[Can't find the start of Chapter 1: The Hunt]

Sorry friend, but was very VERY clear on the rewards page that you only qualifies to the early access if you are sub since aug 10th (and they extended, cause the first date was july 31th).

 

So you cant say they dont warning this...

 

No, it wasn't. The wording on the page made it sound as though you could sub at any point within that time window and be fine. They only mention it in the terms and conditions section once, in smaller print, underneath all the attention-grabbers. They wouldn't have even been required (in the legal sense) to mention it in the terms and conditions section if they had adequately covered it in the FAQ, which is they it's there at all. If they had actually put that wording in the FAQ, there wouldn't have been a problem, but it would have been visible for everyone to see which would have meant more people getting early access. I'm guessing, for whatever reason, that was a problem that they wanted to avoid through sleezeball advertising tactics.

[Can't find the start of Chapter 1: The Hunt]

Found the "fix" but no one here will like it, least of all me. Everything is actually working as intended. If you check the "Terms and Conditions" section of the promotional page for Knights of the Fallen Empire, you will see that in order to acquire early access, you must have been subbed since the 10th of August up to today, consecutively. They bury this little fact under an avalanche of attention-grabber images, but it is there and it is the reason why most of us won't be able to play for another seven days.

 

I'm obviously angry about this. Information that critical should have been mentioned several times on the promo page, in massive neon lettering.

 

Not a total loss for me...still one class away from legendary status, so I can take care of that while I wait. But this is still BS. If I had known this, I would have subbed a lot sooner. Thanks for screwing us EA.

[Can't find the start of Chapter 1: The Hunt]

Tutorial says to "travel to my ship." I did that. The mission console isn't lit up. The intercom in my conference room and my holoterminal are both inactive. My space mission thing only shows, well, space missions. I can't launch my escape pod. My galaxy map doesn't have anything on it. Where the hell do I go to pick up "Chapter 1: The Hunt?"

[Do any players consider the Empire to be the good guys? Spoilers welcome.]

I hate to break it to you but you don't need psychic powers to determine that someone might have some inherrent bias and it's actually relatively common in debate for people to take their subjective viewpoints and try to make them into objective viewpoints.

 

I won't argue that, but this knowledge hasn't kept you from being wrong every single time you've made completely unfounded assertions about me and my tastes. You say things like, "Okay you obviously hate the EU" when you have no actual grounds on which to say that, just to try and square my reactions to your arguments. I invite you to consider that, you're full of it.

 

You see there can be many different interpretations based off someone's work and usually when someone has their own interpretation of something they generally consider their interpretation the one that's correct.

 

There might be no right or wrong answers in interpreting art, but there are answers that are more or less supported by the evidence, just like in science. You can try to tell me all day that Darth Bane was actually a blue elephant in disguise but you're gonna need to produce some compelling proof for me to take such a claim seriously. Don't expect people to just believe you when you make ridiculous bald assertions without backing any of them up.

 

Unrelated Pontificating

 

I have shown you incidents and even writing that talks about darkside corruption but you turn around and claim it doesn't line up with the movies.

 

No, you haven't. You've shown quotes of third-person narration talking about the subject. You haven't actually shown anything. Give me an event that a character in their right mind has observed in real-time that doesn't have another more likely explanation and I'll consider what you've said.

 

The movies don't say whether or not the dark side causes physical corruption so any evidence towards physical corruption or any dialogue regarding it doesn't contradict the movies in the slightest.

 

Corruption...you throw that word around way too much. There's nothing corrupt about the dark side. It's friggin' natural.

 

In fact, even in the movies there's evidence to the contrary. We know that when Anakin falls to the dark side his eyes change color. This alone tells us that it is fully in the realm of possibility that it can alter someone's appearance.

 

All it tells us is what we see. Like I keep saying, you're making a ridiculous logical leap to go from there to "the dark side will give you Palpatine-face." There's a shattered and broken link in the chain of reasoning, and the burden of supplying that link is on the one making the claim.

 

Any writing that elaborates on this is already adding onto the evidence already present on screen. I'm a professional card player Jorander and while this doesn't mean I have some insight into who you are based on your writing I will say that reading people on a daily basis is partly how I make money.

 

And I'm a professional philosopher. My job is literally to ferret out reasoning errors and fix them, and your argument is kriffing peppered with them.

 

People provide tells in their speech, their body language, and even in their text. You may hate the idea that someone may think they have insights into your mind and you may convince yourself someone can't know you without you actually telling them about yourself but in my line of work I fully believe you to be wrong here.

 

Well, I'd start honing your perceptions then because so far you've bungled it twice when trying to pin down my tastes. Bungled it hard.

 

Play a few card games with me and I'll be able to tell when you're lying even if you think that you have given nothing away.

 

And I only need to read a piece of writing once to spot the reasoning errors, no matter who wrote it.

 

If you're not familiar with the "Ones" you haven't seen the clone wars t.v. series. If you haven't seen the clone wars t.v. series..

 

Right, I haven't seen the Clone Wars...even though I have. Go ahead. It's on you to argue your own points, or I'm going to consider your point conceded.

 

this is why I don't bother to break up your arguments the way you break up mine. It's not worth it.

 

I really don't think you can. I don't think you've got a shred of compelling evidence, and I think you know it.

 

I've been debating on these forums since their inception.

 

So have I bud, not that that means a damned thing. I was here back before the beta even got up and running. I was around back then, and I do actually remember you. I remember you, I remember Rayla, I remember ProfessorWalsh, Kai-Sun, Alyxdinas (holy hell did I get into some rows with him) but I will always remember Niarcmorn most clearly. My single greatest regret in my entire life is not asking him more questions. He and I disagreed a lot, and more often than not he crushed me with his intellectual prowess like he did a lot of others, but I also learned a lot from him. Anyone here who remembers Nia, Alyx, or Walsh knows you're not nearly the bigshot that you're trying to paint yourself as with the above quoted line.

 

You're operating under limited knowledge compared to many I have debated here.

 

You have no idea what I know. More assumptions. I'd say you must get taken to the cleaners on a regular basis by other cardsharps, but that would be making a ridiculous, groundless assumption that I have absolutely no way of backing up...

 

If you haven't seen the clone wars t.v. series you're already at a disadvantage.

 

Oh I have seen the Clone Wars. I just asked you who these people are. You shouldn't conflate a question with lack of knowledge.

 

You're trying to make a case for the dark side based off the few books you've read. You clearly haven't read the plagueis novel or the bane series.

 

Rofl! Path of Destruction is my most re-read Star Wars novel, followed by the other two books in the trilogy. I've even cited specific scenes from that novel that you can't just go out and find on the internet. I know this because I've tried to find them for easy quoting and have had to type them out by hand before while constantly looking back at my copy. You want to play "whose the better canon buff?" Fine. I can do that. Bane trilogy, entirety of NJO, entirety of Jedi Academy entirety of Legacy of the Force, entirety of Dark Nest, Tyrant's Test, Plagueis, Dark Lord: Rise of Darth Vader, Darth Maul: Saboteur and Shadow Hunter, Yoda: Dark Rendezvous, Revenge of the Sith novel, Shatterpoint, Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, numerous Legacy-era comics featuring Cade Skywalker, The Courtship of Princess Leia, as much of Republic Commando as I could stomach before I gave up in a combination of disgust and boredom, and every book in the Star Wars Chronicle line that has come out to date. In case you don't know what that is, that's those in-setting artifact books like The Jedi Path and The Bounty Hunter's Code. I've seen a large chunk of the Clone Wars, and payed special attention to the three-episode Mortis arc and the Pong Krell arc. Oh, and I watch all six movies about once every eight months. This is already a wall of text, so I'm going to leave out all the Star Wars computer games I've played and the RPG cores and supplements like the D6 game and the Dark Side Sourcebook. That was all off the top of my head. I know I've read more. Oh yeah, all of the Jedi apprentice books. I never did get into the Jedi Quest books though. I'm going to stop now before this turns into a library listing.

 

Most importantly you haven't read the Tarkin novel (which although it has a lot to do with Tarkin it touches on the dark side quite a bit.

 

Is it more third-person narration contradicting what I and other characters see with their lying eyes?

 

Such as a Sith Temple the Jedi had no idea that was built under the Jedi temple.) Oh, which it also mentions that this hidden temple has influenced the way the Jedi think and behave over the years.

 

Of course it does. Because there was nothing in the movies that could have possibly explained why the Jedi were acting the way they were. It had to be mind control coming off of a dark side site. It's as ridiculous and unconvincing as "the devil made me do it." Tell me, who is the idiot character in that novel trying to claim that this magical underground Sith temple so I can insert myself into the setting and find something sharp with which to strike them.

 

"The Ones" are also known as Mortis, the Son, and the Daughter. They represent the balance of the force. The Father represents balance itself where as the Daughter and Son both represent the dark and light respectively.

 

Hahahaha!

 

Yes, I remember those episodes. The cast of characters falls asleep while in their ship and then "wakes up" on this magical planet where all sorts of strange, wonderful and impossible things happen. That whole planet is a living visual metaphor, right down to how the little aspects of nature work on that world. Personally I think it was far and away the greatest three episodes in that series, with the rest being mediocre even by children's t.v. standards. But yes, everything on that planet is a metaphor, right down to Anakin subduing Daughter and Son in that arena, all the while father was having a harder and harder time keeping them under control. Then Son goes and starts causing havoc which changes the resonance of the planet, because the planet is a living metaphor for the condition of the Cosmic Force in the galaxy, Daughter helps the cast of characters acquire the dagger that can kill Son (This is a nice double-layered metaphor because this the Force sending Anakin to the Jedi to destroy the Sith, but it's also the Campbellian formulation of the Source/World Navel giving the power to the hero to slay the tyrant) dagger falls into the hands of Son who slaughters the rest of the family. Hey, it's Anakin and his personal journey, couched in metaphor. Everything eventually gets wrapped up. Then they all wake up from their vision quest with no memory of what went down.

 

Darth Bane is a great authority on the dark side not just because he was a Sith Lord but he was pronounced Dark Lord of the Sith in true tradition.

 

Now we've got appeal to authority and appeal to tradition. Can we make it a hat trick...and I never said Bane wasn't an authority on the dark side. I never said he wasn't an expert. Go back and read the discussion again. I even freely admitted that he was the dark side expert of his time. I also pointed out, just like I'm about to do again, that that doesn't mean there is no gaps in his knowledge. "Best" does not equal "perfect." And again, just because you said Bane said something, or thought something, doesn't mean he actually said something, and I'm not going to do your legwork pulling up evidence for you, you lazy clown. I've seen you be demonstrably wrong in this thread several times already, and even if you weren't I'm loathe to trust people who don't provide evidence for their claims. You were wrong about Anakin's face burning. You we're wrong about Vergere teaching potentium BS. You were wrong about why Luke wanted to have Jaina kill Jacen instead of doing it himself. He literally gives the in-setting version of "I've got too many dark side points." Your arguments have more content-fallacies than a high school English paper. If something actually happens in the text, you should be able to provide page number and quote and say, "See there? Now shush, you vile sophist!" But you don't do that, because you can't.

 

Want to know another common stupid thing people do when arguing with someone? They assume the person they're arguing with is only disagreeing with them because they don't understand their argument, or they don't have as much knowledge or information.

 

No Sith after Bane has ever denied nor dared to not call Bane a true lord of the sith

 

And there's no true scotsman for the hat trick.

 

As for his potential being unlimited? Anakin's was too because he was completely born of the force. Bane lost a lot of his potential.

 

Umm...the point that I was making was the fact that Darth Bane had limits disqualified him from fulfilling the prophecy of the Sith'ari because the Sith'ari isn't supposed to have limits. Or...are you agreeing with me?

 

First he spent a long time under the orbalisk parasites which were eating his force energy and even after having his force energy constantly fed he got even weaker with their deaths. Despite this, his apprentice who he had been training, only narrowly managed to defeat him. What could have happened if he was never weakened in this manner? We'll never know. The Dark Brotherhood were Sith even if they were considered weak in bane's eyes. Despite him calling them pretenders he wouldn't have liked the old order any better.

 

They were Sith in the same way that people who practice things like Kendo are swordsmen. They were hobbyists.

 

Bane created a line of sith that actually managed to defeat the Jedi and produced the most powerful Sith Lord in existence.

 

Yes, yes he did. But he didn't really destroy the Sith, now did he? He definitely crippled them. Actually, I think it would be more accurate to say that he cut off the necrotized flesh of the body of the Sith Order. He purified their organization. He didn't destroy the Sith, not completely. Anakin did, and by the end, he became more powerful for it, and had no limits.

 

You also told me that the dark side doesn't corrupt people but I have provided proof which you still won't even dare comment on.

 

You won't dare comment on the picture I showed of Ahsoka. The corruption is G-Canon.

 

T-canon, actually. The Clone Wars is the t.v. show, which falls under T-canon. Not that "canon" means anything significant. Check the other thread and you'll see that I commented on it there, and even said we should try to keep this discussion confined to this thread. Let me make this abundantly clear for you; the mortis arc was a vision quest, a place where the ideas inside the characters' heads come to stunning life by donning the masks of metaphor. Looks like you've pegged me wrong, again. No, my problem isn't that I'm afraid to respond, it's that I'm too quick to respond, just like passion is too quick to join a person in a fight. You haven't provided proof. You've provided a few third-person narrators' opinions and some examples that aren't consistent with what Yoda himself said about the nature of the contents of the cave.

 

It exists even in the clone wars series. The aftermath novel discusses the origin of the dark side potentially being outside this galaxy.

