith. But he had been caught by Ben's father, Luke Skywalker.

That fight... . Caedus wished he had a holorecording of it. It had gone on for what had felt like forever. It had been brutal, with the advantage being held first by Luke, then by Caedus, in what he knew had been brilliant demonstrations of lightsaber technique, of raw power within the Force, of subtle Jedi and Sith skills. For all his pain, Caedus felt a swelling of pride-not just that he had survived that duel, but that he had waged it so well.

At the end, Caedus had lost a position of advantage-Luke had slipped free of the poison-injecting torture vines with which Caedus had been strangling him-when Ben had driven a vibroblade deep into Caedus's back, punching clean through a shoulder blade, nearly reaching his heart.

That had ended the fight. Caedus should have been killed immediately. For reasons he did not understand, Luke and Ben had spared his life and departed. It was a mistake that would cost Luke.

It’s pretty clear that Caedus believes he fought a legitimate version of Luke. He “felt a swelling of pride” for fighting in what had been “brilliant demonstrations...of raw power within the Force”. A key point to note here is that Caedus “did not understand” why Luke had spared his life. If he had sensed any sort of restraint or inhibited power in Luke, he would’ve made the obvious conclusion that Luke wasn’t usually eager to kill people.

Here again he attributes Luke’s inhibitions to the restraint that he doesn’t think exists in Inferno:

"Good," Jacen said. "Now use what you are feeling. Your anger and your grief can make you more powerful. Use them when you meet Raynar and Lomi Plo, and you will defeat them."

A sudden wave of disgust rolled through the Force-bond between Mara and Luke, and Luke frowned and pulled his arm away from Jacen.

"No, Jacen," he said. "That's Vergere's way of using the Force. It won't work for me."

Jacen's face grew worried. "But you're one against two, and they'll have the Force potential of the entire Colony to draw on. You'll need all the power you can get!"

Does Jacen know what he’s talking about, at least with respect to pre-LotF Luke’s power? Not only does he know, he knows maybe better than anyone else - sometimes even better than Luke himself - and has multiple times commented on the dynamics of his uncle’s abilities as if he were a versus debater.

Here he is talking to Luke in The Unifying Force:

"From everything you've told me over the years about confronting your father and the Emperor, it has always seemed to me that neither of them was your real enemy. Each tried to entice you to join him. But they were never the source of your fear. You feared falling to the dark side."

Luke grinned faintly.

"Is that all?" he said finally.

Jacen shook his head.

"On Coruscant, at the ruins of the Jedi Temple, Vergere said that the Jedi had a shameful secret, and that secret was that there is no dark side. The Force is one. And since there are no separate sides, the Force can't take sides. Our notions of light and dark only reflect how little we know about the true nature of the Force. What we've chosen to call the dark side is simply the raw, unrestrained Force itself, which gives rise to life as easily as it brings death and destruction."

Luke listened closely. Now I shall show you the true nature of the Force, the Emperor had told him at Endor. On Mon Calamari, Vergere had tried to lead him down the same path, by implying that Yoda and Obi-Wan were to blame for not telling him the truth about the dark side. As a result of their neglect, when Luke had cut off his father's hand in anger, he assumed he had had a close brush with the dark side. When he stood at the side of the cloned Emperor, he had truly felt the dark side. Ever since, he had come to equate anger with darkness itself, and he had passed that along to the Jedi he had tutored. But in fact, according to Vergere, Luke had been misguided by his own ego.

She had maintained that, while darkness could remain in someone by invitation, it could just as easily be jettisoned by self-awareness. Once Luke accepted this, he would no longer have to fear being seduced by the dark side."

"You're suggesting that I've held myself back by not wanting to incorporate this raw power into my awareness of the Force," Luke said. "In that sense, your instincts about me are correct, and so were Vergere's. The dark side has, in a sense, dominated my life. I've suspected for a long time that the fatigue I've sometimes experienced when drawing on the Force during combat owes to my fear of abusing the raw power you describe.

To note:

Jacen correctly identifies the source of Luke’s inhibitions (which lead to Luke’s famous performance in the final battle), and indeed does it better than Luke himself
Jacen later directly witnesses said Luke’s power
Jacen believes the inhibition comes from Luke’s fear of the dark side and abusing his power...but in the Inferno fight, he fully believes that Luke is out to rage-kill him and cannot even fathom why he didn’t finish him at the end, so he clearly thinks he fought an all-out Luke.

Jacen is also well aware that Luke defeated UnuThul and Lomi Plo together in Dark Nest, something that he thinks Luke can do - if he uses his anger:

"Good," Jacen said. "Now use what you are feeling. Your anger and your grief can make you more powerful. Use them when you meet Raynar and Lomi Plo, and you will defeat them."

…

Jacen's face grew worried. "But you're one against two, and they'll have the Force potential of the entire Colony to draw on. You'll need all the power you can get!"

He doesn’t think that Luke can defeat the two by himself based on his non-anger power level, aka the power level he showed in The Unifying Force. He’s also well aware that UnuThul has the potential of the Colony to draw on, and indeed came up with the game plan for stopping him:

"Exactly," Jacen said. "Raynar's ability to project his will through the Force is what binds the individual nests into the Colony. If we remove that, the nests will need to survive on their own."

So Jacen seems to have a good idea of what an angry Luke could do as of Dark Nest. At the very minimum, he has a very good idea of what Luke can do as of The Unifying Force.

