Azronger

Azula. Roku should absolutely not go now.

Combustion Man. Roku should be number 1.

Zuko

Aren't you an OG on this board

@ils

Re-reading my original post, I do admit I characterized your stance a bit too strongly for what you said. However, your precise words were “Unuthul, however, is quite possibly the strongest here and by a decent amount,” due to which I naturally assumed you held a certain degree of confidence about UnuThul being in contention with Sidious. You wouldn’t go around saying, for example, Vodo-Siosk Baas is “quite possibly” more powerful than him, because though you may not have a hyper-precise ranking for the Emperor, he isn’t a total unknown to you either. You’re aware that he scales over all of the PT, and has feats under his belt like draining and telepathically influencing Byss, tanking Galen’s suicide blast, burying the Lusankya and mind-wiping Coruscant, holding the Galactic Empire’s military under his telepathic thumb, and surviving the vacuum of space without an anchor for a year while traveling fast enough to reach Byss from Endor in that time. I presume this because you’ve been involved in discussions involving those feats in the past - if my presumption is mistaken, and you are less familiar with ROTJ Sidious than I believed, then I apologize for the confusion, but I don’t think it’s inherently unreasonable given your initial phrasing and your years-long history discussing Sidious with other fans of his like myself and Gideon.

Regardless, I don’t think what I’ve asked is “silly” at all. If, hypothetically, I claimed I think it’s possible X is more powerful than Y, and you asked me why I think that, I would list my reasons which most likely would include feats, quotes, maybe some scaling, etc. - all the usual stuff. If you then followed up with why I believe those feats and such make it possible for X to be stronger than Y, I would enter into an analysis of said feats and give more detailed reasons. This, in essence, was the intent behind my queries regarding your stance that UnuThul may possibly be stronger than ROTJ Sidious: though I’m aware of the basics of his feats and hype (mainly the two pieces of evidence that I’ve cited for him: bending turbolasers and having the Force potential of trillions to draw on), I wanted to know what you see in them that would make you think he is possibly stronger than the Emperor. Not everyone views the same feats the same way, as our debate on Luke vs. UnuThul in this very thread stands as a testament to.

And Luke vs. UnuThul is indeed something you do have a hard stance on. You may not have noticed, but when I said “Well, I still can't gather from your post why you believe that,” alongside your remarks about Sidious I did quote you saying “I think Unuthul is/was more powerful than Luke, just far less skilled,” and in that same sentence of mine I said “I don't see where you've actually explained why you think UnuThul is more powerful than Luke, or possibly ROTJ Sidious.” So it was a request for you to explain your position on not just UnuThul vs. Sidious, but UnuThul vs. Luke as well. Now, you have done that in your latest post - as far as I understand (tell me if you think I’m misrepresenting you again), your affirmative argument is essentially a reading of their fight as a demonstration of the supposed theme of wisdom and finesse trumping narrow reliance on brute strength, and your negative arguments are the various rebuttals you’ve made to my own affirmative points. In this respect, I don’t think I asked anything more of you than your post warranted.

This is where you lose me completely. I think my argument thus far has been very clear:

1. We are both in agreement that Sidious at his peak in Dark Empire is more powerful than Luke.
2. I’ve made a case for why I believe ROTJ Sidious and DE Sidious should be rather close - or at least, a case for why ROTJ Sidious should be far, far, far closer to his DE counterpart than his ROTS one.
3. I’ve stated my belief that if you have DE Sidious above Luke then you ought to have ROTJ Sidious near Luke as well; the only reason you wouldn’t is if you disagree with my arguments, or the idea more broadly, that ROTJ Sidious is approaching DE Sidious.
4. I’ve made a case for why I believe Luke is far more powerful in the Force than UnuThul.
5. The conclusion that follows is that ROTJ Sidious, too, is far more powerful in the Force than UnuThul.

I don’t get where in that you picked up on something that made you think “Since the standard you've set for yourself in convincing me of this idea is that it's not possible for you to be wrong” or “you are making the claim that you can prove something with a shadow of doubt or possiblity that you could be wrong” or “Your claim is one of absolutes with no room for doubt or possiblity. So even if I magically conceded everything instead of continuing to counter your interpretation, you actually still wouldn't have met the burden you set for yourself by your own logic” or “I'd like to remind you again of the burden you set for yourself. We aren't dealing in ‘I don't think’ - we're dealing in ‘you raised a possibility, and I (Azronger) am going to prove that that possibility doesn't have even a remote chance of being true.’” After re-reading both my posts, I’m even more perplexed. All I said was “Unless you're one of the people who assign a huge difference to his ROTJ and DE iterations, I don't understand how UnuThul could be more powerful than ROTJ Sheev” because I was under the assumption you viewed the Luke vs. UnuThul fight the same way I do. After it became clear you didn’t from your second post, I acknowledged that in my reply: “You've laid out your issues with my claim that Luke one-shots UnuThul.” In short, I don’t agree to this standard you’ve ascribed for me because I dispute I ever set it for myself in the first place.