 

The novel doesn't "do" anything. A novel is a collection of ink marks on a piece of treated pulp bound by cured animal hide. It's an inanimate object. It just sits there. Stop misusing personification. The quality of information provided is only as good as the quality of the writer who wrote the book, and if that is the same "Aftermath" that I'm thinking off, the one with the Doctor Who and Twitter references...the quality is suspect. Extremely suspect.

 

Therefore it can't be just some internal natural thing no matter how many quotes you try to use to convince us otherwise.

 

So, no matter how much evidence I provide, you and the voices in your head won't believe me. All I want is one shred of evidence that actually does support what you say. One shred. The opinions of characters and the musings of authors in the form of clunky third-person voices don't override what I can see with my eyes in the movies, and what is shown to be much more consistent across a lot more works.

 

I saw no problem with Luke Skywalkers quotes you brought up because Dark Side acts pull you towards the dark path.

 

Read the quoted text again. Luke's problem wasn't with the act. His problem was that he would enjoy it too much.

 

"'I don't think he's joking,' Han said. He turned toward Luke. 'Look, buddy,

if this is about our feelings-'

'Han, it's not.' Luke met the gazes of both of Jaina's parents, then said, 'To

tell the truth, I've been looking forward to running him down.'

 

'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."

 

Quoted text from Legacy of the Force book 9: Invincible, page 23.

 

Darth Bane describes the Dark Side like a drug. The more you use it. The more you give in to it. The harder it is to resist. The more intoxicating it becomes.

 

Like I've done several times already, can you please provide me with the quote and surrounding text, or a page number so I could look this up and judge the nature of the text for myself?

 

He describes this from experience as he has delved into the dark side.

 

His experience of the phenomena is not necessarily the phenomena itself. Kant kind of beat that point into the ground, but I'm glad he did.

 

He's a great authority because we are hearing the first hand accounts of someone who uses it and makes no apology about it.

 

His authority is only as great as the quality of his arguments. Assuming for a moment what you say is true (hope the shock didn't kill you) then all Bane is still doing is describing how it felt to him. That is not in any way objective. You're saying he was describing a subjective experience.

 

So it's very possible that Luke is feeling the effects especially since he's given in before.

 

It's not something that can be confidently affirmed though. Not enough evidence.

 

Why did it matter that he killed Lumiya?

 

I don't kriffing know. Ask Luke. He's the one who makes a big deal out of it. His argument is that he's too tainted from killing other dark siders, to the point to where killing Jacen will somehow magically take him from where he's at to an evil raving lunatic of a villain. It makes about as much sense as a bloated third-generation novel tie-in story in an expanded universe as one would expect it to.

 

To present Luke's argument though...

 

Didn't you read the spoof conversation? Killing Lumiya gave him some dark side points, and killing Jacen would give him the extra amount needed to turn him into an evil Sith lord. In the actual text Luke doesn't use the phrase "dark side points" of course. He just calls it the taint of the dark side. Actually, I think it's Leia who uses the word "taint" and all the other "Jedi masters" there smile and nod like a pack of idiots.

 

Lumiya was mostly retired and had nothing to do with Mara's death. Jacen killed her. Being one of the few left who proclaimed themselves to be Sith.. Luke immediately, without proof, believed she did it. So he killed her. That's murder.

 

Right...so what if she did do it, and Luke did have incontrovertible proof. Would it not be murder then? Is there something about the circumstances that made the act dark?

 

The Jedi vs Sith book talks about how the Dark Side is viewed to be semi-sentient much like the light side with it's own designs and purpose.

 

"The novel says this, the books talk about that, George Lucas said Anakin got that scar by slipping in the shower..."

 

I don't care if you want to take my word for it or not. I've provided these quotes in the past and most of the people who debate here automatically assume all this to be true

 

Must be damned frustrating for you to run across someone who doesn't just take what you say at face-value without any scrutiny or questioning then.

 

because they've read many of the same materials.

 

Didn't I just say a few lines up that a common error people commit in discussion is assuming people disagree with them because of a lack of knowledge of the subject-matter, or they misunderstand the argument? Sometimes people who disagree with you do so despite a high degree of knowledge of the subject-matter and a keen understanding of your argument. Hell, it's possible people might disagree with you because of these things.

 

It makes sense in the context of the clone wars because "The Ones" were sentient and often directed the force.

 

Says you. Looked to me like a vision-quest that happened inside their own inner worlds, what with falling asleep, then waking up at the planet, going through their cool Campbellian mini-adventure, and then waking right back up on their ship at the end with no time passed and no memory of what had happened.

 

The reason I haven't posted a quote about bane's opinions is because I don't want to look through each bane book to find it nor do I want to spend my time flipping through it's pages.

 

You think I enjoyed hunting for a good Youtube clip of Anakin's hair and face burning on Mustafar, you know, the thing you said didn't happen? You think I enjoyed digging out Invincible to quote from it? Believe me, I'm aware that it's an inconvenience. I do it anyway, because it's a dick move to make a claim based on evidence, and say "go find my evidence for yourself, I've not any more time to waste on you pleb." Besides which I actually kind of value my credibility, to some small degree.

 

You might find this discussion irritating but I find it equally irritating having the prove something that is common knowledge.

 

What are you talking about? I love these kinds of discussions, otherwise I wouldn't partake in them. It's your rude, insulting mannerisms that I find irritating. Oh, hey, guess I called it. Looks like you do indeed find it frustrating to run into someone who doesn't take your BS at face-value.

 

The dark side is addicting, it corrupts the user, and has been described to be like a narcotic.

 

You know what my old English professor once said? "Unsourced claims are lies." That always stuck with me. Think about what a claim is; a claim is a descriptive statement made in the affirmative, often of an arguable nature. As a noun, a claim is formally defined as "an assertion of the truth of something, typically one that is disputed or in doubt." A claimis an assertion of the truth of something. An assertion of the truth, more broadly. A source is the knowledge, the sensory information that the claim rests on. "Bobby hit Susie!" is a claim. The source of this knowledge would obviously be the seeing of the act in question. But what if such an act never took place? What if the claim had no source from which to spring? I could still claim that Bobby smashed Susie in the face, but if I never saw any such thing happen, I couldn't know if it was true or not, could I? To say such a thing, I'd have to be "lying," willfully misrepresenting what I saw/knew. If you can't say with confidence where you saw something, if you can't trust in the veracity of your own claim, you shouldn't make the claim.

 

Now, with all that in mind...you wouldn't happen to have a source, would you? I mean, you must have one, because I know there's no way you'd ever lie to someone on the internet because it's convenient, or misrepresent your own knowledge.

 

Bane made sure he was very careful not delving too far and not letting the addiction consume him.

 

Actually, near the end of Path of Destruction, he realized the problem was that all the other fools around him weren't willing to go far enough. I'll provide you with the case of his awakening, his difficulty, his "block" he experienced in the Sith academy, and how he got around it.

 

"It had been his third day here at the Academy. He’d been applying the meditation techniques he’d learned the day before when suddenly he felt it. It was like the bursting of a dam, a raging river flooding through him, sweeping away all his failings: his weakness, his fear, his self-doubt." Path of Destruction, pg. 47.

 

Look at this. Look at what's going on inside of him. It's described as the bursting of a dam. I put it earlier as "letting the monster out." This description sounds a lot like what Yoda talked about when he said anger, fear, and aggression are the dark side and quick to join you in a fight.

 

"He strode through the virtually empty halls of the Academy toward the meeting, his outward appearance calm and confident. Inside he was anything but. All night, as he lay surrounded by the silence and darkness of his room, the duel had played itself over and over in his head. Free from the emotion of the battle, he knew he had gone too far. He had proven his dominance over Fohargh by pinning him with the Force; he had achieved dun moch. The Makurth would never dare to challenge him again. Yet for some reason Bane hadn’t been able to stop there. He hadn’t wanted to stop. At the time he had felt no guilt over his actions. No remorse. Yet once his blood cooled, part of him couldn’t help but feel he had done something wrong. Had Fohargh really deserved to die?

 

But another part of him refused to accept the guilt. He’d had no love for the Makurth. No feelings at all. Fohargh had been nothing but an obstacle to Bane’s progress. An obstacle that had been removed. He had given himself over to the dark side completely in that moment. It had been more than simple rage or bloodlust. It went deeper, to the very core of his being. He’d lost all reason and control . . . but it had felt right." Path of Destruction, pg. 51.

 

Notice the careful choice of words here by Karpyshyn. He is telling this story from the point of view of Bane who, get this, describes his complete surrender to the dark side as "losing control!" Just like Jacen Solo did when talking to Vergere! Bane is taking the same tack that Vergere warned Jacen away from. Bane's surrender led to slaughter. Why? See the above passage; the dam had burst, and it, according to Bane, felt right. Why did it feel right? Because he was no longer working against his nature. It didn't feel "corrupting," or "addictive" or "like a narcotic," it felt "right." That's the kind of language people use when they're "in the zone" going all wei wu wei. That's not the language people use to describe being drugged. Bane didn't lose control. He let go. He surrendered. He finally stopped trying, and simply did. To put it in Taoist terms, he practiced "wei wu wei," "doing not-doing," perfect effortless action. Drew might not be as gifted as Stover or Luceno when it comes to beautiful imagery and lovely language, but he is a solid storyteller.

 

In case you can't tell, that's not only one of my favorite scenes in the novel, it's one of my all-time favorite scenes in Star Wars, period.

 

But I totally hate the expanded universe, right?

 

"He had been humiliated and embarrassed, and he’d responded with anger. His anger had let him summon the dark side to lash out at his enemy. He could remember a feeling of elation, of triumph, when Fohargh went sprawling through the air. But there was something else, too. Even in victory, his hatred had kept growing, rising up like the flames of a fire

that could be quenched only with blood. Passion fueled the dark side, but what if the dark side also fueled passion? Emotion brought power, but that power increased the intensity of those emotions . . . which in turn led to an increase in the power.

 

In the right circumstances, it would create a cycle that would end only when a person reached the limits of his or her ability to command the Force-or when the target of his or her anger and hatred was destroyed. Despite the heat in his room, a cold shiver ran down Bane’s spine. How was it possible to contain or control a power that fed on itself? The more he, as an apprentice, learned to draw on the Force, the more his emotions would control him. The stronger a person became, the less rational he would be. It was inevitable." Path of Destruction, pg. 54

 

What we have here is Bane trying to work out a conundrum. He's trying to square his experiences with what he has been taught. Given his then-lacking knowledge, it's not surprising that he would reach the conclusion it looks like he's about to reach here; the more he learned to use the dark side, the more his baser instincts would override his rational mind. It's eerily similar to not just the conclusion reached by a lot of fans, but even the process of how the fans get to said conclusion is very much like Bane's thought process. For now, just keep in mind that these are all things Bane isn't sure of. He starts this all off by asking the question "What if, what if the dark side also fueled passion?" Let's read on, shall we?

 

"No, Bane thought. He was missing something. He had to be. If this were true, the Masters would be teaching the students techniques to avoid this situation. They would be learning to distance themselves from their own emotions, even as they used them to draw upon the dark side. But there was nothing of this in their training, so Bane’s analysis had to be

wrong. It had to be!" Path of Destruction, pg. 54.

 

Hrm...what he's essentially saying here, is that if the dark side did fuel passion, they'd be treating their emotions how the Jedi do, or how Bane understands the Jedi treat their emotions, so that can't be the answer. This is the start of a difficult time for our lovable Byronic hero.

 

"Hurst had died that night. The authorities had ruled it a natural death. A heart attack, brought on by a combination of too much alcohol, a life working the mines, and the overexertion of nearly beating his own son to death with his bare hands. They never suspected the real cause. Neither had Bane. Not until now.

 

He shook his head to clear away the memory of Hurst’s death. The man had deserved neither pity nor mercy. The weak would always be crushed by the strong. If Bane wanted to survive, he had to become one of the strong. That was why he was here at the Academy. That was his mission. That was the way of the dark side. But the realization did nothing to quell the queasy feeling in his stomach, and when he closed his eyes he could still see father’s face.

 

(Cue Bane getting his face smashed because he's too afraid to surrender to the Force and starts practicing that limiting "Jedi control.")

 

"The sequences are just tools. They help you free your mind so you can draw upon the Force. That is where you will find the key to victory. Not in the muscles of your arms or the quickness of your blade. You must call upon the dark side to destroy your enemies!" Clenching his jaw from the burning pain now spreading through the entire left side of his body, Bane could only nod. "You’re holding back," the Master went on. "You aren’t using the Force. Without it, your moves are slow and predictable." "I ... I’ll try harder, Master." "Try?" Kas’im turned away in disgust. "You’ve lost your will to fight. This lesson is over." Realizing he had been dismissed, Bane slowly made his way to the stairs leading down from the temple roof. As he reached them, Kas’im called out one last piece of advice. "Return when you are ready to embrace the dark side instead of pulling away from it." Path of Destruction, pgs. 56,57

 

Look at that. He is careful not to go too far, like you said, but a curious thing happens. He actually gets weaker. He isn't "trusting the Force," or "letting go of his conscious self and acting on instinct" like Obi-Wan taught Luke. He isn't "doing not-doing" anymore. He, in the words of Yoda, is trying, instead of doing.

 

To summarize, he meets with Githany who tells him that he hasn't lost his power, despite his loss against Sirak in the ring. She shows him that the Force is a part of him, and through guided meditation he, "Suddenly he felt as if he were falling. No, not falling: diving. Swooping down into a great abyss, the black emptiness inside his very being. The chill darkness numbed his body; he lost all sensation in his extremities. He could no longer feel Githany’s hands wrapped about his own. He didn’t even know if she was still sitting beside him. He was alone in the freezing void.

