I often times feel as if Malgus doesn't get the proper respect he deserves, given the sheer breadth of his power. As I hope to raise his stock, this blog will focus primarily on how highly he scales above the flock in his era, and as you will see, far beyond that:
First, Darth Malgus as of Return is stated to be the most dangerous dark-sider Satele Shan had ever experienced:
"There in the hangars I encountered the most dangerous embodiment of the dark side I have ever experienced-the man who would later be known as Darth Malgus."
Source: Satele Shan, The Journal of Master Gnost-Dural
Satele Shan has also met Darth Baras, who as of the Treaty of Coruscant had this under his belt as an accolade of power prior to decades of power growth:
"Rewards. Power. Sel-Makor offers them to you. Like the one who came before."
"Who are you talking about? Was there someone here before Fulminiss?"
"Decades ago. A Sith. Greater than Fulminiss. Power was given."
Credit: Sel-Makor and the Battlemaster of the Jedi Order, SWTOR
Lord Fulminiss was among the Sith Emperor's favored servants:
"Lord Fulminiss. The Emperor isn't taking any chances with Voss."
Credit: Lord Scourge, SWTOR
Stated to be the Empire's greatest alchemist:
"They are the only surviving work of the Empire's greatest alchemist, Lord Fulminiss. A Jedi Knight on Voss deprived us of his genius."
...
"The Dread Masters' agents are burying Seeds across the galaxy. Where they will drive entire populations mad."
Credit: Darth Acina, SWTOR
He was a master of the most arcane arts of the dark-side and was suggested to be capable of summoning a storm that could disintegrate a city:
Widely regarded as one of the greatest Sith sorcerers in the Empire, the enigmatic Lord Fulminiss is a master of the dark side’s most arcane and lethal aspects. The grotesque Harrower assassins are his most famous creation, but legend has it he once summoned a raging storm of pure Force energy that disintegrated a rebellious city of natives in the Imperial-conquered Jabiim system.
Credit: Lord Fulminiss Codex Entry
A testament to his immense skill with the dark-side was his greatest creation, the Seeds of Rage:
The Sith Order is constantly seeking ways to fuse dark side power with technology, creating new and terrifying weapons for inflicting terror and despair on the Empire’s enemies. One of the greatest practitioners of Sith alchemy, Lord Fulminiss, devoted his life to developing insidious new devices for corrupting other life forms. The subterranean machines code-named “Seeds of Rage” were Fulminiss’s crowning achievement. The Seeds use a combination of low-frequency transmissions and pure dark side power to subtly manipulate the thoughts and emotions of any living creature nearby. Over time, victims of these devices are driven homicidally insane and contaminated by dark side energy.
Credit: The Seeds of Rage Codex Entry
Taking all of this into consideration, we can definitely say that Lord Malgus even as of the onset of the Great Galactic War was an immensely powerful and dangerous Sith. Which is why he's already considered among the Empire's greatest warriors:
Even before the Great War, Malgus was widely regarded as one of the greatest warriors in the Sith Empire.
Credit: SWTOR Encyclopedia
Malgus then spends the next twenty eight years growing constantly more powerful, becoming the Empire's greatest hero:
"What short memories you people have. Darth Malgus is the Empire's greatest hero. He led the assault on Coruscant's Jedi Temple. Killed its leaders."
Credit: Grand Moff Rycus Kilran
Achieving feats on the battlefield that Darth Sidious considered unequalled:
Malgus submitted utterly to the dark side, and doing so made him an exemplary warrior. His battlefield feats have never been duplicated.
Credit: Darth Sidious, Book of Sith
Malgus then engaged and crushed Aryn Leneer:
She did not wait for Malgus. She bounded across the hangar, her speed augmented by the Force, the lines of her blades leaving a blur of light in their wake. Malgus held his ground, blade ready.
She stabbed low with her primary blade, high with her secondary. Malgus leapt over both, flipped, landed behind her, and crosscut for her neck.
She ducked under it while spinning into a reverse leg sweep that caught his feet and tripped him. When he hit the ground, she rose, turned, raised both blades, and drove them down in a parallel overhand slash. Malgus somersaulted backward, and Aryn’s blades cut gashes in the floor of the hangar. Sparks flew.
Malgus bounced up from the somersault and loosed a telekinetic blast that lifted Aryn from her feet and blew her across the hangar. She slammed into one of the shuttle’s bulkheads, but used the Force to cushion the blow so that it did no harm. Bouncing off the cool metal, she charged Malgus. As she ran, she cast first her own lightsaber at Malgus, then Master Zallow’s, using the Force to guide both.
The attack caught Malgus unprepared, and Aryn’s blade bit into his armor. Sparks flew and Malgus winced, snarled with pain. He ducked under Master Zallow’s blade, and Aryn recalled both to her hands as she ran. The moment she had them, she cast them both at Malgus again.
But this time he was ready. Augmenting his speed with the Force, he flipped high into the air and out of the way of both. She anticipated his movement, however, bounded forward to cut him off and landed a flying kick in his chest. He used the Force to diminish the blow’s impact but it drove him back a step and she heard his breath hitch through the sound of his respirator.