Corroborating evidence

Luke thinks Jacen is his match in Fury:

Three YVH droids were left. And Jacen. Against Luke and Ben. Jacen was Luke's match, which meant Ben had to cope with three combat droids. The odds weren't good. Then the odds changed.

Which may not mean Luke ~ Jacen, but does mean Jacen can reasonably stand up to him in a fight.

Caedus is also too powerful for Kyp Durron to defeat, who as of mid-NJO believes himself to be stronger than Luke, or at least what Luke had demonstrated to him (including his dovin basal feat, which Kyp ends up replicating with greater ease):

And he didn't think he'd be as terribly drained as Luke by the technique. He was stronger in the Force than Luke Skywalker.

(from Enemy Lines I: Rebel Dreams)

And of course there’s Juke scaling, which can come later lol.

The key thing here is that Jacen being able to give a fight to Luke is not some sort of outlier feat - it’s clearly repeated throughout the series, and is an opinion shared by many characters, including Luke himself. It takes a bit of a sort of fanon mental gymnastics to argue that it’s actually all a ruse and all the instances of Jacen standing up to Luke are just clever illusions.

How powerful is Luke?

That Luke is obviously (I mean, we can go into details if one wants lol) way, way, way, way, way more powerful than the Luke that defeats Palpatine in Dark Empire.

Like it’s not even a very close duel (way less close than Luke vs. Jacen):



Could it just be that Palpatine had lost his dueling edge? No. Firstly, there’s Leia:

LEIA: Be careful, Luke! The Force is strong....they're both moving so fast, I can hardly see them....I feel waves of power....the Dark Side and the Light.....But......I feel......the Light.....is winning!!

She feels Luke overpowering Sidious via “waves of power”, not beating him through technical skill.

Even more concrete is that Palpatine uses the Force storms when he is “desperate”:

Leia boarded the Eclipse, but defied the Emperor and tried to bring back Luke to the light side. Her efforts allowed Luke to break the hold of evil, and they both turned against Palpatine. The desperate Emperor summoned a huge Force storm, but he could no longer control what he had unleashed.

Which suggests he couldn’t have defeated Luke via conventional means.

And then we can do all sorts of scaling for Sidious blah blah. For one thing, he is "the greatest master of evil the galaxy has ever known", putting him above Valkorion. He's also far more powerful than Knightfall Vader, who is the "most powerful enemy ever faced by the Jedi", which would include Valkorion. He's also far more powerful than Yoda, who is the "most powerful foe the darkness had ever known", which would include the Outlander. From the OP (I just realized this lol) it doesn't seem like Shedding Limitations is enforced as an axiom, but that meta can be countered if brought up.

What does this mean?

Jacen does better against an infinitely more powerful Luke than DE Sidious, and DE Sidious scales above Valkorion (and even if he didn't, his feats are far beyond anyone Outlander has any sort of relativity with).

He doesn’t just fight Luke for a while - he lands four devastating physical blows and puts him in a bacta tank for a week.

That’s significantly beyond anything that the Outlander has done. To say the Outlander wins, you’d essentially have to argue that Valkorion can casually ragdoll DN Luke and DE Sidious...well, actually, that wouldn’t even be sufficient (since the Outlander shows zero relativity to Valkorion), just necessary. And I suppose you could try to argue that, but good luck lol.

cool

I too wrote this up at pretty much the last minute. I tried to make this post as short as possible in order to minimize the possibility of this debate becoming a massive WoT, but it still ended up being pretty long unfortunately. I also purposely excluded evidence for certain points that have been discussed numerous times over the years that we are all well aware of (as you did), but if you’d like me to provide quotes for those particular points I can. I’ll be splitting my post into a few separate sections, namely:

Fighting Luke Counter
DE Sheev vs. DE Luke/DE Sheev vs. Caedus
SL/Meta Considerations
Caedus vs. Stats
Caedus vs. Muur

Fighting Luke Counter

Pre-prime Caedus famously fights Luke in Inferno. While he loses, he puts up a more impressive fight than anyone ever has on a serious GM Luke, and ever would until Abeloth.

This scaling on a fundamental level relies on reaction scaling to be an effective indicator of Caedus’ power level relative to Luke. The fight alone does not inform us on the power relationship between the two. Luke in the same mindset in the same material is having a protracted duel with Lumiya:

He knew the lightwhip by now. He'd relied on the shoto as an extra weapon in the past to counter the whip's twin elements of matter and energy, but he was flooded with a new confidence that he could take her with just the lightsaber that had always stood between him and darkness. Holding it two-handed over his head, he rotated it slowly, stalking around her.

Lumiya raised her arm to flick the whip and get the momentum for the forward stroke. And then she cracked it, sending forks of dark energy crackling into the ground at his feet, making him jump back before he sprang forward again and brought the lightsaber around in a right-to-left arc that she parried with the whip's handle. He leapt out of range of the whirling tails again and again, then she paused and he edged closer again.

"You hate me that much?" he asked.

"I don't hate you at all."

"You killed her. You killed my Mara."

"Nothing personal." She looked as if she was smiling, but the movement was around her eyes rather than her cybernetic mouth. "Just doing what I swore an oath to the Emperor to do. To serve the dark side. Oaths matter, Luke. They're all you're left with in the end."