 

"The dark side is emotion, Bane." Her words came to him from a long way off, faint but unmistakable. "Anger, hate, love, lust. These are what make us strong. Peace is a lie. There is only passion." Her words were louder now, loud enough to drown out the drumming of his heart. "Your passion is still there, Bane. Seek it out. Reclaim it." Path of Destruction, pg. 69.

 

Note, the abyss, the black emptiness inside his very being, the totality of the Dark with a capital "D." The answer wasn't to pull back, or to rely on your emotion in moderation like you seem to be suggesting when you say,

 

Bane made sure he was very careful not delving too far and not letting the addiction consume him.

 

What we have in the text contradict your characterization of Bane. He literally dove into his own inner dark void, and here we have Githany practically quoting Yoda as to what the dark side actually is. From here on out, he figuratively does dive deep. He reads as much as he can. He takes every opportunity to practice the sequences and velocities of Djem So. He completely and fully embraces the thing that made him afraid upon his murder of that one acolyte.

 

The dark side should be a tool not a crutch.

 

Well, I don't worry so much about "shoulds" and tend to think more in terms of "is," and as for what the dark side "is," well, I tend to see it as death. I'm partial to the idea of the void.

 

Sidious failing was probably not fully heeding bane's device.

 

You mean "advice?" I'm, for the most part, in agreement with Luke on this one. Palpatine's vulnerability was his over-confidence, which led to his screw-up of not preparing a contingency plan for the rebels kicking the collective behind of "a legion of his best troops."

 

He drew on the dark side so much and so heavily that he became arrogant and his lust of power got the better of him like many Sith Lords before him.

 

Right, Palpatine just isn't the kind of person who would lust for power normally...he just "lost control." I don't think any sane person who has seen all six movies would buy this.

 

The corruption is canon

 

I want a corruption cannon now.

 

What corruption? This hypothetical, magical thing that we never actually see? Look, canon only goes so far. At some point you have to acknowledge that there are errors and contradictory elements and that you cannot square everything. Yes, I know that's what the canon system is for, to handle in-universe contradictions like that, but Leland Chee is human and therefore prone to error, and we've got multiple cases of C-canon being contradicted by other C-canon, and in some cases even T-canon, even when said contradicted C-canon actually agrees with G-canon, like the similarities between Yoda's teachings and Vergere's teachings. Ultimately, that canon database thing is a tool for writers handling certain stories to ease research. Appealing to that database is basically one giant appeal to authority. if Leland Chee walked up to you and told you it was G-canon that Anakin was really a chick, would you buy it, or would you ask for some proof?

 

and the reason you fought so heavily against it is because once you admit the corruption is canon then you can't claim it's truly natural.

 

Reasons are for peasants bud. Or, to more directly quote Yoda, "No, there is no why!" I believe Vergere was also fond of that very idea, there is no why. Let's look at what Yoda has to say about this: "Yes, run! Yes, a Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they." Holy kark! From the mouth of Yoda himself, anger fear and aggression are the dark side of the Force. Since you seem to regard authority so highly, there's an authority figure for you. It doesn't get much more natural than anger, fear, and aggression. Remember, even you said George Lucas said the prequel Jedi have it right. You haven't shown me the quote though. Maybe now would be a good time to look at it? Come to think of it, if the prequel Jedi have it right, maybe it's time to revisit what Mace said in Shatterpoint about how the dark side is nature, and civilization imposed upon nature is the light.

 

I'll leave your baseless speculation about my motivations alone and keep shredding your arguments.

 

Once you accept that the corruption is canon you can't deny that it would have some influence on the mind.

 

Everything has an influence on the mind. We're influenced to some degree by whatever stimuli we experience. It's often a very small degree though, and there's nothing that proves that the dark side is special in this regard. Just a lot of character-opinion and third-person narrative voices of hack writers who have no idea what they're doing. I'm looking at you, Troy Denning.

 

Now for my final statement.. I have some words of advice. Don't get angry reading my posts.

 

You sound like the kind of Jedi in the minds of people who misunderstand Jedi. I'll get right on deciding how I feel about something, because, you know, I can totally do that, just decide to feel something regardless of what the stimuli is that provoked the feeling. I was about to type something that I know would have made anyone reading it extremely uncomfortable, and it was probably against the forum rules, so I can't but it would illustrate the point perfectly.

 

I'm not trying to incite you.

 

You must be terrifying when you actually put effort into stuff then.

 

This is a debate about a fictional universe discussing a fictional "entity" such as the force.

 

Ah yes, the "it's just fiction" argument. I'm going to answer that with two Stover quotes, one Ursula K. Le Guin quote, and one George Lucas quote because they shred this garbage way better than I ever could.

 

"This story happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. It

is already over. Nothing can be done to change it.

It is a story of love and loss, brotherhood and betrayal, courage and

sacrifice and the death of dreams. It is a story of the blurred line

between our best and our worst.

It is the story of the end of an age.

A strange thing about stories—

Though this all happened so long ago and so far away that words

cannot describe the time or the distance, it is also happening right now.

Right here.

It is happening as you read these words."

 

-Matthew Woodring Stover, Revenge of the Sith

 

"My first goal was to write a fantasy novel that was NOT the umpty-seventh rehash of a Not Quite Final Battle of Good vs. Evil. Those kinds of fantasies have their place, just like junk food can have its place in a balanced diet. But just because it has its place doesn't mean it's anything but empty calories.

As one character in Blade of Tyshalle puts it:

 

"You've guessed by now that what you are seeing is a Fantasy -- what humans call 'illusion.' There will be those who will try to tell you that Fantasy is the opposite of reality, that it is the same as lies... that it is a lie because it is a Fantasy. I tell you this is not so.

"It is the greatest gift of my people, that we can bring our dreams to life for other eyes. Fantasy is a tool; like any tool, it may be used poorly, or well. At its best, Fantasy reveals truths that cannot be shown any other way."

 

-Matthew Woodring Stover.

 

https://www.sfsite.com/04a/mws101.htm

 

"This book is not extrapolative. If you like you can read it, and a lot of other science fiction, as a thought-experiment. The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrodinger and other physicists, is not to predict the future - indeed Schrodinger's most famous thought-experiment goes to show that the "future," on the quantum level, cannot be predicted- but to describe reality, the present world. Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.

 

That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies.

 

"The truth against the world!" - Yes. Certainly. Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth! This book is not about the future. Yes, it begins by announcing that it's set in the "Ekumenical Year 1490-97," but surely you don't believe that? [Emphasis mine. Note the similarity here with how Stover opens his novel.]

 

Yes, indeed the people in it are androgynous, but that doesn't mean that I'm predicting that in a millennium or so we will all be androgynous, or announcing that I think we damned well ought to be androgynous. I'm merely observing, in the peculiar, devious, and thought-experimental manner proper to science fiction, that if you look at us at certain odd times of day in certain weathers, we already are."

 

-Ursula K. Le Guin, Introduction and Foreword to The Left Hand of Darkness

 

http://theliterarylink.com/leguinintro.html

 

"LUCAS: Yes, I know what that is. The groundwork has been laid in this episode. The film is ultimately about the dark side and the light side, and those sides are designed around compassion and greed. The issue of greed, of getting things and owning things and having things and not being able to let go of things, is the opposite of compassion--of not thinking of yourself all the time. These are the two sides--the good force and the bad force. They're the simplest parts of a complex cosmic construction.

 

MOYERS: I think it's going to be very hard for the audience to accept that this innocent boy, Anakin Skywalker, can ever be capable of the things that we know happen later on. I think about Hitler and wonder what he looked like at nine years old.

 

LUCAS: There are a lot of people like that. And that's what I wonder. What is it in the human brain that gives us the capacity to be as evil as human beings have been in the past and are right now?"

 

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,23298,00.html

 

Just fiction indeed. Note, in particular, the Le Guin and Lucas quotes. The fiction is about exploring all sorts of real things couched in the language of metaphor. Lucas seems to be describing the dark side in this interview as simply, a state of cosmic agreement with greed and consumption. As the smartest poster on these boards once put it, "

 

"The way out of this mess is to look outside the characters of Star Wars and their personal moral dilemmas. In fact, you must look outside Star Wars altogether. “The dark” is not a fantasy concept invented by George Lucas which has meaning only so long as his storyline holds together. The dark is real. Stover says as much in the opening of his novel.

 

“A strange thing about stories

Though this all happened so long ago and so far away that words cannot describe the time or distance, it is also happening right now. Right here.

It is happening as you read these words.”

 

The dark is not a decision, or a value system, or an emotion. The dark is totality. The dark is the changeless, timeless void that will exist when the universe is finished. So long as there is life in the world, there will be change and growth--as well as loss, the shadow-side of change and because of this, we never see the full scope and power of the dark."

 

-Niarcmorn, It's So Easy Being Evil: Star Wars and the Dark.

 

There's no reason to get angry at any of my words or anything that I say.

 

Do you even know what anger is? Anger by its definition isn't reasonable. It's understandable, but it isn't reasonable. Making a bunch of baseless claims and saying it's true and dismissing people who disagree with you as "not knowledgeable enough to understand" when you have no idea what their knowledge base is...acting like you know people better than they know themselves, just because you think you have some ability to read things through text. Let me tell you something, something I would expect you to know if you can read people half as well as you claim to be able to; it's a lot easier to get a read on someone through their body language than their "writing voice." In fact, most people never really develop the ability to clearly communicate tone and feeling through text, and even when they do, it depends as much on the reader to pick it up as it does the writer to put it down. To fall back on Vergere again, "Is it what the teacher teaches, or what the student learns?" If you want to disagree with that particular assertion based on my lack of evidence for it, go right ahead. I don't have the longitudinal studies and statistical analyses on hand to back it up. It is what my experiences have shown me though.

 

I promise you that isn't my goal. If you are getting angry I do suggest that you sit back and try to relax before coming back into this discussion.

 

I'm always relaxed, even in my frustration, which is the word I used. I didn't say I was angry, I said I was frustrated, and I chose that word consciously. Now I'm thinking a better phrase would have been "emotionally fatigued." To quote Mace Windu from Shatterpoint, "You haven't seen me angry yet."

 

You would think years of the existence of the internet would have taught me some patience and understanding, that almost no one on the internet can argue properly, to realize "It's okay, they don't know any better, they're just ignorant, they're not deliberate deceitful or jerks," but nope. I keep holding out hope and I keep getting proverbially kicked in said hope.

 

We're not in some debate class and I'm not trying to defeat you at anything.

 

It would be more honest than what you've done so far. In fact, I'd honestly rather you actually try and refute, rather than dismiss my arguments. Or if you want to, you could signal your desire to agree to disagree (if that is indeed your desire) and I will drop the subject with you, though I will certainly discuss it with anyone else willing.

 

I guess...what I'm saying is, unless you'd rather not and if that's the case I won't press you on it...bring it on, ******! There are two kinds of argument. There's the kind of argument where two sides compete, "take a position and defend it!" and then there's the kind of argument known as a "dialogic" argument, or a Socratic argument. That second one is where multiple sides do their level best to present their case, and everyone hearing it does their level best to shred the hell out of it, in hopes of finding any holes or imperfections in the idea. This is done so that the people who hold those positions can modify, hold, or abandon their ideas as new information enlightens them. If you don't want to do this, just say so, but if you don't want to do this, then don't be a dick and engage in a drive-by argument where you simply pop in and say "Nuh uh!" and go on your merry way.

 

I don't expect you to respond to the bulk of this because it's long, and because you haven't done a whole lot of responding to me beyond outright dismissal. With this, I'm going to do my best to leave the thread alone for a few days because I'm already waaaaay too damned invested in this, especially given my current project.

 

Holy kark...this is a 25-page word document...time to go play some SWTOR.

[Do any players consider the Empire to be the good guys? Spoilers welcome.]

I'm going to snip most of the rest because many of your counterpoints was "I don't like what the writers have stated. I feel it contradicts what lucas wanted and we don't know what Lucas real intentions were but based on my interpretation of ___ I feel it's ___."

 

You're misreading what I'm saying. I'm saying that certain parts of the EU contradict the movies, and I'm not willing to consider those as valuable sources for describing "the Force" in general when they contradict the source material so blatantly.

 

I get it.

 

No, you really, really don't. Stop trying to ascribe motives, thoughts, and feelings to me when you can't. So far, every one of your guesses about me has been dead wrong, and your persistence in mischaracterizing me is starting to get frustrating.

 

You hate the EU

 

And what a surprise, here you are again claiming to know things about my own thoughts and feelings that I haven't even told you. What's your evidence for this claim? Please, cite your psychic powers. That would be hilarious.

 

but you know what Leland Chee controlled the holocron and in EU canon.

 

I don't care if it's coming from the mouth of George Lucas himself; if he can't back up his claims by pointing to the content, whether that content is the movies, or setting notes that he hasn't released, then he doesn't have a leg to stand on.

 

The dark side corrupts you and it twists you.

 

Repeating it over and over again won't make it true.

 

Oh, for the record. Luke didn't want to kill Jacen out of fear of falling to the dark side. It's because he had a vision if he was the one who did it Ben Skywalker would fall.

 

Let's go the text, shall we?

 

Luke: Jaina, you need to assassinate your brother now because I have accumulated too many dark side points.

 

"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,"

 

"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."

"Because you want it too much," Kyp said. "You said yourself that your

judgment was clouded by vengefulness. If you could purify yourself, maybe

go to Dagobah and meditate-"

"It is not Master Skywalker'z judgment that is clouded," Saba said. "It is

him."

"What?" Han demanded. "He's not allowed to get mad when someone kills

his wife?"

"This one does not think it is anger that cloudz him," Saba replied. "This

one thinkz it is what he did to Lumiya."

"I think the word you're looking for is taints, Master Sebatyne," said Leia.