He recovered, roared, raised his blade high to cut her in two, and brought it down. But she had already summoned her own blade back to her hand and interposed it in a parry.
Malgus’s strength drove her to her knees. She held out her other hand and pulled Master Zallow’s blade to her hand, stabbed for his stomach with it.
Malgus sidestepped the stab, though it skinned his armor and showered sparks. He pushed her blade to the side with his own and kicked her in the face. The strength behind the blow blew through her defenses, caused her to see stars, loosed teeth, and sent her head over heels backward. She landed on her knees, stunned, seeing double.
She rose, swayed on her feet, seeing four blades in her hands rather than two. Something was in her mouth and she spat it out—a tooth, the root forked and bloody.
“You are a child to hate,” Malgus said, his tone incongruously soft as he stalked toward her. “Your anger barely smolders. You are a fraction of what you could be.”
She needed time to recover her senses, some distance from Malgus. She backflipped high into the air and landed atop the Imperial shuttle. Her mind was beginning to clear.
“Your Master was also misguided. He thought to defeat me with calm, but failed. You thought to defeat me with anger, but carry too little, despite your loss.”
Aryn’s vision began to clear. She felt more herself.
“Be grateful for that, Jedi. Anger exacts its own price.”
Again she felt the odd sense of sympathy or pity adulterating the otherwise pure hate flowing from Malgus. His eyes went to Eleena, her body crumpled on the landing pad’s floor.
As Aryn prepared to leap at Malgus, he held forth a hand, almost casually, and lightning sizzled through the space between them. Aryn interposed her lightsabers, but the power in the lightning exceeded anything she had felt from Malgus before. It blasted through her defenses and both lightsabers flew from her hands. The lightning seized her, lifted her up, and threw her from the top of the shuttle.
As she flew toward the deck, she smelled burning flesh, heard screaming, realized that it was her flesh, her screams. She hit the ground hard and her head bounced off the ground. Sparks erupted in her brain, pain, and everything went dark.
Credit: Deceived
Leneer was capable of percieving and reacting to FTL as if it was a crawl:
Aryn did not bother to respond. She dwelled in the Force, floated in and on the warm network of lines that connected all things, one to another. Her consciousness expanded to see and feel everything near her. She focused on her perception of the passage of time, first on how it felt as she moved through it, then on spreading it, stretching it, until she could linger in a millisecond as if it were a moment, then a minute. To Zeerid it would appear that she were a blur of motion, existing simultaneously in multiple places. To her, it felt as if the universe around her had stilled. She smiled, seeing the moments that hung before her, each millisecond a long moment in which she could think, in which she could act. The effort taxed her, and she knew she could not maintain it for long.
"Watch the scanner," Zeerid said, his words a lifetime in the utterance.
She did not watch the scanner. Her body could react faster than any machine. Instead she watched the viewscreen.
.....
She remained immersed in the Force asFatman surged through hyperspace. The ordinary maddening churn slowed to a crawl of spirals and whorls, the script of the universe writ large in characters of blue, turquoise, midnight, and lavender. She fancied there might be meaning in the lines, an important revelation that hung before her, just beyond the reach of her consciousness.
Credit: Deceived
She could throw a six car tram with ease:
Aryn gestured at a cargo tram near the three men shooting at them from behind. The six cars of the tram rushed toward the men, propelled by Aryn's power.
Credit: Deceived
Malgus himself, by this point, could match the thruster power of a freighter with his telekinesis:
He reached out with the Force as Razor continued its rise, tried to take it in his mental grasp. Its ascent slowed. He held forth both of his arms, made claws of his hands, and shouted with frustration as he sought to hold back the power of the ship's thrusters.
He felt a tightness in his mind, the string of his power being drawn taut, stretching, stretching. He would not release the ship. Its thrusters began to whine. He held it, teeth gritted, sweat soaking his body, his breath a dry rattle through his respirator.
Credit: Deceived
Malgus achieves a form of Oneness with the dark-side of the Force after killing his wife Eleena Daru and dedicating his focus solely on the dark-side:
Thinking of Eleena blew oxygen on the embers of his anger. In life, Eleena had been his weakness, a tool to be exploited by rivals. In death, she had become his strength, her memory the lens of his rage.
He resided in the calm eye of a storm of hate. Power churned around him, within him. He did not feel as if he were drawing on the Force, using it. He felt as if he were the Force, as if he had merged with it.
He had evolved. Nothing split his loyalties any longer.
Credit: Deceived
Every day thereafter, for twelve years, his understanding of the Force grew daily:
He served the Force and only the Force, and his understanding of it increased daily.
Credit: Deceived
NOTE: This level of growth in the Force was replicated by Jacen Solo, who had Skywalker potential in his bloodline:
Luke realized Jacen's Force skills seemed to be getting stronger and more subtle every day, and he felt uneasy.
Credit: Legacy of the Force: Bloodlines
He was one of the most powerful Sith Lords the Old Republic would ever know in his prime:
In Deceived, you’ll learn the story of Darth Malgus and his rise to power. Delve into the dark secrets and history that shaped one of the most powerful Sith Lords the Old Republic would ever know…
Credit: Deceived Novel Trailer, swtor.com
Log in to comment