She drew back her arm and brought the lightwhip crackling through the air, missing Luke by centimeters. He lunged at her again and again, driven back each time. She'd slow sooner or later.

But so would he.

Then, as she began to raise her arm again, he ran at her, so close in that she couldn't get the whip traveling at its maximum lethal speed. He forced her back, step by step, as she tried to maintain the distance she needed.

One-two-three-four; she blocked him, handle held this way, then that, using the whip like a short lightsaber to deflect him, but Luke didn't pause or shift direction to wrong-foot her. He drove her like a battering ram toward the edge of the mesa, pushing her within meters, then a step, of the edge.

Lumiya held the whip handle in both hands like a staff and blocked his downward sweep. For a moment they were locked in a stalemate, pushing against each other and grunting with the effort, with only the sounds of exertion because they had nothing left to say to each other.

Her rear foot began to slide backward as she struggled for purchase. The edge of the mesa was cracked and fissured. The smooth glittering stone began to crumble.

Luke reached out and caught her hand as she fell, whip tumbling and bouncing down the steep rock face into oblivion. He leaned back, all his weight on his heels, knuckles clenched white with the strain of holding her weight, and for a second he wanted to see her face dwindling as she fell to her death, mouth open in a scream, but that wasn't the way to end this.

"I'd never let you fall," Luke said, and pulled her back to safety. As she straightened up, he looked her in the eyes-calm, eerily calm-and swung his lightsaber in a single decapitating arc.

Now he could breathe again.

Some things to note:

-Luke in the beginning is dodging Lumiya’s lightwhip “by centimeters” and is being driven back “again and again” by Lumiya’s lightwhip prior to getting as close and personal as possible.
-It is noted that if Luke were to not close the distance, he would slow down/tire out as Lumiya does.
-Even after closing the distance and putting Lumiya in a sub-optimal position given her weapon, The two combatants are in a stalemate for a moment and Luke is grunting with effort and exertion.
-If there were not a cliff nearby to drive Lumiya towards and Luke is fighting in the same mindset, the battle would have been significantly longer.

It is clear that Luke is in a similar (if not the exact same) mindset against Lumiya as he is with Caedus, and yet Luke is participating in a protracted duel with Lumiya where he’s clearly exerting effort and seemingly unable to obliterate her. A close fight with Luke in this state is not necessarily indicative of where Caedus stands in relation to Luke from a scaling perspective, especially given we know Caedus is vastly inferior to the Grandmaster, and that Caedus does not have a true or even consistent gauge of Luke’s full power:

Luke's StealthX nudged him again from behind-how? Caedus couldn't see. Force push? Something metallic inside the fuselage shrieked. He had a sense of someone rummaging furiously in the drives as if looking for a dropped hydrospanner, throwing fragments into the coils. He's ripping the thing apart... Caedus tried to block Luke in the Force and suddenly got an idea of just how much power Luke could muster. His seat shot forward, sheared off the runners, tipped to one side, and he hit the console at an angle before he could buffer the collision with the Force. Something cracked in his chest. Pain flared, stopping his breathing. Then he was aware of brilliant white light coming right at him. In the moments before he managed to veer off to starboard, almost blinded, he got a glimpse of a StealthX's uneven out-line with two grappling arms extended, and the sense of a Jedi other than Luke.

I should be beyond this. I should be anticipating these strikes against me.

It had to be one of the renegade Jedi. Lumiya was dead. Who else might be able to fool him? Ben-no, Ben had his skills like vanishing in the Force, but he thought in honest, plain lines, channeling his Force power into extensions of ordinary talents like smashing down doors, locating explo-sives, and blinding surveillance holocams. Two burly CSF officers and a sniffer akk could do that. So it would be one of the usual suspects-Luke, probably, or maybe Zekk, be-cause it wasn't his mother's or his sister's style. Where were they? How far could Luke extend his powers?

And why couldn't anyone else see it? Illusions could be made visible to many people. So it was designed to disturb him, and him alone, not to lure his ships into shooting and whatever might result from that.

Caedus could feel nothing beyond a distant sense that there were still Jedi in the Force, much the way the lights of a city were a constant and unnoticed backdrop until they went out. He was chasing phantoms again. That was what they wanted. He had to focus, swallow his anger, and avoid being provoked.

The crew of the Anakin Solo had already heard him make a complete fool of himself. He'd have to work on restoring his infallible image.

(Note here also that they’re exchanging blows at a high rate, with implied relative parity)

That’s four physical hits Jacen got in; and they weren’t mild taps either. He made Luke “croak instead of breathing”, “feel himself going down”, and landing “rib crunching” attacks.

C3P0’s assessment after the fight:

Tying into what I said above, the technical breakdown of the fight does not necessitate Caedus being close to or scalable to Luke. I’d argue at the very least from an intent perspective if not from a technical perspective, it’s more likely that Darth Krayt is intended to be close to Luke based on their battle with Abeloth in FOTJ than it is for Caedus to be close to Luke based on their fight, especially given the multiple direct power comparisons between the two throughout LOTF always favor Luke massively. This primarily (if not completely) hinges on Jacen’s reactions to the fight relative to past incarnations of Luke he is aware of.

There are a few common attempted retorts to this:

Yeah, I don’t agree with any of the commonly attempted retorts for reasons you’ve already brought up. I do want to talk to you about the last two though which I semi-agree with (but with some added context in between).