"You're saying that killing Lumiya in vengeance tainted him with the dark

side."

"Yes." Saba glanced in Luke's direction, then lowered her chin in apology.

"This one fearz that if you go after Caedus, no matter how the hunt beginz,

it must end in vengeance. That is why you can see nothing but darknesz

down that path."

"And this one believes you're right."

 

That's all from Book 9 of the Legacy of the Force series, Invincible. So, literally, he can't do this because he's got too many dark side points and this will push him over the edge. His destroying a Sith has somehow "tainted" him. It's kriffing ridiculous.

 

Now let's discuss what Vergere was talking about, shall we?

 

"But it also obeys your commands.(1)" The Force influences people who, get this, "let go of their conscious selves and act, on instinct!" When you have a person filled with anger, hate, and all this other crap, what do you think that's going to look like? Incoming Vergere: "If your surrender leads to slaughter, it's not because the Force is dark. It's because you are." When you open up the floodgates, whatever is in will come out, and if nasty is in, nasty will out. If kindness, goodness, happiness, and warm fuzzy puppies are in, then that will out.

"Light and dark are no more than nomenclature: words that describe how little we understand. What you call the dark side is the raw, unrestrained Force itself: you call the dark side what you find when you give yourself over wholly to the Force. To be a Jedi is to control your passion…but Jedi control limits your power. Greatness—true greatness of any kind—requires the surrender of control. Passion that is guided, not walled away. Leave your limits behind.

 

Number 1: The Jedi believe in letting the force guide you. That's why Obi Wan talks about letting go to Luke. This has always been a Jedi concept. The Jedi does the will of the force.

 

According to Obi-Wan, partial control of one's actions...

 

The Jedi does not use the force as a tool.

 

...but it also obeys your commands.

 

This is why in the mandalorian wars the Jedi didn't want to get involved. Revan and his group did it anyway and what happened?

 

Actually, the Jedi didn't take part in the Mandalorian Wars because they were convinced the Mandalorians weren't the real threat, and they didn't want to spend their strength on what was a glorified feint.

 

Having the force "Obey your commands" is very Sith. The Sith use the force as a tool. The Jedi don't.

 

Hey, take it up with Old Ben. He's the Jedi who said it. I'm just repeating his words.

 

The second bold part is the problem with Vergere as a character.

 

I feel the approach of out-and-out falsehoods that I've debunked a thousand times before. Something utterly stupid this way comes...

 

She doesn't believe in the dark side.

 

Well would you look at that. I kriffing called it. I literally addressed this exact point in my previous post, in advance, because I freaking anticipated you'd say this. All Vergere said was that the thing we call the dark side is called such because it's the best name we have to describe something that we can only grab so much intellectual knowledge of. "All the answers fall short of the truth, light and dark are just names, they're not the things themselves. Don't get hung up on the language." That was all Vergere was saying.

 

She doesn't believe in sides. Vergere believes The Force is just the force.

 

Also untrue. She said that there is more to the Force than merely light and dark and would you know it, she's right. We know the Force also breaks down into Living and Cosmic aspects too.

 

She followed the potentium theory which is outright wrong.

 

The potentium theory teaches that it is the intentions of the adept that matters, and not what those powers are used to accomplish, and indeed even the powers themselves. Vergere challenged this view every step of the way. Every time Jacen brought intentions up, she shot him down. The potentium teaches that as long as one "lives a moral life" the dark side isn't a problem. The problem with that that Vergere attacked, was that so long as you could convince yourself that you were moral (who can't do that?) and that your intentions were pure, you could justify whatever you wanted.

 

We know that there's two sides of the force.

 

At least four, actually...Living, Cosmic, Light, Dark...

 

The potentium theory was a lie to get people to ease into the dark side.

 

The potentium was a falsehood. It may have also been a lie, but we can't know that for sure.

 

While what she says is very similar to what Obi Wan tells Luke Skywalker? It's not the same. The Jedi don't teach you to act on passion. Even in Luke's academy you don't act on passion. You don't have the force "guide" your passion.

 

What a coinkydink, Vergere didn't teach Jacen to act on passion either. She taught him to choose, then act. She also taught him what "choose and act" really means for someone like him.

 

She outright criticizes the Jedi. This is a very common theme among Sith.

 

It's also a common theme among Jedi. Masters criticize their padawans all the time. It's how they learn. Yoda himself had some choice words for the Jedi order throughout the prequel trilogy. "Too sure of themselves, they are, even the older, more experienced ones." Damn. Kind of sounds like people who fall deep into the potentium. "To a dark place this line of thought will carry us. Tread carefully we must." Yoda says this in response to Mace Windu, of all things, suggesting the establishment of a temporary regency/dictatorship ran by the Jedi Order. Is it any wonder Yoda almost lost his s***? Hell, he even chides Obi-Wan in front of all the kids, to which they respond with their own gentle, innocent mockery, as only a child can. Her words for the Sith though are far more interesting. In regard to her discovery of Anakin Skywalker's ultimate fate, she responds by lamenting the path he chose.

 

"The Jedi control limits your greatness." Heed back to Yoda's words. "Greatness" is one of the things he mentions when he claims a Jedi seeks not these things.

 

Actually, he said, "Adventure, excitement, a Jedi craves not these things." All he said about greatness was "war not make one great," in response to Luke saying, "I'm looking for...a great warrior." Yoda clearly had an idea of what was "great" and war apparently didn't figure into it.

 

A good manipulator will throw in truths, put in familiar phrases, while also mixing in some subtle lies. Also when I said Dooku above? I meant Windu.

 

Better manipulators don't lie at all. They're just selective about who they share what information with, and when.

 

As for your whole "Where's your proof that Windu doesn't know more than Bane?"

 

Oh don't you even. I did not at any time ask you to prove a negative. I instead rightly pointed out your appeal to authority when you said "Darth Bane is a Sith lord so he must be an expert on the dark side." Then I asked you to provide the quote to back up your claim about what you said Bane believed, because I'm skeptical in regards to your claims about his words and ideas.

 

Come on.

 

No. In case you haven't noticed, I'm stubborn, almost to an unhealthy degree. After this post, I'm going to try and let this thread go for a few days. On the other hand, it's in my nature to engage in acts of minor self-destruction...

 

Bane was the one who revolutionized the Sith Order. He did this because he realized the failings of the other Sith. As the Sith'ari he understood the dark side better than any Sith before him as well as it's nature. This is the entire point of the novels.

 

You'll get no argument from me concerning Bane's achievements, or his value to the Sith Order and the advancement in understanding the dark side that he provided. He then went on to lay the foundation of the destruction of the Jedi Order. Every Sith after him merely borrows their power from Bane. Even Palpatine acknowledges this. Even Bane though uses the metaphor of venom in a cup for the Force, with the venom being the dark side, and the cup being the person. Still waiting on your proof that Bane said what you said he said.

 

As an aside, it's not proven that he was the Sith'ari. Looking at the prophecy Sorzus Syn found, it's questionable whether or not Bane actually fulfilled it. The first line in particular is kind of damning; "The Sith'ari will be free of limits." Bane had limits until the day he died. Bane led the Sith, but he never really destroyed them. He killed a lot of Sith true, but even he would have argued that they were "no true Sith," and merely pretenders. In any case, so long as Bane was alive, the Sith weren't actually destroyed. The Sith'ari will raise the Sith from death and make them stronger than before." This is the line that Bane comes closest to fulfilling, but he never actually destroyed the Sith, so one could argue that he didn't really raise them from death, though he did make the order much, much stronger.

 

Now...Anakin on the other hand...he had no real upward limits. He was conceived of the Force. He was literally the Force incarnate. In Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader, we get a snapshot into Anakin's potentially limitless power. Even in the movies, Palpatine said "Darth Vader will become more powerful than either of us." It was also Anakin's destiny to destroy the Sith, and destroy the Sith he did indeed, and after doing so, he was technically the last Sith, so, for a brief while, he led them. As for raising them from death and making them stronger than before...if you think of him as a Sith when he died...well..."If you strike me down now, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." Even Yoda referred to this as "returning from the netherworld of the Force." Personally, I think Anakin fits better than the Sith'ari, and we never got any hard in-setting confirmation that Bane was in fact the Sith'ari.

 

"Because a scientist said so" isn't my argument.

 

Your argument was literally that Bane should know this stuff because he's a Sith lord. Sith lords are to the dark side what climatologists are to weather. That doesn't mean that Sith lords can't be wrong about the dark side, just like it doesn't mean that climatologists can't be wrong about the weather. Again, still waiting on the quote from Bane that you said he said.

 

My argument is someone who majored in european history is probably going to be more knowledgeable in european history than someone who majored in asian culture.

 

And I would agree with you, but that wasn't what you actually said. And if you did say something like, "This expert on the subject said the paladin Roland wielded a giant purple ***** named "The Stamina" for his weapon instead of a sword named "Durandal," I'd ask you to back up your claim, no matter what kind of experts you called down.

 

Sidious had the largest collection of Sith artifacts, relics, and teachings. Even more than the Jedi. Most of this was passed down by Bane and his successors! Most of the stuff on the Sith the Jedi had LOCKED AWAY. Windu wouldn't have access to them anyway nor would he have a need to seek them out.

 

Actually, The Jedi Path makes it pretty clear that the masters of the order do explore the contents of those forbidden libraries. After all, you have to know what tricks a disease uses in order to cure it.

 

I'm also not going to go back to quote most of the bane novel because it heavily conflicts with everything you said here.

 

So, let me get this straight; you've got evidence that can shut me down, but because it can shut me down, you're not going to present it? Well, you do what you like, but until you present evidence, I'm reserving the right to call BS on this claim of yours.

 

Just go read the trilogy. It's all about the nature of the dark side.

 

Oh I have. In fact I've probably read the Bane trilogy more times than any other selection of Star Wars novels. It was actually Path of Destruction that first got me interested, nay, fascinated with Star Wars novels, the Force, and the dark side. None of what I read in those books sounds like it supports what you're talking about. In fact, Bane was pulling power from other dark siders which suggests that the dark side, is internal. He hit a roadblock early on in his training because he couldn't let go and open the floodgates because the thought of doing so and "losing control" (strange how that phrase keeps cropping up) scared him. It wasn't until he actually decided to surrender that control and let it all hang out that he got that kind of power and, well, his surrender did indeed lead to slaughter.

 

Also I have proof that the dark side isn't internal.

 

This aught to be good.

 

The ones were manifestations of the Force.

 

The what now?

 

They were external forces.

 

Explain. I'm not familiar with these "ones."

 

Also Aftermath confirms that the dark side isn't external

 

Cool where's the quote?

 

and Sidious, before his untimely death, had plans to search for the source of the dark side outside the current galaxy.

 

Well, he was always kind of myopic so that's not really surprising.

 

Given that it's G-Canon that Sidious had the greatest knowledge of the dark side of anyone if he believed the dark side was external and the source could be found? It is probably external and could be found

 

"Greatest" doesn't mean "perfect." The tallest dude in the room could still be four feet tall. A strangely engineered plague could kill all the tall people and leave the tallest person alive at four feet tall. A better analogy would be to say that while so-and-so might be the tallest person on the planet right now at x height, it doesn't mean that is as tall as humans can be. As great as Palpatine's knowledge was, there was probably still room for improvement in his understanding, especially given his colossal screw-up at the end there.

 

Aftermath is a new novel under Disney Canon.

 

That that one where the wibbly-wobbly TIE fighter flies herkily-jerkily through space, and people are trending on the space-twitt...I mean holonet?

[Darth Nox vs Hero of tython]

"He studied the ancient ruins on the Sith mausoleum world of Korriban. He unlocked secrets of the Force from a captured Jedi Holocron. The dark side energies flowing through Palpatine's body were so intense, that they ravaged his mortal frame. The very source of Palpatine's strength was killing him.

 

To counter the dark side's consumption, Palpatine turned to a bizarre combination of technology and Sith magic. Palpatine used Spaarti cloning cylinders to create a store of younger bodies, and employed an ancient Sith technique to transfer his consciousness into a waiting clone. Thus, Palpatine could avoid death indefinitely -- as long as his supply of clones remained intact. He would change his form again and again, prolonging his life. Palpatine constructed a secret throne-world deep within the galaxy's core, on a shadowy world called Byss. Here, he kept his clones safe, protected by a loyal cadre of Dark Side Adepts. "

 

The dark side corrupts you. It's shown in the clone wars. Remember Dark Side Ashoka? Look at what it did to her appearance. Did you see how it affected maris brood? What about Darth Vader? (Remember his face wasn't burned.) How about Anakin's eyes changing color? Jacen Solo's? What about in universe lore about how Darth Marr has become so ravaged by the dark side that he's essentially terminally ill? What about the references in the bane novels? How about Darth Zash? We have seen in so many different media that the dark side corrupts you. The dark side might be a natural force but drawing on it isn't natural.

 

Also read tales of the Jedi and other old republic sources. The Sith species ARE more in tune with the dark side naturally. It's stated even in the Old Republic encyclopedia and the star wars encyclopedias were endorsed by Lucas.

 

Show you where to find it? It's the commentary. I quoted the commentary you posted. In the commentary he was commenting on the scene. That's what commentary is. Everyone here knows the dark side has a corrupting effect. We even see it in the clone wars. The dark side's corrupting influence is CANON. I've never ever met anyone who debated it's corrupting effect.

 

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_i_mHP3u5W9E/TUzh6zpJeYI/AAAAAAAAAJY/mfwJKcjxREY/s1600/Altar37.jpg

 

Here's a picture of Ahsoka taken by the dark side.

 

http://wookiee.ru/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/09001548.jpg

 

Visible veins. Discoloration in her lips. A more haggard appearance. She looks "older" than she does normally and doesn't have her normal youthful zeal.