What exactly would you have liked me to say? How should I have phrased my four premises that the condition of “moderate-high possibility” instead of “factual possibility” would have been fulfilled in your eyes? For the record, I don’t even believe there is such a thing as 100% concrete proof - I only use that phrase colloquially. In reality, even something that looks fully solid on paper such as the AOTC Anakin vs. Dooku vs. ROTS Anakin example you gave contains very small probabilities of ad hoc caveats that would invalidate the comparison if true, but because those probabilities are infinitesimal we don’t bother even thinking about them. However, due to those miniscule probabilities, there exists a threshold where something goes from merely “possible” to being commonly accepted as “fact.” In science, this threshold is very high, with scientists sometimes - when dealing with subatomic particles, for example - repeating the same experiments thousands of times before codifying anything down as law. In Star Wars debating, this threshold is far more subjective and often varies from person to person. A good example is your objection to my argument for ROTJ Sidious’s relativity to his DE incarnation:

Inference is quite a common method of argumentation and not innately fallacious, so I personally have no issues using it. I also have no problems with a position requiring a lengthy justification so long as the logic and evidence presented is solid. If you're dissatisfied with my argument, I'd like a more detailed explanation than simply noting that it "is just back scaling the gap from DE based on historical growth precedents" when there is absolutely nothing wrong with it on principle - it's just fundamental inductive reasoning, which is how probability is established: multiple similar results increase the probability of something being true the next time around as well. And if your issue isn't with the methodology, but with the probability not being high enough in your view, I'd still like some sort of explanation as to why.

But anyways, the two points of contention here are the ROTJ-DE gap for Sidious, and the dynamics of the fight between Luke and UnuThul. Unless you have some other major qualm with what I’m saying, then I think those two points should be the sole focus (for now; I have other arguments I could make for Sidious but I don’t want to bloat this debate any more than I have to).

LUKE VS. UNUTHUL

Whether you personally are/were wowed by it is beside the point; the fact remains that it did indeed cause a ruckus in the debating community, more so than practically any other ostentatious writing from Troy Denning, or Matthew Stover or James Luceno, or anyone else, that I can think of. Me pointing this out is to draw emphasis to the immensity of the quote, since as far as I’m concerned, deriving power levels from how certain authors describe their characters and their uses of the Force is perfectly normal and reasonable practice. For example, when Jacen describes his uncle as “blazing in the Force like a star gone nova,” it probably means Luke is far more powerful than his nephew even if the description of his presence itself is hyperbolic. You don’t need to tell me that Luke having the capability to resist the gravitational pull of a supermassive black hole is similarly exaggerated, but given you yourself make note of how Denning is a substantially less flowery writer than someone like Stover, the one time he does include prose like this in his books should probably mean something, no? Do you think he would hand quotes like that to anyone besides those he considers to be at the absolute apex of Force power, e.g. Luke, Abeloth, and Krayt? If your answer is no, then it’s not “a completely meaningless piece of prose for our purposes.” Here he has UnuThul, an original invention of his whom he has almost total freedom to write however he wants, yet he in the final, climactic fight of the series he chooses to forgo wanking his power (his sole relevant combat attribute), and instead gives Luke perhaps the most absurd accolade for a Force-user’s power in any Star Wars media while writing him just standing there as UnuThul does all he can “trying to move him a single centimeter,” and making sure to note UnuThul is drawing on the Colony for the act to leave no ambiguity as to whether he’s at maximum power or not. That speaks to me far more than a technical analysis of the mechanics of Force shields vs. offensive telekinesis, which I doubt was in Denning’s mind when he wrote this. Of course, those mechanics can still be involved, but they don’t detract from what I perceive to be the intent that Luke is more powerful than UnuThul as a whole when I look at the text itself.

I don’t understand how I’m supposedly cherry-picking. When I use the term casual, I don’t necessarily mean a feat doesn’t take a lot of power to accomplish. For example, I would describe Goku taking Frieza’s death beam to the face as “casual,” but I can clearly also observe he is in his Super Saiyan form which amplifies his base strength by 50x. Similarly, Luke evidently needs to go all-out to do what he does to UnuThul because the latter is extremely powerful in his own right, but the disparity that arises between them as a result is enough where Luke can casually handle whatever UnuThul throws at him and punk him in return. I don’t see what relevance Lumiya has to this, but maybe if you’ll show me the excerpts from Luke’s other fights you’re referencing I might get your point better.