"Luke does better against Jacen in other showings."

I do think this is relevant when we are trying to break down how close to Luke Jacen actually is. It also puts a cap on what Caedus’ reactions mean. Luke is consistently revealing new levels of power Caedus had not previously conceived of, and in some cases completely dominates him in ways we might confuse with the way Darth Malak dominates Carth Onasi. Given we know Caedus is not at all close to Luke in the realm of pure force power and the fight itself is not indicative of parity between the two, this again falls on the reliability of Caedus’ reaction to the fight relative to his conception of prior Lukes.

”Luke was hindered/not using his full power”

Ah, here’s the big one.

Is the Luke we see fighting in Inferno indicative of his full powers as of Legacy of the Force? That’s not necessary to believe. But this doesn’t mean that Luke doesn’t have parity with earlier versions of himself.

It is ambiguous if Inferno!Luke has parity with earlier iterations of himself at best.

Firstly, it’s pretty clear that Luke is intent on killing Jacen in a way that he basically never is in any fight. There would be no reason for him to hold back his “conventional” level of power, even if perhaps he isn’t drawing on the level that he may be against, say, Abeloth. You can try to argue that this anger hinders him...but there’s almost no precedent for this being the case. The number of cases where using your anger makes you more powerful dramatically outnumbers the cases where it makes you weaker (are there even any?); TPM Obi Wan, Anakin on several occasions, Luke in RotJ, Savage, Maul, etc. It’s a pretty ubiquitous trope.

In the case of LOTF, it caused Luke to have a protracted duel with Lumiya. It’s pretty much impossible to say how much Luke was trying against Caedus or how hindered/amped he was (though it’s never noted Luke is amped), primarily because Luke has literally been in near-death situations or the same state of anger and struggled against random Nightsisters/Lumiya. He has no reason to “hold back” his conventional levels of power against Lumiya and still puts up a relatively low performance. Furthermore, despite Caedus’ performance against him, Luke in Fury thinks a team of Kyle Katarn, Valin Horn, Kolir Hul’ya and Thann Mithric could defeat and capture the Dark Lord, a team TUF/DN Luke would absolutely eviscerate. If anything, it is more narratively consistent in LOTF that Caedus is not at all close to Luke’s full power, and in that event Caedus scaling to Luke’s earlier iterations becomes ambiguous given his reactions are explicitly not a reliable gauge of Luke’s power.

Now anger can be a hindrance in other ways; namely, it can shroud one’s longer term foresight and also cloud their judgment. This may factor into why Luke was duped tactically on a few occasions during the fight, but it doesn’t pertain at all to his direct melee combat performance, a category in which anger is pretty much always an amp for a Force user.

So why would Luke hold back his power? The default assumption should be that he wasn’t. The issues with scaling Luke in general tend to come from his Jedi restraint, not from the idea that he can’t access his power even when he’s trying with fury to kill someone.

Well, him not being able to access his power/him performing in the same mental state as when he struggled with Lumiya is the only real way to rationalize it IU given the strike team Luke sends to subdue Caedus after fighting him in Inferno. Note that at the end of LOTF, it is believed that not even the entire council could take Caedus alive (whereas Luke previously thought the 4-man strike team could), so Caedus ends up being far above what Luke conceived of him in Fury, yet Luke is still far above Caedus. This alone would indicate Luke’s ability or willingness to use his full power in Inferno is stifled, or as a more likely/realistic explanation the writers of LOTF do not conceive of power gaps in the same way we do (hence Luke’s fight with Lumiya, Caedus’ fights with Aurra and Mara, etc). The gap between Luke and peak Caedus could genuinely be as big as the gap between Caedus and Aurra if we just go by the fights themselves without anything else informing us. In fact if we go by Luke’s reaction to Inferno!Caedus, it seems to be the case that TUF Luke would eviscerate the Scorned Solo. This will be relevant when delving into reaction scaling.

The two steps here are:

Did Jacen think Luke was using his real power?
Is Jacen aware of Luke’s real power (as of some earlier incarnation)?

1. Well...he couldn’t think that, right? If he does then he has an extremely low opinion of Luke’s real power given Luke’s reaction to the fight (i.e. that the Fury team could subdue Caedus).
2. Jacen is aware of Luke’s real power as of some earlier incarnations, but the extent to which he is aware is unclear and doesn’t have a coherent connection to Jacen’s opinion on how well he did against Luke.

Here’s Jacen’s reaction to the fight:

This point again ties into whether or not we factor in Luke’s reaction to the Inferno fight. My qualms are not with the technicalities of the fight and whether or not Luke’s mental state hindered him in a general sense, rather that we see Luke in this mental state struggle with Lumiya and that Luke does not think Inferno!Caedus is close to his full power given his confidence in the Fury team.

You claim that Caedus does not believe Luke’s inhibitions exist in Inferno...evidence for this? If you mean specifically in the Inferno fight based on the quote you provided about Caedus being surprised Luke spared his life...it’s never noted Luke was particularly amped or in a state where he would get amped, and again his performance necessarily has to be far below what a peak Luke could do. The fact Jacen believes he matched an all-out Luke (who was apparently also amped?) that we know was operating infinitely below his full capabilities brings Caedus’ perspective into question here, or at least re-frames it in such a way that Caedus is proud of the fight he gave Luke but knows he is infinitely below, which still loses the connection to prior Luke’s. In Invincible, Saba thinks Luke being unable to defeat Caedus is a joke, and Luke thinks he is certainly capable of stopping Caedus:

"I know you have," Luke said. "But I'm not going to need support because I can't kill Caedus."