 

All I'm going to say about this post is that Lucas himself has said that he is aware of Palpatine running around doing stuff in the EU, and that in his vision of Star Wars, that did not happen and Palpatine was slain forever at the hands of Anakin Skywalker. Well, that and I think we should keep this particular discussion confined to the other thread so as to avoid having to repeat ourselves.

 

Okay, two other things; everything about that planet was exaggerated, thrown into stark contrast. The metaphorical and the literal crossed frequently. It is an extreme outlier that I don't think makes a good representative example of what we commonly see in the movies and the portions of the EU that remain consistent with the movies.

[Do any players consider the Empire to be the good guys? Spoilers welcome.]

You do realize that Vergere was retconned to be a dark side user who was trying to tempt Jacen right?

 

I'm well aware of what some second-rate editors said in a panel, yes. Their proclamations don't match up with what is actually in the books. Either that, or Yoda was a dark side user who was trying to tempt Luke because they each taught their respective students the exact same stuff.

 

Vergere's accounts aren't that reliable.

 

Accounts of what?

 

As for Darth Bane vs Dooku?

 

Huh? When did Dooku come up? I didn't mention him in relation to any of this.

 

Bane has a better grasp of the dark side because he was a sith lord.

 

Right, and scientists who deny global warming must be right because they're scientists. That's appeal to authority. And I still didn't get that quote from you that backs up what you're saying about Bane's own ideas. For all I know, you're ascribing ideas to Bane that aren't his own, attributing thoughts to him that he never had or voiced.

 

The Sith'ari the one chosen to bring about a new order of the Sith.

 

Huh? Why are we talking about the Sith'ari now? What does this have to do with anything?

 

To destroy them and rebuild them stronger than ever. Darth Bane has a better grasp of the dark side than Windu does.

 

Yeah, you said that already. Forgive me if I'm still skeptical, given that you haven't provided a shred of credible evidence for this claim.

 

You quoted Lucas but didn't read that last sentence, did you? Lucas considers the Sith evil. If the dark side isn't evil why are sith evil?

 

Two things; one, the dark side and the Sith, while closely connected, are not two words for the same thing. Two, I never said the dark side wasn't evil. I said it was natural.

 

Why is it necessary to bring about balance and balance is achieved with the destruction of the Sith? You realize he wasn't saying Palpatine or Vader. The Sith are evil.

 

In the classical sense of the word "evil," yes, I'd absolutely agree with that, Evil with a capital "E," which is why them and balance can't both be a thing at the same time.

 

You're only taking what you want to hear.

 

You sure about that? Because to be sure about that, you'd kind of have to be rooting around inside my mind, and if you can do that...stop dicking around on these forums, go to the James Randi foundation, and we'll split the prize money 50/50. You get half for your psychic abilities, I get half for getting the idea.

 

Also in the books it was said that Sidious was using a Sith Mask. The lightning didn't ruin his face. That was his true self.

 

Yeah. Those kinds of books are also how we got this;

 

Luke: Jaina, you need to assassinate your brother now because I have accumulated too many dark side points.

Ben: Wait, what about redemption?

Luke: (chuckles). Oh Ben, compassion is for those who deserve it. And Jacen is too far gone.

Ben: I thought you were the one that believed he fell because of 'selflessness'. And what about Vader?

Luke: Never mind that now. Jaina, I need you to do this for me. I would do it, but its too risky for me.

Jaina: Sure thing, Uncle. Can I use the new tricks the Mandalorians taught me?

Luke: What are those?

Jaina: Oh, they taught me how to switch on psychopathy for battle and how to shut out feeling for my opponent.

Luke: Oh! Like Jacen going cold inside. Hmm, sounds like the dark side.

Jaina: Thats what I thought. But its the only way I have a chance to survive this. Are you sure you can't do it?

Luke: Yeah, I'm sure. Just make sure you aren't feeling emotions when you assassinate him. Then its all ok.

Ben: Umm, isn't this how Jacen got started?

Luke: No, Ben, Jacen's problem is that he got all philosophical about it thanks to that bird lady. Its fine otherwise.

Vergere's Ghost: Wait, you think I taught what?

Luke: (ignores Vergere). Ben, just be quiet. Sith are evil. We don't need to justify ourselves. Jaina, go kill some Sith.

Jaina: What should I do if he stops fighting?

Luke: Its a trick. Kill him anyway.

Ben: This is karked up.

 

It's a little bit of a spoof, obviously, but that is absolutely the spirit of what happened.

 

This game isn't the only one that has used corruption as appearance. Notice the change of eye color in Anakin? The more you practice the dark side the more it alters your appearance.

 

Yes, I did see that change of the eye color. That's a massive flying Jedi leap to go from "the power of the dark side changed his eye color," to "the books said Palpatine wore something called a 'Sith mask' so it must be true."

 

The more you dig in and delve into it the more it twists your body.

 

Except for when it doesn't.

 

George has stated that the correct philosophy of the force and the correct views of the force is held by the jedi in the prequels.

 

"Correct philosophy..." calling philosophy "correct" is like trying to write on wood pulp before it becomes paper. Philosophy is about how to search. The only way philosophy is "correct" is as a tool for clarity of thought.

 

What was it that they feel about the dark side?

 

Why don't you tell me.

 

As for when Lucas said the order itself has the correct views of the Jedi? It was stated in the Power of the Jedi sourcebook.

 

Unless of course what was written in Power of the Jedi differed from what Lucas understood to be Jedi teaching on the matter.

 

Here's a direct quote that talks about Sidious having his body ravaged by the dark side

 

Doesn't confirm it as the one perfect truth though. Now, if Lucas were to look at that quote and say, "Yes, the Jedi of the prequels believed that," then I think you might be on to something. Even then, if we want to engage Death of the Author, even Lucas has to back up his claims with evidence from the films, since he says he goes by the films and nothing else. In the movies, it looks to me, and I assure it looks this way to everyone else who watches the movies, that the lightning barbecued Palpatine's face off.

 

So many books, novels, and source books state to use Force Lightning you draw on your hate and it is a dark side power.

 

Makes sense to me.

 

The dark side exists.

 

I don't think you have the slightest idea how true this statement actually is.

 

The force does influence people. Their actions.

 

"But it also obeys your commands." The Force influences people who, get this, "let go of their conscious selves and act, on instinct!" When you have a person filled with anger, hate, and all this other crap, what do you think that's going to look like? Incoming Vergere: "If your surrender leads to slaughter, it's not because the Force is dark. It's because you are." When you open up the floodgates, whatever is in will come out, and if nasty is in, nasty will out. If kindness, goodness, happiness, and warm fuzzy puppies are in, then that will out.

 

"Light and dark are no more than nomenclature: words that describe how little we understand. What you call the dark side is the raw, unrestrained Force itself: you call the dark side what you find when you give yourself over wholly to the Force. To be a Jedi is to control your passion…but Jedi control limits your power. Greatness—true greatness of any kind—requires the surrender of control. Passion that is guided, not walled away. Leave your limits behind." - Vergere.

 

"Trust the Force, Luke. Let go, Luke! -Obi Wan Kenobi.

 

Wow. It's almost like...Vergere was laying some Old Republic Jedi wisdom on Jacen Solo. Not very Sith-like now, is it? But I already know what you're going to say. "The first sentence in that quote contradicts what you say about the dark side being real and existing! And it's incorrect!" Both of those statements are false. Vergere isn't saying those phenomena don't exist. Vergere is saying, like any good Taoist, that "the truth is always greater than the words we use to describe it," or, as Jacen puts it in the book, "all answers fall short of the truth." Light and Dark are indeed just our pathetic word-attempt at describing something extremely ethereal and abstract. Light and Dark were chosen for these phenomena because they are the best metaphors we have to describe them. It's about as accurate as we can get. Vergere told Jacen that what he called the dark side is the raw, unrestrained Force because in his case, it was true. If he let it all hang out, it would have been ugly. In fact, it would have turned extremely ugly if Vergere hadn't stopped him from murdering a life-form.

 

The force has always been there guiding people. The force is alive in a sense and is capable of protecting itself (Anakin was created due to the imbalance.) so if the force can influence people and even create it's own guardians why wouldn't the dark side have any influence?

 

See above. It has influence when people who have a great deal of darkness within them, "much anger I sense in you," surrender to that anger. Anakin did exactly that. What you saw at the end of the Revenge of the Sith wasn't Anakin turning into a twisted, warped version of himself. That was just him uncaging the monster, so to speak. Of course he himself realized that the only monster there was him.

 

Yes Anakin chose it. Lucas said himself he was seduced by it. It was a choice. Just like a drug doesn't "Make" you take it. It's your own choice to start.

 

Just try to get a hungry wolf to not eat meat. It's its nature. It comes naturally, like the dark side comes to us.

 

Did you see how Anakin looked when he had his mask removed? The fire didn't touch his face.

 

Watch the scene again. His hair catches fire from the heat and burns the hell out of his face. By the time it's done, it looks like a slightly darker, and I do mean "slightly" darker skin tone than what we got when the mask was removed in RotJ. The wrinkles are even the same.

 

https://youtu.be/_xP3fI7yn5s?t=9m3s

 

He was as pale as Sidious.

 

Yeah, not seeing the sun for 19 years will do that to you.

 

He had pieces missing off his head

 

You can see those pieces burned away in the linked video.

 

(That didn't come from bolts or whatever.) he didn't look healthy.

 

He didn't look great after that bout of fire-bathing either. I mean, he pretty much literally burnt in hell. In case you couldn't tell, that was the metaphor Lucas was going for, that and Palpatine being Death, what with the bone-pale face and black robe.

 

To ignore what the dark side does is to ignore canon.

 

Yeah...canon has kind of been butchered all to hell, waaaay before Disney came along and declared it all BS.

 

I just have to point out Anakin's eye color change to prove the dark side is capable of changing your appearance.

 

Never said it wasn't. I still think it's an epic Force leap to go from there to "everything all these book writers say lines up with whatever was in Lucas' head with Palpatine's face modification."

 

We know there are dark side locations in the lore.

 

"What's in the cave?"

 

"Only what you take with you."

 

The cave was strong in the dark because Luke brought a lot of darkness with him, same reason why Jacen sensed a powerful dark side groundswell on top of the foundation of the Jedi temple, of all places...come on Jacen, how can you be that much of an idiot...

 

Dark Side locations that's very presence can cause Jedi to fall. That can twist the landscape and the creatures on it. Tales of the Jedi has a lot to do with that. The Jedi academy books touch a lot on that.

 

Yes, I'm well aware that a lot of writers in the past largely wrote whatever they wanted without a ton of regard for consistency across their various works. Even if they did actually care about that, maintaining consistency across so many works from so many authors would have meant more time doing research than the actual creation of the content. It's just not feasible.

 

This game touches on that.

 

You also get light side points for feeding some poor suckers lethal poison, because apparently it's only dark side if you go the really cruel route and give them the poison that kills them slowly. I don't think this game should be used as an example when it comes to nailing down the metaphysics of the setting. It's all over the place.

 

Let's look at some wording in Lucas quotes..

 

And then we will get to the 3rd film where he is seduced to the dark side..

Which brings us up to the films 4, 5, and 6, in which Anakin's offspring redeem him and allow him to fulfill the prophecy where he brings balance to the Force by doing away with the Sith and getting rid of evil in the universe..."

 

Evil, mal, harm, damage, sickness. Like manipulating the entire galaxy into a war where billions are killed, and billions more are wounded, displaced, and made destitute. That's the evil that Lucas was referring to, not some dark side rituals. Even if you go by what Luceno wrote in Plagueis (great book btw) the Sith spent a lot of time polluting the galaxy with their special brand of misery and horror before they were able to pull off what they did.

[Darth Nox vs Hero of tython]

log·ic

ˈläjik/Submit

noun

1.

reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity.

 

So what I did here was question your reasoning. Yes that includes evidence. It is still questioning your logic.

 

Principles of validity. Do you know what that means? Do you know what basic critical reasoning is? When the concern of validity comes up in logic, it's a question specifically of whether or not an argument is structurally valid, or structurally invalid. The definition you've provided has nothing to do with evidence. The definition you've provided is all about reason. Evidence and logic are two entirely separate and different things. Evidence is empiricism and induction, logic is rationalism and deduction. Your entire beef with my argument was about the nature and quality of the source I cited, as in the evidence I provided.

 

Yeah, you may have not noticed, but Baras was more powerful than Thanaton.

 

Says you.

 

The Wrath didn't need 4/5 ghosts to combat and defeat him.

 

Wait a sec...you're saying Wrath didn't need a bunch of extra help to kill Baras, therefore Baras is more powerful than Thanaton, who took a whole bunch of extra power to kill? Huh?

 

Having a powerful Sith in your bloodline thousands of years ago won't make Nox anymore powerful than they are shown in game.

 

Baras isn't shown to be any more or less powerful than Thanaton

 

And Force-Walking isn't a measure of power.

 

The hell it isn't. Power, broadly defined, is a resource of some kind. It is the ability to influence, either the environment around you or people, through some sort of means.

 

I think you misunderstand a great deal of things.

 

Well, I don't. But I'm open to listening to a solid argument backed with some evidence.

 

For starters, this assumes that all Jedi have the same capacity and affinity for either side of the Force. They don't

 

What do you mean by this? Explain in detail, and in plain English, what you mean by "affinity for the Force," please.

 

Beings like the ancient Sith were naturally attenuated towards the Dark Side

 

Everyone is naturally attuned to the dark side, because the dark side is natural.

 

They will find it easier to master and use it.

 

Yeah, Yoda covered this in TESB. The dark side is indeed the easier path.