There was a short silence while everyone contemplated this startling statement. Then Saba Sebatyne began to siss.

"Master Skywalker," she said, "you are alwayz making jokes at such strange timez."

"I don't think he's joking," Han said. He turned toward Luke. "Look, buddy, if this is about our feelings-"

"You've been looking forward to it a little too much?" she asked. "Is that what you mean?"

"Exactly." Luke's gaze slid away from the table. "Every future that begins with me going after Caedus ends in darkness. I know I'm the only one who can be sure of stopping him, but no matter how I envision it, it always leads to darkness."

There’s really only two options here:

1. Jacen believes he fought Luke at his best despite Luke being far from his best, making Caedus’ commentary unreliable.
2. Jacen believes he gave Luke a great fight but still knows he is infinitely less powerful than Luke/was not fighting Luke at his best.

There is also a variable of experiencing power directly vs. witnessing or sensing power. Despite being in a protracted duel with Luke in Inferno and sensing/witnessing his power over the years, Caedus does not even have “an idea” of how much power Luke could muster until Revelation when he is directly hit with Luke’s power (i.e. the fight in Inferno did not give Caedus “an idea” of how much power Luke could muster). The fact Caedus could not even get an idea of Luke’s power despite directly fighting him in Inferno ties into the reaction scaling. While Jacen has witnessed/sensed Luke’s non-bottlenecked power in TUF and was able to discern that Luke’s power was being bottlenecked, this does not indicate that Jacen has even “an idea” of Luke’s true power as of TUF, given that Caedus was not even able to get an idea of LOTF Luke’s power despite fighting him and being TK pinned by him in Inferno. This explanation also goes with Jacen’s thoughts on Luke/Unu/Lomi: Jacen not thinking TUF Luke can defeat Unu/Lomi doesn’t mean much when it can’t be proven Jacen has an idea of Luke’s true power. Indeed, Luke in DN ends up not needing to draw on his grief and anger to utterly no-sell UnuThul’s TK efforts without budging, ragdoll him, make him cry etc. Note this is not even contingent on how powerful Luke actually is in relation to Unu/Lomi, as it’s unclear if Jacen has a vs. debater-tier grasp on their full power either. It could be a hierarchy like:

LOTF Luke’s true power
DN Luke’s true power
UnuThul/Lomi Plo’s true power
TUF Luke’s true power
The Luke Caedus fights in Inferno
Jacen’s conception of a grief/anger stricken DN/TUF Luke
Jacen’s conception of UnuThul and Lomi Plo
Jacen’s conception of TUF Luke

I.e. Jacen can believe TUF Luke is unable to defeat his conception of Unu/Lomi but in reality the overall hierarchy of power relative to his conceptions can be much higher. There is also no proof that Jacen believes Luke is drawing on his anger and grief to make himself more powerful in Inferno, as this is never mentioned and any time Luke’s mental state post-Mara’s death is mentioned it is described as hindering (i.e. loss of emotional control, heart split into pieces, cognitive dissonance, the force no longer speaking to him etc). It’s even mentioned that Luke is completely torn on his desire to kill Caedus and is split amongst a variety of options:

"I did things for Jacen. Kept him updated on goings-on in the Temple. After he became the head of the Guard, he asked me to take things into and out of the Temple for him, like spare datapads and replacement electronic components." She took a deep breath before continuing. "When your son disappeared ... I was the one who helped him get out of the Temple without being seen."

Luke stared at her for a long moment. "At Jacen's order."

"Yes."

Luke looked away from her as his emotions threatened to spin out of control. Ben's account of his solo mission had never included a confirmation that Jacen had sent him. Ben had never volunteered details of where he had gone or what he had done. Luke had known intellectually that only Jacen could have dispatched the boy. But now, at last, Luke had proof, a corroborating witness, and the confirmation hit him harder than he would have expected.

This girl had helped effect the plan-had endangered Ben. All out of a misguided loyalty to a very bad man.

Luke stared at her again. He tried to remain impassive, but she apparently saw something in his expression and took an involuntary half step backward.

Luke didn't bother trying to keep anger from his voice. "How were you found out?"

"She wasn't. She came forward." Cilghal put a comforting hand on Seha's shoulder.

Alone, Luke stood away from the ill-balanced tool rack, closing his eyes, immersing himself in the Force ... looking for guidance.

His heart should have been the only guide he needed, with the Force offering the occasional nudge when things were unclear. [/U]But his heart had been burned beyond recognition when Mara had died, and what was left was in pieces, each piece suggesting a different course of action. Throw everything into the effort against Jacen. Hunt down Alema Rar and make her pay for killing Mara. The rot is too deep; the Jedi Order should withdraw and let the warring states fight their way to a finish; only then can rebuilding begin. This kill is mine. This kill is mine.[/U]

And the Force was silent. It seemed like forever since it had shown him any guidance about the bigger picture. All it offered him these days was guidance for immediate problems, the here and now. It had been that way since-for how long? Since Mara's death at least. It could have begun before then.

Perhaps he could no longer read the Force. Perhaps it chose not to speak to him anymore.

And if that was true, he could not remain the Grand Master of the Order. He would lead the Jedi into ruin.

Luke thinks Jacen is his match in Fury:

Which may not mean Luke ~ Jacen, but does mean Jacen can reasonably stand up to him in a fight.

Caedus is also too powerful for Kyp Durron to defeat, who as of mid-NJO believes himself to be stronger than Luke, or at least what Luke had demonstrated to him (including his dovin basal feat, which Kyp ends up replicating with greater ease):

Couldn’t “Jacen was Luke’s match” just mean that Jacen is fighting Luke? Don’t know why it has to mean the two are equal, and indeed as mentioned above Luke thinks in Invincible he is certain to defeat Caedus and Saba thinks it is a joke that Luke can’t defeat Caedus.

Caedus being too powerful for Kyp Durron to defeat doesn’t mean much when Caedus is seemingly a vastly superior duelist to Kyp (Luke thinks Kyp ~ Katarn in dueling and that Gaalan could give either of them an even fight, lol) and a better fighter in general. Caedus wouldn’t even need as much raw power as Kyp to defeat him in combat, and even if Caedus does, it doesn’t really matter since the quote from enemy lines is not indicative of the power of a non-bottlenecked/full power TUF Luke, even if true.

The key thing here is that Jacen being able to give a fight to Luke is not some sort of outlier feat - it’s clearly repeated throughout the series, and is an opinion shared by many characters, including Luke himself. It takes a bit of a sort of fanon mental gymnastics to argue that it’s actually all a ruse and all the instances of Jacen standing up to Luke are just clever illusions.

Ultimately, I find reaction scaling unconvincing because it’s unclear at any point where Jacen’s beliefs on Luke’s power manifest in reality, he does not have an accurate gauge at all of Luke’s power in LOTF, and the whole hierarchy of power could reasonably be beyond his prior conceptions of Luke/Unu/Lomi. It is not “fanon mental gymnastics” to question Caedus’ reactions when he doesn’t even have an idea of LOTF Luke’s power until Revelation despite fighting him and being pinned by him in Inferno.

How powerful is Luke Counter

Could it just be that Palpatine had lost his dueling edge? No. Firstly, there’s Leia:

DE Palpatine is pretty much impossible to quantify as a duelist. Funny enough, the bantam novels and other works written when DE was first released imply that Luke around and even after DE is an inferior swordsman to the top PT Jedi, as evidenced with Luke’s fights against Sedriss, Callista, and Desann. You can argue the PT retroactively raises DE Sheev and thus DE Luke’s dueling capabilities relative to bantam, but there’s no clear evidence Sidious is better than in ROTS, and indeed is likely worse if we want to employ a harmonization of all the sources from DE to now.

Even if we assume DE Sidious is a ROTS-Sidious level duelist, I still don’t see the connection between this and the supremacy quotes (unless you are arguing ROTS Sidious is above Valkorion), as Palpatine’s full power outstrips his dueling to such an absurd extent it’s laughable. I don’t buy that Leia’s quote is measuring Luke’s force power in relation to Sheev’s, because in the comic itself when Palpatine summons his “full potency”, Luke has a realization that he can’t defeat Sheev’s full power directly, then deactivates his lightsaber while Sidious is standing there summoning his force storm and joins with Leia in force harmony, becoming “united to the force in all its intensity” against a Sidious who is explicitly caught off guard and is focusing most/all of his power into channeling the force storm (i.e. even Luke/Leia/Anakin fetus in this harmony state are not necessarily above Sheev’s directed full power):

Luke deactivating his lightsaber with Palpatine just standing there
Palpatine caught off-guard

I’m sure you’re aware of the DE endnotes stuff. What this ultimately shows is that there is no meaningful way to connect Luke’s duel with Palpatine to the supremacy quotes because Palpatine’s full potency is still infinitely beyond baseline DE Luke. This makes sense, as earlier in DE Luke was mentally enslaved by Palpatine, which requires an enormous gap in power to pull off (see Valk and KOTFE Outlander), and Luke only breaks free from the mental enslavement right before he duels Palpatine the second time. It doesn’t make sense Luke would go from “just broke out of Palpatine’s mind domination with Leia’s help” to “comparable to Palpatine’s full potency”:

Luke saying the shroud of evil has been lifted from his mind

Onto the next topic...

SL/Meta Considerations

And then we can do all sorts of scaling for Sidious blah blah. For one thing, he is "the greatest master of evil the galaxy has ever known", putting him above Valkorion. He's also far more powerful than Knightfall Vader, who is the "most powerful enemy ever faced by the Jedi", which would include Valkorion. He's also far more powerful than Yoda, who is the "most powerful foe the darkness had ever known", which would include the Outlander. From the OP (I just realized this lol) it doesn't seem like Shedding Limitations is enforced as an axiom, but that meta can be countered if brought up.

I figured I’d dedicate an entire section to this even though I didn’t want this to become a meta-debate, especially since pretty much everyone reading this debate uses SL and judges debates under those standards. The ways I see this being resolved are:

A: We roll with the entire SL system as laid out in Ant's blog and uncap Valkorion/Outlander from any of the supremacy quotes. Obviously the case for Valk/Outlander would have to be supported affirmatively, but the quotes are not a hard bind if there is contrary evidence.
B: We roll with some pseudo-combination where quotes can be binding past their release date but can be overturned with strong evidence favoring characters who come later (i.e. consistent explicit evidence of later characters scaling above characters with supremacy quotes).
C: We roll with the old system that quotes are binding past their expiration date and have no implicit/explicit exceptions.