 

A random Jedi will not have so easy a time mastering or handling the corruption the Dark Side brings.

 

What is this corruption you speak of, that you claim the dark side brings?

 

This doesn't even go into the fact that Mortis exists

 

You talking about the prophecy or the place?

 

and that what the Jedi believe has no bearing on the facts presented about the Force.

 

This is true of everyone. What a person "believes" is immaterial next to the reality. That said, if you think the Jedi have some mistaken ideas, I'm all ears as to what you think those mistaken beliefs are, and why you think they're mistakes.

 

Uh, no. But I'll bite. When have you ever seen someone be more powerful than a master of the Light simply because they drew on the Dark Side?

 

Yes. Palpatine in his battle against Yoda. Darth Bane in his battle against...any Jedi he ever fought, including a master.

 

Take DE for example, Luke is clearly less powerful than Sidious the entire time he's drawing on the Dark Side, and he's obviously drawing on the Dark Side given his eye color.

 

DE?

 

Then for some odd reason, when Leia brings him back to the Light, he's able to overpower Palpatine, and she's not amping him, she's specifically stated to only be clearing his mind.

 

I'm slow to trust EU writers' abilities to stay true to what is established in the movies, for what I would think are obvious reasons.

 

All evidence points to the Dark Side being a quicker source of power, not a stronger one.

 

Right, that's why Sidious was able to best Yoda, because he had easier access to power...not because he had access to more power. Look at what happened in the RotS novelization, if we're going to bring books into it. Yoda realized that war itself had become the weapon of the dark side, and even the mere act of fighting was an aid to his enemy's power.

 

No, it was because on a cosmic scale, the Dark Side was becoming more powerful than the Light. More specifically, in the EU at least, Plagueis and Sidious tipped the balance in the Dark Side's favor after months of rituals.

 

According to Lucas it was because of the "evil deeds of the Sith" that the cosmic balance shifted, not because of some series of rituals.

 

No it's not. From the second you leave Korriban, it's always someone telling you about some ritual or another to gain more power. This includes your ancestral relics, Tulak Hord's rituals, a super weapon, four Force Ghosts, plus a bonus fifth, and an army that's just given to you. It's like saying the Wrath's entire storyline isn't you being directed to kill people. That's clearly what it is.

 

Uh huh. Clearly...

 

The only reason you even know about it is because someone else found it first. That's basically the Inquisitor's entire storyline.

 

There's certainly nothing else to that story about overcoming odds through strength of will, rising from the ashes, Faustian deals for power (dark side through and through) no, the entire storyline must clearly be about other people finding stuff and you therefore learning about it. Every heroic journey has something like that. It's called a guide. Luke's guide was Obi-Wan Kenobi. He says hi.

 

In the commentary he's talking in regards to the scene. He's telling the audience how anakin is feeling. What anakin is thinking. What he's experiencing. That's why he gives that commentary. He's not saying what Anakin must do. It's all about in that moment. This is how Anakin feels. That his current powers. The light side. The jedi's teachings. They're not good enough.

 

Okay. If you really think that is what Lucas is saying, show me the quote. Show me the quote, tell me where to find it, so I can judge for myself.

[Darth Nox vs Hero of tython]

He was talking about Anakin's mindset. His thoughts. The way he was thinking. He was giving insight into Anakin's mind. Anakin felt the dark side was stronger. So to him the logical choice if he wasn't strong enough to save Padme and the ones he loved was to go to the dark side.

 

That's not what he actually says though. What he says is the quote I've provided. I mean, unless you'd like to point me to an actual quote that backs up what you're saying, and tell me where to find it.

[Darth Nox vs Hero of tython]

Some problems with this logic. You're assuming the HoT and NoX have the same capacity to use the Force to make this statement even remotely relevant, and that's a pretty big assumption since Nox is the only one in the entire game that needs to augment themselves to compete.

 

I think you mean there's some problems with my "evidence." Not my logic. Only thing that matters in logic is whether or not the argument is structurally valid and free of reasoning errors. What you're questioning in this post is my source, not my application of reasoning.

 

To compete with Thanaton, a fully-trained dark lord of the Sith who had been amassing personal strength for decades. Nox starts off as an apprentice and rather rapidly catches up. Nox has a powerful sith lord in the ancestral line, and masters a technique that many others have died trying to learn.

 

I don't know where the source for the Dark being stronger than the Light is coming from,

 

You don't? It's coming from the mouth of George Lucas himself.

 

and yes I've listened the commentary before,

 

Well, that's where you'll find it. Check out the scene with Shmi's funeral on Tatooine and turn on the commentary by George Lucas. Here's the quote; "...to become the most powerful Jedi, and the only way you can really do that is to go to the Dark side because the Dark side is more powerful. If you want the ultimate power you really have to go to the stronger side, which is the Dark side..."

 

but given TCW's take on it, which is a lot more recent than 2002, these Forces are supposed to be in balance.

 

I think you're misunderstanding. The Jedi believe that the right and proper state of the Force is balance, not drowning in darkness. Given what the dark side is, and what balance means, I agree with them. But in terms of power available to the individual through the use of the Force, the dark side in that area is absolutely stronger. A Jedi who draws on the dark side is going to find they possess greater power when compared to a Jedi of more-or-less equal ability who doesn't draw on the dark side.

 

The Dark Side may allow one to gain more power quickly, but on a cosmic level any one side shifting too much is kind of not supposed to happen.

 

It allows one to gain more power, period, but at a cost. I wasn't talking about the cosmic scale. I was talking about the power of the dark side, not the state of cosmic balance between the dark and the light. The dark side could be chased to the far edge of the galaxy by light and a Jedi could still find more power drawing on the dark than the light.

 

Hence the entire Original Saga.

 

The original saga happened because, in the cosmic scale, the dark side almost completely enveloped the Force.

 

No, the same thing that happens to the Inquisitor is what happened to everyone else. The difference is instead of dying, Nox made it to the Mother Machine. The only reason you even know about it is because someone else found it first. That's basically the Inquisitor's entire storyline.

 

That's...a bit of an exaggeration.

[Do any players consider the Empire to be the good guys? Spoilers welcome.]

No, the dark side does twist you and changes who you are as a person.

 

I'll take this as your primary claim. I'm expecting any evidence you provide to actually support and/or relate directly to this claim.

 

Yes love made him fall but we're not talking about why people fall.

 

He might have fallen "because" of love, but love didn't "make" him do anything, falling included.

 

We're talking about what happens once they do.

 

I'm talking about what "falling to the dark side" is, and for that matter, what the "dark side" is.

 

It's more than just holding a gun and in both star wars and the EU we see a complete change in someone once it happens.

 

Do we really? According to Stover, who consulted with Lucas when writing the Revenge of the Sith novelization, Anakin wasn't tempted by the dark side. "The dark side isn't tempting Anakin, to anything. Anakin is looking at the dark side and saying, "that's what I want." Anakin was always afraid of losing people. He was always greedy. After he fully pledged himself to Palpatine, he still had all this anger and all this lust for power, all this fear of losing people, and all this greed. Yes, Anakin definitely "grew" as a person in that his identity evolved, I'll concede that, but this is really a chicken-and-the-egg issue. He didn't change because he fell to the dark side. He fell to the dark side because he changed, and the change wasn't "too" major. It simply consisted of a change of mind, a change of perspective. All Sidious did was convince Anakin to adopt a different perspective, a perspective that he turned out agreeing with. Falling to the dark side doesn't mean you suddenly start acting like a twisted, warped version of yourself. The dark side doesn't alter a person's identity or personality.

 

Look at the two quote lines in my sig; one is from the EU, the other is Yoda and Luke talking. Here both Yoda and Vergere are making the argument the the dark side, the dark side itself, is an internal thing, not some external Force, and this seems to line up with what Lucas himself has said in the past. This lines up with what Lucas himself has said about the Living Force vs. the Greater/Cosmic Force, often called the Unifying Force in the EU.

 

We see the effect the dark side has on the mind and body. George Lucas has outright called the Dark Side evil.

 

Where did George Lucas say the dark side was evil? Even if he did (which I doubt) then he could just as easily mean the more classical definition of evil, as in malicious, destructive, dangerous. He was a devout student of Joseph Campbell, and that was how Campbell used the word. Lucas was quite clear that moral judgments had little place in his vision in the Star Wars saga. Good and evil were less moral concepts and more...well, forces.

 

"The Force breaks into two sides: the living Force and a greater, cosmic Force. The living Force makes you sensitive to other living things, makes you intuitive, and allows you to read other people's minds, et cetera. But the greater Force has to do with destiny. In working with the Force, you can find your destiny and you can choose to either follow it, or not."

 

-Lucas.

 

Unless he believes evil to be a natural state I doubt it. Windu's interpretations are based on his opinions on the matter and in character opinions are not infallible.

 

No, they're not infallible, but they do line up with what others have said about the Force, and what we know about the dark side. In order to understand all of this, you need to understand what the dark side is. The dark side is the force and power of death, the concept of entropy qualified.

 

We know the dark side can make people rot. Sidious was described as smelling like rotten flesh.

 

Bodies rot naturally of their own accord. That's just something they do. No, actually, it's not even something they "do." It's something that just happens to them. That aside, what character in what text described Sidious this way, and do we know that that wasn't simply because it had been a long time since Sidious showered?

 

We know it makes people turn grey. We know it distorts their appearance.

 

In this game, maybe. In books of questionable internal consistency and quality of writing, maybe. In the movies, Palpatine was altered physically because of the lightning.

 

There's a reason why we visually see them become monsters.

 

Yes, bad things happen to them which deform their bodies. We don't have any evidence from the movies, or from Lucas' quotes, that the dark side does something like that to a person.

 

If we're going to use Windu's quotes what about Obi-Wan's describing the dark side making anakin twisted and evil?

 

Actually, he accused Sidious of "twisting [his] mind until he had become the very thing he sought to destroy."

 

How about Yoda's thoughts? We know in universe what effect it has on the body/mind and it's clarified in the bane novel. Bane discusses it in detail and he's a good source because he IS a Sith and a practitioner of the dark side.

 

Think hard back to the text; what does Darth Bane actually say? What's the quote?

 

On that note, if we're going to consider Darth Bane as a true expert on the dark side by the end of Path of Destruction, then Mace Windu should know everything there is to know about the Force, because at that point, he has been a Jedi far longer than Bane has been a Sith, and has had access to a much larger body of knowledge for a much longer portion of time.

 

Anakin DID become psychopathic when he fell to the dark side. It was a psychopathic drop. He knows Padme loves the republic, what it stands for, and her beliefs. This didn't stop him from murdering children, adults, etc.

 

He never gave a **** about her. He cared about how she made him feel. And think about how he acted up until that final, fateful moment when he choked her out. "Ask him to stop the fighting and let diplomacy resume!" "No! Don't ask me to do that! Make a motion in the senate where that kind of a request belongs!" The dark side doesn't make people crazy. If there was anything that made Anakin crazy, it was Palpatine's arguments.

 

Everything he did he claimed was for Padme. Yet when she told him she couldn't follow him down that path he began choking her. He claimed it was Obi Wan's fault and denied completely it was his own doing. He was incapable of seeing reason which is quite similar to someone suffering a psychotic break.

 

I don't think he was actually suffering a psychotic break, and I'm reluctant to attach that label to people without first getting a deep-level understanding of how they reason because people do in fact have different points of view. What seems rational to one person might not appear rational to another. People often have their own kind of internal consistency that they don't generally violate. In the words of Stover, the man who authored the RotS novelization while consulting with Lucas on it, "There's love that's about you, and then there's love that's about how I feel about you, and it's this crucial distinction Anakin fails to recognize in time." -Stover.

 

Lucas has stated that when Vader met luke that he was struggling with himself and "Trying to free himself of the dark side's influence" notice that word, "influence" he spoke of it as if it had some hold over his thoughts and actions.

 

Please provide the quote for this, and the source. I'm pretty sure the influence he was trying to free himself from was Palpatine's influence.

 

Which it does. Lucas has described the dark side as a cancer.

 

Actually, what he said in his interview with Bill Moyers was "But there could never be any more than two of them, because if there were, they would try to get rid of the leader, which is exactly what Vader was trying to do, and that's exactly what the Emperor was trying to do. The Emperor was trying to get rid of Vader, and Vader was trying to get rid of the Emperor. And that is the antithesis of a symbiotic relationship, in which if you do that, you become cancer, and you eventually kill the host, and everything dies." - Lucas.

 

There is no where in the history of Lucas quotes where he calls the dark side a cancer, and that doesn't jive with what Yoda said about death being a natural part of life.

 

This doesn't mean the dark side itself is unnatural. While order is part of nature so is chaos. While life is part of nature so is death.

 

Okay...so what is...

 

George Lucas has outright called the Dark Side evil. Unless he believes evil to be a natural state I doubt it.

 

...that about then? Either the dark side is natural or it isn't.

 

We know when people start on the dark side they desire more. More. More. More. More.

 

I think it's more accurate to say they start on the dark path because they desire more.

 

A sith can never have enough. Neither can a fallen jedi. In a way Windu isn't entirely wrong. It is primal. It is a very primal instinct to ensure that you are the dominant Alpha. To be so dominant that no one can be a threat to you or the things that belong to you. Look at wolves. An Alpha will lord himself over the pack and ensure no packmate threatens his rule. An Alpha Wolf will take a chunk of territory and viciously protect it from intruders or those that wish to take it from him and if his pack is big enough or strong enough he will then expand that territory. It's natural but it doesn't change that the dark side compels people to act this way.