In a lot of ways these systems kind of roll into each other and become the same thing. You don’t seem to subscribe to C given that you brought up “most powerful foe of darkness” and “greatest master of evil the galaxy has ever known”, which without exceptions would put Yoda and Sidious above The Son/Daughter/Wutzek (which we know isn’t true, don’t feel the need to get into it unless you press it). If we assume there are plausible exceptions to those quotes, then:

1. There’s no reason to believe that, with proper evidence, Outlander and Valkorion couldn’t be exceptions.
2. Valkorion’s quotes calling him “the most powerful force user who has ever existed”, “history’s most powerful dark side master”, “the most dominating force user the galaxy has ever seen” etc from 2012 could be used to place Valkorion above Abeloth and the Son with the Father as an exception. There’s nothing explicitly putting Abeloth or the Son above Valkorion (whereas Valkorion has 3 quotes putting him above them), while Abeloth and the Son are explicitly shown and stated to be infinitely beyond Sidious.

So not having exceptions makes the quotes you mentioned worthless, and generally speaking the system doesn’t seem to function. Having exceptions pretty much turns C into some version of A and B and can be weaponized in favor of Valkorion/TOR.

To not get this too bogged down, regardless of the overall structure of SL, the idea that quotes have expiration dates is pretty much the same as saying they have no expiration date but implicit/explicit exceptions. You would have to argue that these quotes have no exceptions (which doesn’t work) or that they do have exceptions but Valkorion/Outlander could not be among them in spite of a large swath of direct evidence in their favor (such as Valk having 3 quotes putting him above the Son/Abeloth and other stuff which will be mentioned later).

Jacen does better against an infinitely more powerful Luke than DE Sidious, and DE Sidious scales above Valkorion (and even if he didn't, his feats are far beyond anyone Outlander has any sort of relativity with).

Nao.

He doesn’t just fight Luke for a while - he lands four devastating physical blows and puts him in a bacta tank for a week.

Yao but explained above.

[/QUOTE]That’s significantly beyond anything that the Outlander has done. To say the Outlander wins, you’d essentially have to argue that Valkorion can casually ragdoll DN Luke and DE Sidious...well, actually, that wouldn’t even be sufficient (since the Outlander shows zero relativity to Valkorion), just necessary. And I suppose you could try to argue that, but good luck lol.[/QUOTE]

I can assure you that Valk does not have to casually ragdoll DE Sidious and DN Luke for Outlander to defeat Darth Caedus.

Spoiler:

Caedus vs. Stats

When it comes to measuring up the Outlander to Caedus, I first want to explore the world of stats. Stats are fully considered S-canon material meant to convey power relationships between characters:

Stats are S-canon and convey power relationships between characters
Stats are S-canon
Stats are looked over by potent LFL officials such as Sansweet, Walker, Thompson etc.

As such, they are valid assuming no explicit contradictions with c-canon evidence. Across all the major stat books, the likes of Darth Revan and Darth Malak are consistently ranked above Dooku and near Sidious. This idea is never contradicted by any of the other stats or c-canon material:

Dooku’s Stats
Windu’s Stats
Revan’s Stats

It seems viable that Darth Revan scales above Count Dooku and is near ROTS Sidious based on the s-canon evidence with a lack of c-canon evidence to sufficiently counter. Darth Revan of course is surpassed by SF Malak, who KOTOR Revan manages to defeat in spite of being in the midst of a massive DS nexus and Malak feeding on the energies of fallen jedi to replenish his power. Revan then grows even more powerful upon regaining his memories and being able to channel both sides of force, then Act 3 Hero surpasses Novel Revan who gets one shotted by Arcann, who loses to eoKOTFE Outlander, who gets oneshotted by Chained Vaylin, who gets oneshotted by Unchained Vaylin, who Outlander surpasses etc (If you want quotes/evidence for any of these pieces of the scaling chain, let me know). Peak Outlander is numerous orders of magnitude beyond Darth Revan, who is beyond Dooku. When you consider the gaps between Darth Revan and peak Outlander, this avenue of scaling places the latter enormously beyond the ROTS titans, which is more than can be said for Caedus. The power gap in the stats between Darth Revan and ROTS Sidious, while impossible to perfectly approximate IU, should still indicate enough parity that Outlander would scale infinitely above.

Caedus vs. Muur

Another character I wanted to inject into this discussion is Karness Muur. Muur arrives on the scene as a prominent character in 2008 (note: Sidious has no legitimate/binding supremacy quotes post-2008) and is both stated and heavily implied to be a peer of Sidious. Vader/the narrator seem to think so, as do the writers of Legacy and pretty much any work Muur is shown in:

Vader/the narrator stating Vader with Spirit Muur would crush Sidious despite Vader seeing office Sidious in ROTS and knowing he fought Yoda
Muur believes Celeste is a “suitable host” for his purposes…
But ultimately seeks other hosts because of Morne’s unique ability to resist Muur
If Muur were to invade and dominate a willing host, he would “live again” and conquer the galaxy/topple Sidious and the Empire
Karness Muur living again is pretty much his win condition + he's arguably the most powerful Sith introduced in Legacy

Ultimately there’s numerous strong indicators pointing towards Muur having some degree of parity to Dark Times/ANH Sidious. Note that these sources also imply Living Muur is > Spirit Muur in Morne’s body. The latter shows solid superiority to Vong Krayt with Muur “outshining” his powers and pretty much utterly overwhelming Krayt. Vong Krayt has both stats and c-canon evidence placing him with or above the ROTS titans. As far as c-canon, Krayt has his absurd scaling above Hett who gave baseline Kenobi 2 years post-ROTS a close fight with minor advantages, as well as the Apocalypse fight (if you want to break down the Apocalypse fight from a technical perspective, the mere fact that Vong Krayt is present with an 100% all-out Luke against Abeloth and keeping up/contributing positively should create a baseline for where he should be. Certainly Dooku couldn’t have been present there and contributed the way Krayt did, and from a narrative perspective I think it is clear that Krayt is at least keeping up and contributing positively). The writers of the Legacy comics who also wrote the republic comics that are super favorable of Dooku believe that Krayt would defeat Dooku “without a doubt”. While you can argue none of the c-canon stuff is bulletproof, collectively in tandem with the stats and approximation of LFL intent it seems clear that Krayt is with the ROTS titans:

Krayt Stats
Yoda Stats
Muur outshined Krayt on Had Abaddon

What is the relevance of this? Well, in KOTFE Chapter 8, Arcann is able to deflect a minute-long lightning barrage from Outlander while the latter is being possessed/controlled by the spirit of Valkorion to exponentially amplify his power. The power Valkorion unleashes extends the Outlander’s body so far beyond his limits that he is hospitalized for 2 days and nearly dies. The Outlander is infinitely more powerful than Morne given that Mando Wars Revan as of 2011 (and as of any time prior) is the most powerful jedi of the KOTOR era. Valkorion also scales beyond Muur via the 2012 quotes mentioned in the SL section and is likely infinitely beyond Muur (I can get into that as well if you want, but not necessary to prove the point). So we have an infinitely more powerful host possessed by an infinitely more powerful spirit channeling a much greater relative extent of power given that Morne is unaffected by Muur’s power against Krayt but Outlander is hospitalized and nearly dies. Yet Arcann can block this power for a minute straight and tank the subsequent blast and multi-thousand foot fall with no discernible damage. What this gives us is something like:

Peak Outlander >> Unchained Vaylin >>>> Chained Vaylin > early KOTET Valklander >>>> early KOTET Outlander > end of KOTFE Outlander >/~ end of KOTFE Arcann ~< KOTFE Chapter 8 Valklander >>>> Legacy Morne-Muur > Vong Krayt >~ ROTS titans > Dooku.

While I think some of the precise Muur-Krayt-ROTS titans stuff can be dissected further, it seems pretty much impossible for it to be the case that not only are Muur and Krayt not above or on par with the ROTS titans, but that they are so far below the ROTS titans that even the exponentially superior KOTFE Chapter 8 Valklander wouldn’t be beyond them. It also seems to make sense from an intuitive perspective, as even if baseline KOTFE Outlander is Dooku or TCW Maul level, I still think a Valkorion-possessed Dooku/TCW Maul would dominate Sidious, given what Muur can do in Morne’s body.

There is also Ritual Kun scaling, Ziost scaling, and Vitiate’s galactic hype which can be discussed later, but suffice it to say I think there are numerous angles in which the Outlander utterly outshines the ROTS titans, whether it be through s-canon or c-canon.

How does Caedus fit into all of this? Well, I’ll get into the real meat of that in later posts with the other evidence for Valk/Outlander mentioned directly above given the range of topics already brought up in this one. But suffice it to say, I believe Caedus has too much proximity to the ROTS titans and is capped by DE Sidious via the “modern times” quote to be able to compete with Outlander’s scaling. I’ll probably get into Outlander’s parity with/superiority to DE Sidious in my next post, but the above scaling with Muur + stats should be a solid indicator where Outlander stands.

What does this all mean?

-Caedus does not scale to full power LOTF Luke, or even what we would consider a baseline not holding back Luke.
-Caedus’ thoughts on the Inferno fight relative to his conception of previous incarnations of Luke are not reliable.
-Luke/Caedus do not scale to DE Sidious’ full potency, thus the supremacy quotes have no real meaning for Caedus unless the supremacy quotes refer to the ROTS titans, which necessarily need to have exceptions/can have exceptions when explicitly contradicted by multiple pieces of evidence.
-Outlander scales way, way, waaaaaaaay beyond the ROTS titans.
-Caedus has too much proximity to Krayt/Muur and the ROTS titans/definitive inferiority to DE Sidious to compete with the Outlander’s scaling.
-Outlander has miscellaneous advantages over Caedus, such as fighting experience (by a huge margin) and diversity of fighting experiences (by a huge margin). This advantage has manifested to the extent that Outlander has overcome opponents significantly more powerful than himself (see Unchained Vaylin in KOTET Chapter 8) through greater combat experience.

Overall, it seems that you not only have to grapple with the inconsistencies in LOTF between Caedus’ reactions and Luke’s, but the reality that in sources outside of LOTF Caedus does not scale nearly as well to his contemporaries as The Outlander does. Darth Caedus has no shot.

Good posts on both sides, interested to see Elm's counter