 

Yes, that's exactly what happened with Kar Vastor. That's exactly what Palpatine described when he described a Sith desiring to hold on to their power. That's exactly what Joseph Campbell described when he talked about the tyrant Holdfast as a preserver of the impressive configuration and a keeper of stasis. Sounds to me like Mace nailed it. Sounds to me like Mace wasn't only "not entirely wrong," he got it 100% right.

 

There's a reason only a handful of Jedi in the history of the entire order has managed to pull themselves away from the dark side.

 

Actually, in order to become a fully-fledged knight, each Padawan must undergo several significant trials; two of these trials are the trial of the flesh, and the trial of the spirit. Both of these are incredibly dangerous trials because they are designed to bring the Padawans face-to-face with their own inner darkness, just the like cave on Dagobah brought Luke face-to-face with his own inner darkness. "What's in [the cave?] "Only what you take with you." Well, he found the visual personification of evil in the cave, and then he found out he was the proud owner of that evil. Every single Jedi knight is someone who came face-to-face with the dark side and did exactly that, pull away from it, and there are a lot more Jedi in the history of the setting than there are fallen Jedi.

 

It's written to be hard to do.

 

There's a wonderful sequence between Yoda and Dooku in Dark Rendezvous. Yoda challenges Dooku to try to turn him to the dark side. Dooku tells him the dark side will give him the power to fulfill all of his personal desires. Yoda holds out a rose and says, "Good. I want this." There is no difficulty in resisting the dark side when it isn't what you want. Anakin, according to the author who consulted with Lucas, the same Lucas who told him to "not change the sense of the scene," said that Anakin wanted the dark side. He chose the dark side, because it was his desire to do so. He was simply following his own nature, his own greedy, cruel, selfish nature bred into us due to natural selection, no different than the rest of us.

 

Nearly impossible. Most Jedi don't even think it is possible because that's how tough it is. If it's so easy. Just as a switch? Look at most people. They kill someone, feel guilty, and many people will turn themselves in if it's a crime of passion maybe even kill themselves. In force sensitives this is rare. They may feel guilty at first but then they do it again.. again.. again.. and begin enjoying it.

 

"If you kill for fun, you're a psychopath. If you kill for profit, you're a hitman. If you kill for fun and profit, you're a US Army Ranger." -Actual US Army Ranger that I'm not going to name. Point of that is that there are plenty of people in the real world who kill and don't feel guilty about it at all, and we don't even call all of them psychopaths because we think sometimes their circumstances make their behavior reasonable. Ultimately, it comes down to really thin and simple disagreement.

 

Taking a look at Anakin...he didn't seem to happy about his own outbursts. He was sooo, so angry at his own actions in regard to the Sand People. "I know I'm better than this." Aka, "I just lost control," aka, "I don't want to admit that I'm the kind of person who could do something like this." All three of those quotes were Star Wars characters. The first was Anakin, the second was Vergere mocking people who say stupid things like "I just lost control," as though that somehow makes it better that they have it in them to be a killer. He was clearly tormented by his own deeds concerning his murder of Mace Windu. Let's look at an excerpt from the novel:

 

"Padme? Are you here? Are you all right?"

I'm very sorry, Lord Vader. I'm afraid she died. It seems in your

anger, you killed her.

This burns hotter than the lava had.

"No... no, it is not possible!"

You loved her. You will always love her. You could never will her

death.

Never.

But you remember...

You remember all of it.

You remember the dragon that you brought Vader forth from

your heart to slay. You remember the cold venom in Vader's blood.

You remember the furnace of Vader's fury, and the black hatred of

seizing her throat to silence her lying mouth—

And there is one blazing moment in which you finally understand

that there was no dragon. That there was no Vader. That

there was only you. Only Anakin Skywalker.

That it was all you. Is you.

Only you.

You did it.

You killed her.

You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her,

when you could have gone away with her, when you could have

been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself...

It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap

of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith—

Because now your self is all you will ever have."

 

See how there is no dragon, and there is no Vader, and it's all Anakin? How he did this? Anakin chose the dark side because it was what he wanted. You can speculate about "why" he wanted it all you like, but the best explanation out there is because we're instinctively predisposed to want it, we all are, because the dark side is natural, which is why it comes easy to us.

 

"I thought the danger of the dark side was that it was easy, that it comes naturally?" - Vergere.

 

The dark side is there to compel them to commit greater acts of atrocity in the name of power.

 

The dark side doesn't compel people to do anything. No one needs the dark side to desire power bad enough to hurt innocent people to get it. We get plenty of that in the real world. The dark side of the Force just lets them bend the laws of physics with their hatred. All it does is give them more power than they would otherwise have.

 

"GL on Balance

 

"The first film starts with the last age of the Republic, which is it's getting tired, it's old, it's getting corrupt.

 

There's the rise of the Sith, who are becoming a force, and in the backdrop of this we have Anakin Skywalker, a young boy who is destined to be a significant player in bringing balance back to the Force and to the Republic...

 

Then in the second film we get into more of that turmoil. It's the beginning of the Clone Wars, it's the beginning of the end of democracy in the Republic, sort of the beginning of the end of the Republic. And it's Anakin Skywalker beginning to deal with some of his more intense emotions of anger, hatred, sense of loss, possessiveness, jealousy, and the other things he has to cope with.

 

And then we will get to the 3rd film where he is seduced to the dark side..

 

Which brings us up to the films 4, 5, and 6, in which Anakin's offspring redeem him and allow him to fulfill the prophecy where he brings balance to the Force by doing away with the Sith and getting rid of evil in the universe..."

 

The dark side is more than just feeling or acting in anger, jealousy, hatred, etc. It goes beyond just that.

 

You won't get any argument from me on this point. This is never something I disagreed with.

 

Note the difference there. "He has to cope with his anger, jealousy, sense of loss, possessiveness, hatred" he had all of these. This did not make him dark side.

 

I believe I said as much earlier.

 

He wasn't of the dark side feeling these things or doing them. They lead to the dark side but you can feel these things without being dark sided.

 

Think about what I've been saying the whole time. I only disagree with part of this, and the part I disagree with might surprise you.

 

They lead to the dark side...

 

They can, but they often don't. Plenty of people, Jedi included, feel these things all the time and for whatever reason, never "struggle" with the dark side. Yes, they have the advantage of training and so aren't instinctively predisposed toward choosing the dark path, but they still feel them. The only thing that matters is what you actually do. Your feelings, your desires, when it comes to whether or not someone embraces the dark side, the only thing that matters is the actions of the person taken. As Vergere said, "choose, then act." Anakin chose the dark side, and he acted. That was "why" he fell, because it was his choice, and it's almost a tautology even saying that, because "falling to the dark side" is simply choosing the dark path, and a person's motivations for doing so matter not a whit. Anakin chose death, he chose evil as defined classically, not morally, over the light.

 

He then claimed in episode 3 he got "seduced by the dark side." there's a distinction.

 

A woman can't seduce a man who doesn't have some desire for a woman, and the dark side can't seduce someone who doesn't have some desire for the dark side. Normal, untrained people have a natural desire for the dark side. It's the most natural thing in the world. That's why it's so easy, compelling, and seductive. It's easy because it comes "naturally" to us because it is our nature, our instinct. It's called the fight/flight/freeze/fornicate response. Fear, anger, passion, these are "dark" things. That doesn't mean they're unnatural, or even all that unhealthy. Indeed, as I just got done explaining, those things are actually perfectly natural, and also perfectly dark. Therein lies the problem. You need training of a certain variety so complete and at a specific stage in your life that it replaces those instincts and desires.

 

The sorts of things we've been discussing in this thread.

 

I haven't been talking about anything but Star Wars and the Force, only briefly touching on Buddhism when you brought it up.

 

The films don't really go beyond good vs. evil in the way that a lot of other material does.

 

That's true but probably not for the reason you think. The films don't deal with "good and evil" as moral entities. Those words as they're used in the films fall under their classical definitions instead of their more modern definitions. Example: while Vader commited an act of great evil against Palpatine when he threw him off that edge, it was an act of great good for the rest of the galaxy.

 

The nature of the Force and all that. If you haven't read them already, the new canon novels - 'Dark Disciple' and 'Lords of the Sith' touch on some of these topics.

 

Wait a sec...you're saying the films don't accurately portray an invention of the films?

 

As for these other novels, unless Stover, Luceno, Karpyshyn, or Zahn (in that order) is writing them, I'm not touching them.

 

Good stuff, btw. You've made me think. I disagree with some of your points, but I have to let the debate rest now and get some work done

 

Unless you'd rather drop the subject (which I'm totally okay with) I'm interested to know what specifically you disagree with, and why, and what specifically about my arguments failed to convince you of a given point.

[Darth Nox vs Hero of tython]

If you've been following up on KOTFE

 

 

Vitiate is Valkorion.

 

Holy ****!!!!!!

 

Well...okay then. That synches that.

[Do any players consider the Empire to be the good guys? Spoilers welcome.]

Double-post, needs deleting.

[Do any players consider the Empire to be the good guys? Spoilers welcome.]

Just what I meant. If I was Sith and someone started with all that "You can be redeemed" stuff, I would be like. "Pleeeease just kill me already and be done with it":D

 

Consider this; you own a car. Your car has no functioning brakes. You drive this car with no intention or desire to repair said brakes, because you get a cheap thrill from driving a car with no functioning brakes, and the faster the better. Obviously, this is incredibly hazardous to not only your personal well-being, but the well-being of those around you. If anyone who gave a damn about you knew about what you were doing, they'd beg you to get your brakes fixed so you didn't inadvertently kill yourself or someone else. You're the Sith. Your friend who is trying to save your life is the Jedi. Your car is the Force. Your lack of functioning brakes is the dark side. The light side is getting your brakes fixed.

 

That is case of capturing one, not if entire nation surrenders to you. You can imprison one force sensitive. How about tens of thousands?

 

Depends; are they actually surrendering, or are they being deceptive little nerf-herders? In the case of the former, wall of light cuts them off from the Force so they're no longer a threat, and can be kept with the normal prison population, problem solved. If they're being deceptive little nerf-herders and I realize this before they can make their move, I'm not showing any mercy, and it's perfectly within the Jedi code to behave so.

 

I meant it that you already have knowledge how to use Force,

 

You have Jedi instincts when it comes to the Force, which are literally diametrically opposed to Sith instincts. To actually go from being a good Jedi to a good Sith, you'd have to unlearn and unwind a lot of the crap they would have taught you as a Jedi initiate.

This is actually a problem that Darth Bane had in Path of Destruction, a problem that almost caused him to reject the dark and go full-blown light, because he couldn't reconcile the lack of restraint with gaining power. Ultimately, he just had to realize the solution was in fact to cast off all restraint, to surrender, to let go.

how to use lightsaber,

 

Some of the techniques will translate, yes, but a lot of Sith techniques are the boiled-down essentials of what the Jedi teach. The Jedi teach, for the most part, 7 lightsaber styles. The Sith Order only teaches 3, and if you didn't happen to be focusing on one of those three as a Jedi, you're going to be behind the saber-curve when you show up on Korriban. God save you if you decided to practice Makashi instead of Djem So, or Ataru instead of Soresu, because you wouldn't have been able to find a Sith who could help you advance any further in your chosen style, and you'd be starting over from square one.

 

maybe even have one and just have to switch crystals, not that you go to Korriban and try engaging your overseer in philosophical debate:D

 

I wouldn't engage an "overseer" in any kind of discussion unless I had an audience and reasonable confidence that I could win some of them over with my arguments, aka, "pulling a Revan." I'd pretty much do what I said initially; cause as much havoc as I could, in as many places as I could, and use said havoc as cover for my escape, taking any initiates who wanted to escape with me.

 

Mhh, too bad. The guilt thing would have been so much stronger, I think. But I guess I should temper my expectations, it's Star Wars after all.

 

Stronger? Maybe. Probably. Hell, I can't really disagree with that. I do think that it's true-to-life though, if not necessarily "realistic."

 

The dark side twists you, corrupts you, and changes you from who you are.

 

It's been described like a drug. As you give into it the dark side requires more heinous and brutal acts for you to get the same rush which leads one to doing worse things. The Jedi Code is not compatible with normal people or their way of life but it is compatible with force sensitives. Force Sensitives have been described as having more wild emotions.

 

Master Orgus has good words on the subject.

 

"A Jedi given in to passion becomes a terrible thing.." In real life if someone becomes hurt. They may cry. They may scream. They may threaten to kill someone. A Jedi that gives in to passion becomes a monster. For those that doubt remember.. the dark side ravages your body and mind.

 

I honestly read Orgus' words as semi-contradictory to your first statement, instead of as support of it. The reason a Jedi given to passion is a terrible thing, is because of the unbridled power they throw around when hurting people. Instead of someone pissed off guy with a gun and lots of ammo, it's a pissed off guy who can end worlds by farting. The main difference is their power over the laws of physics. A lot of major authors for the series, including Lucas himself, as well as several knowledgeable characters like Mace Windu, have described the dark side not as corrupting or addictive, but natural, and therefore easy.

 

That was Mace's biggest beef with the dark side in Shatterpoint. If you think about Anakin and his fall, nothing about that required any supernatural force to compel him to evil, and he wasn't driven by a psychotropic reaction either. In the words of the author of the novelization, he fell because of love that was about the way he felt about someone else, instead of love that was about someone else. Lucas simply said, "He can't let go of his girlfriend." Yoda called him out as being greedy. Obi-Wan called him out on his lust for power.

 

I kind of cover this in some other posts in this thread, if you want to get my thoughts on this subject in detail.

[Darth Nox vs Hero of tython]

Sith Warrior story ending. The mail directly states that the Jedi Council believes the Emperor to be defeated but it was only the voice.

 

I remember the email...are we sure that the sender of the email is telling the truth though?

I mean, everything about that encounter with Vitiate led me to believe it was Vitiate. The Voice, if that's who it was, was taking some extreme liberties with Vitiate's authority and identity, and when he died, well, there were effects from that the like of which I've only seen when Palpatine was killed in RotJ. I mean, we even know that Vitiate's spirit is floating around disembodied after that. How did that happen if not his bodily death? Even Darth Marr brings up the holo of Saresh and says that the Republic has finally uncovered a truth which we might have long suspected...or something to that effect. Is Marr just misinformed/lying? Or is the author of that email misinformed/lying? I mean, we know for a fact the emperor is in fact dead. Is it something else that killed him? Because he has definitely achieved poltergeist status by Shadows of Revan.

Also the Jedi Knight is just as powerful as Nox. No idea why people think the Jedi Knight isn't. The Jedi Knight focuses their force mastery and power into strengthening themselves and their body. This doesn't make them weaker than someone who uses outward displays of power. It's like Windu. Windu is not weak with the force as he's very powerful and his only rival by the end of the clone wars is Yoda/Sidious which is confirmed by George Lucas himself.

 

Also confirmed by Lucas in the AotC dvd commentary is that the dark side of the Force is in fact stronger than the light, and that is one of the primary reasons why I think Nox is stronger. I'm perfectly aware that a Jedi's strength flows from the Force, whether they're saber-swingers or object-chuckers, but the same is true for the Sith, and the dark side will straight-up give them more power, as per Lucas and observable content.

 

For the whole "The Jedi Knight has to get in close.." Nope. Force Exauhstion which is essentially the Knight's version of force crush, heavy telekinetic power (such as when you use the dark side option and you drop a stalagmite on the voice), and he can release blasts of light energy (similar to the warrior who can release blasts of dark energy). To explain why this is such a big deal one of Exar Kun's most fearsome powers is the ability to channel dark side blasts as devastating attacks. Except Exar Kun used a gauntlet to achieve this both the warrior and knight can do this without such tools.

 

I don't see why people think closing with Nox would be such a challenge. Jedi guardians...excuse me, "knights," are trained specialists in doing exactly that. They can leap across vast distances in an eye-blink and run fast enough to be barely trackable by the human eye. We see examples of this in the actual movies.

 

You're told throughout the story as the Jedi Knight and Warrior that you're the strongest Jedi/Sith in generations. So many people awe at your magnificent power. To think the Knight and Warrior isn't "powerful" is folly. The inquisitor started OUT weak. The power of the ghosts give him the power to take on the strongest sith/jedi. Essentially the warrior and knight already had such power. Nox has a unique ability that gives him the means to catch up to anyone. So his potential is just as limited as the classes mentioned.

 

Well, Nox started out with potential. Definitely average in current ability, but with a lot of room for upward growth. The Sith Warrior and the Jedi Knight are their factions' respective champions of ultimate destiny. One pretty much functions as Anakin did when he was dark, and the other pretty much functions as Anakin was meant to assuming he didn't turn to the dark side.

 

It's the classic prodigy vs hard work debate. The Knight/Warrior were simply blessed with power. They were born powerful with great destinies and the means to excel. Nox on the other hand learned a power to eat ghosts in order to make him stronger. Oh, but then his body couldn't contain it. So he went and sought out a way to make his body stronger so he could. Then his mind wasn't strong enough. So he did that as well. Nox is a story about survival and how his tenacious ability to not give up when outmatched gives him the capabilities to do anything.

 

Pretty cool right? And I see so much hate for the SI story all the time...I thought it was pretty good, except for the last portion of the third chapter.

[Can I still help Vette if I leave her collar on?]

I whole heartily disagree with keeping the collar on mostly because i play only Light Side characters.

 

That being said, i do agree that is kinda silly for there to be no option to progress her story with keeping the collar on her. Dont know any other companions that do that.

 

But, from what i can gather - and also injecting my own opinion on this - leaving the collar on is effectively stating to her that you intend to keep shocking her. Regardless whether you would in your entire character's life. That does not sound like someone she would WANT to willing help. In the end, it becomes your choice. Either you do the right thing and remove the collar, or you suffer not being able to progress her story.

 

And to be quite frank, if you are Dark... WHY do you even care about not being able to progress her story? You are Dark - effectively evil. You cant be both evil and remove her collar.

 

I would like to be able to progress her story by completely breaking her spirit on my will. I'm talking twist her mind up so horribly that she either starts seeing the abuse as something to look forward to, or just make the abuse progressively worse until she overcomes the increasing pain just like she did the shock collar, then all at the end I can tell her I made her suffer for her own good, and that she is stronger for it, as evidenced by her ability to completely ignore even the most brutal suffering, and have her agree with me, thank me for "training" her, and then agree to willingly serve me for my "kindness" and have her ultimately decide to continue wearing the collar as a symbol of fealty. Because Vette's "default setting," is happy, cheery, and bright, the dark version of her story needs to go just as far, only in the other direction.

 

Of course, this game isn't rated M so we can't go there, ergo we can't "really" go full-on Dark Lord of the Sith World-Swalllowing Holdfast Tyrant.

[(Spoilers) How did lord Paladius]

That's why I was confused.

 

Sounds like one more case of writers not willing to do some research to maintain consistency.

[(Spoilers) How did lord Paladius]

Cutting someone off from the Force is a light side thing. A darksider isn't even supposed to be able to do it. It's known as "wall of light" for a reason.

[Do any players consider the Empire to be the good guys? Spoilers welcome.]

I believe you are wrong. They would most likely killed them, same as Sith would kill Jedi. Only difference would be, that Sith would just say "You lost, deal with it", before killing them, while Jedi would probably have endless speeches about some greater good noble nonsense,

 

Unlikely. Jedi aren't creatures of morals. It is highly likely that the Jedi would try and turn them from the path of destruction they're on though.

 

and then would kill them (if they won´t die from being bored to death by those speeches.)

 

The Jedi have a history of actually not killing their prisoners. Nomi Sunrider didn't kill Ulic Qel Droma, Bastila Shan and her team didn't kill Revan, and Anakin freely acknowledged that killing prisoners is "not the Jedi way."

 

I would say there are more Jedi-turned-Sith, than other way around:D In fact, being trained as Jedi and then go to Korriban academy is by far best tactics.

 

Jedi training is the last thing you want to have if you plan on studying to become a Sith. That's like trying to boil your water by putting it in the freezer. I also have my doubts about the number of Sith who have seen the light vs. Jedi who walk in the dark. A lot of the turned Sith pop up in the Sith character stories and are more subtle about their...conversions, than Jedi who turn dark.

 

You got advantage over opponents and know how to fight and all that.

 

You know what, this gives me an idea...pick a fight with a Sith, pretend to lose (They'd buy that deception easy because all of those Sith are totally convinced of their own power and superiority. Their overconfidence is their weakness, after all.) Pretend to convert to the dark side whereupon they will take me to Korriban to train, start to prove myself...then wreck their setup hard. Nuke their libraries, destroy their weapon and supply caches, and show as many of their potential "students" as possible a more excellent way, ideally rescuing some of them in the escape. We can even make a mission out of it and call it "Rescue on Korriban."

 

Hey, Bioware, if you've got a writing position open...

[Havoc Squad Commanding Officer vs. Cipher 9]

Incredibly hard to call for me. This would be one hell of an asymmetrical war and for that reason alone I'm actually really interested in this.

 

If Cipher 9 screws up and gets cornered, caught, or pinned down, it's game over for the imps. On the other hand, Havoc Squad may never see Cipher 9 coming. Cipher 9 is an unholy fusion of Jason Bourne and 007 with imperial technology and resources. The Havoc Squad Commander is a poor man's Masterchief, and that alone is absolutely horrifying. Havoc's leader is one of those game-changing battlefield pieces, the kind of unit that you have to plan your entire strat around if you want to have a hope in hell of winning. Cipher 9 on the other hand is basically Clyde from Law Abiding Citizen, an expert at unconventional warfare.

[Lore-wise Who Is The Most Powerful Character In-Game?]

Darth Nox imo.

 

I think the Sith Warrior is a contender for that spot. I'm not quite ready to call it done, but I do think that it is down to those two. If my arm was twisted right now, I'd lean more toward Wrath, but not by a ton.

[Darth Nox vs Hero of tython]

I don't think the Knight could defeat Nox. If we ignore the obvious plot armor that the Hero of Tython would have, then Nox is just to much of a power house.

 

Also the Knight didn't defeat the Emperor...he defeated the voice of the Emperor two very very different things.

 

Keep in mind, most powerful doesn't always win.

 

I was under the impression that

the person you kill at the end of the JK class story was in fact the actual emperor. I just thought his spirit survived to spread further mischief, much like EU Sidious.

Is that inaccurate? And if it is, can you provide me with a general idea of where to look in the content that confirms it's the Voice?

[Darth Nox vs Hero of tython]

In a way you're saying Nox is more powerful but the Hero of Tython would win a direct confrontation because they're destined to do so. I kinda like that.

 

Could we put that statement in neon and frame it in platinum so that it can be shown whenever these power discussions pop up?

 

lol, sure.

 

One thing I always like to point out in these vs. threads is that it's not always the most powerful who wins. Sometimes it's the meaner, nastier, or sneakier person who wins. That one guy who is 90 lbs. soaking wet and mewling whenever you mock him might also be the guy who plants a bomb in your car or something. (Please no one interpret that as a threat, it was meant as an example of how a weak, untrained person might triumph over a stronger, more capable combatant.) A good Star Wars example of this is actually in Shatterpoint.

 

 

When Mace Windu confronts the main villain in round 2 near the end of the book, he acknowledges his previous loss, the villain asks Mace what he plans on doing since he lost before, Mace basically says, "I'm not going to fight you. I'd lose that fight, every time. Instead, I'm just going to murder you. Then he basically force pulls a sharp metal object from behind into the guy's head. It's actually one of the coolest moments in the expanded universe when you're actually reading it.

 

[Do any players consider the Empire to be the good guys? Spoilers welcome.]

??Then what, in your opinion, was his drive?

 

His drive? You're asking me about his reasons for what he did, his motivation? Easy. He was motivated by greed. But motivated and compelled are two entirely different things. He was entirely free to ignore his greed and choose another path.

 

We're all driven by emotions, at one level or another. Without their drive you'd be unable to do anything.

 

The whole guilt thing is so obvious?

 

It's obvious that he felt guilt, but no where in the novel or the movie do we see guilt as his primary motivation for action...if we care enough to discuss Anakin's motivations. He was rightly identified as being greedy, lusting for power.

 

??

 

See above. That's my more detailed explanation.

 

You don't 'change out' nature, you can only condition, or be conditioned, to act in a specific way, but you're not changing 'one's very nature'.

 

Not only does Mace Windu disagree with you, but so do a great deal of modern self-defense instructors who recommend and provide training so deep and intensive that it lessens the impact of the fight/flight response, and it works. Imagine that training from an early, incredibly young age when you're still forming schemas relating to the world. You'd have a completely different set of instincts than a normal, natural member of your species.

 

Who said anything about being brainwashed?

 

Brainwashing is part and parcel with the misconception that people choose the dark side due to mind control, or being simply overwhelmed by one's own emotions. They all take the agency of the individual out of the equation, when the entire saga is about nothing but that.

 

It wasn't just his selfish attachment to Padme, it was also, and more importantly, imo, the prospect of letting her die and thus failing to save her like he failed to save his mother and the guilt associated with that failing.

 

"I lost my mother. I won't lose you too." "You turned her against me! You will not take her from me!" Does that sound like someone who is moved overmuch by guilt? Listen to what his focus is on. It's all about how he's losing stuff. Never is he once remotely concerned with what his mother wanted, or what Padme wanted. I agree with Obi-Wan, Yoda, George Lucas, and the author of the RotS novelization when they say that Anakin fell because he couldn't get over his own greed.

 

His guilt dates back to the time he left his mother behind on Tatooine. It was forgotten, then resurfaced when she was killed by the sand people. Everything he did after that only added to it.

 

That wasn't guilt. That was Anakin declaring that he "just lost control," because he doesn't want to admit that he isn't the kind of person that would do that. It's how a lot of people in the real world rationalize their own behavior that they would, under any other circumstances when their emotions aren't running hot, would disagree with. "I'm a Jedi. I know I'm better than this." See? He knows he's better than that. He knows he's not the kind of person that would do something like this.

 

My guess is they write for a living and don't have enough time to research properly. Perhaps it would be better if the IP owners scrapped the gospel aspects of their Canon and limited consistency and continuity to the crucial aspects of the SW universe.

 

The Force is far and away the most crucial, essential aspect of the SW universe as far as continuity is concerned. The entire saga is built on the foundation of the mythos of the Force. Without it, there is no Star Wars.

[Darth Nox vs Hero of tython]

Isn't one of the Knight's abilities, the ability to deflect all range attacks for three seconds? I could swear that was an ability on my Warrior I just finished Ziost with.

 

Probably? I haven't played the game in quite a while, and only recently re-subbed in preparation for the coming expansion. Huh...I say the rest of that as though it isn't obvious...

 

I do know that when you pop one particular CD for the jugg/guard they get damage reduction, and it's a saber-defense-ish ability.

 

The Inquisitor PC is said to attract the ghosts of the death, that certainly has the ring of prophecy and destiny about it. They also know intuitively(/) how to join these ghosts with the Force - something the Jedi on Taris were quite unable to do.

 

They each have there unique talents.

 

This is true to a point, but the knight is the only one with a true galaxy-changing destiny. The knight is pretty much Anakin Skywalker. The knight is the dragonslayer, a killer of a creature much, much more powerful than itself. Nox is literally the kind of individual that the Jedi knight is born to kill.