The absolute power levels of the combatants aren’t germane so long as the relative gap between them stays the same. Maul handling Dooku’s Force-push wouldn’t be written like that not because “Maul isn't Grandmaster Luke Skywalker and Dooku isn't the vessel for trillions of Force sensitive beings,” but because it would look completely counterintuitive if Dooku is supposed to be at least a decent bit stronger in the Force than Maul (if you think the gap between Luke and UnuThul is wider, you can swap Dooku for Yoda or someone else in my example). Fair enough on the Stover bit - but my argument functions just fine without it, if not better considering we’ve removed all elements of grandiloquence and made the following into a totally normal, nondescript piece of prose: “Dooku swung his remaining hand up to hurl Maul down the corridor as he had done before. But this time, Maul was ready. He placed his own hand in front of Dooku's and stood that way, waiting. Dooku continued to struggle, trying to hurl Maul down the corridor, trying to move him a single centimeter. Maul did not budge, and finally Dooku stopped struggling and met his eyes with a stunned and anguished gaze.” Yet it still looks stupid.

To condense everything I’ve been saying thus far, my overarching point is basically that your argument for Luke simply using the Force in a more efficient way rather than being straight-up more powerful than UnuThul is reliant on the reader’s understanding of the behind-the-scenes mechanics of Force defenses as disproportionately hard to breach - without that understanding, the reading that Luke is the stronger of the two is incredibly self-evident. The thing is, we ourselves didn’t arrive at that understanding until 2019, and until then we’d been dissecting the material for years in enormously greater depth than 99.999% of Star Wars fans on the planet, including the authors whose job it is to research and write this stuff in the first place. So when I hear the take that the utterly dominant manner in which Luke defeats UnuThul and the fantastical ways in which his strength in the Force is described in that scene is somehow in reality intended to be a demonstration of UnuThul’s superior power being thwarted by a smarter but weaker adversary by Denning, I get a tad bit skeptical. Do you think that’s a “woolly” position to hold?

Also, quote for all Killiks being Force-sensitive?

If Luke isn’t even using the same technique as Anakin, then he’s not employing “optimal efficiency or strategy,” because as far as I’m aware, there’s nothing suggesting that rooting oneself to the ground is a disproportionately effective way of defending against telekinetic attacks the same way a conventional Force shield is. If Luke is splitting his Force reserves between rooting himself to the ground and generating a telekinetic barrier instead of funnelling all his energy into that barrier, it proves he doesn’t have to be economical with his power usage in dealing with UnuThul, running counter to the narrative you’re presenting.

What does “preparation” actually mean to you here? As far as I’m concerned, if Anakin brings his arm up in time to block Obi-Wan’s push, then he’s prepared for it - especially when, unlike what you claim, he begins gathering his energy at nearly the same split-second Obi-Wan does (pause at 1:43 and go through it frame by frame with the , and . buttons on your keyboard). The same way, all Luke does is bring his arm up in time to block UnuThul’s push - that means he’s prepared. The first time he isn’t, so he gets flung across the corridor and smashed into a wall. It doesn’t get any more complicated than that for me. I really don’t understand this point of yours.

Also, how exactly can Anakin be “nowhere near as prepared for Obi-Wan's push as Luke is for Unuthul's”? “Blade-to-blade, they were identical. After thousands of hours in lightsaber sparring, they knew each other better than brothers, more intimately than lovers; they were complementary halves of a single warrior.” (ROTS novel) Add to that all the sourcebook quotes echoing the same sentiment, and I think my point is made for me. By contrast, Luke makes the generic observation that Raynar Thul is a “powerful, young man” and as such is over-reliant on his own strength. You say “Luke knew what Unuthul was about to do because he had done it before, and he was ready to counter that specific tactic” as if those same things don’t apply to Anakin. He’s far, far, far more familiar with the intricacies of Obi-Wan’s psychology and combat strategies than Luke is with UnuThul’s, and more prepared for that opponent than Luke could ever be for his.

What do you mean “all that foreshadowing”? It’s one paragraph, and the only time Luke finesses UnuThul is in the lightsaber duel where he counters his opponent’s straightforward swings with pivots and severs his arm nearly instantly. When Luke counters UnuThul’s Force-push, he does so on the basis of sheer power, but the overarching lesson remains the same: “What am I going to do with you, Raynar Thul? You learn nothing from your mistakes.” Luke is scolding Raynar that, when met with an immovable object, his solution was to try to move it instead of trying to find some workaround. Then, once Luke deactivates his own blade and pins UnuThul by picking him up from the collar, “waiting for an answer to his question,” he expects him to retaliate with Force lightning, but again his former student disappoints by lifting his hand “to call his lightsaber back, to attempt to continue the battle that he obviously could no longer win.” It’s only after that that Luke fully pins UnuThul’s whole body with the Force and ends the fight properly, removing the focusing crystal from Raynar’s lightsaber and continuing to scold him, and then engaging him in a battle of wills to convince him to surrender.

Just as you can construct an entire narrative about a weaker but smarter fighter overcoming a stronger but dumber one based on one paragraph and frame your whole interpretation of the fight around it, I can do the exact same thing: the fight is a lesson where Luke is testing his one-time pupil by putting through various situations: two warriors clashing with lightsabers, an immovable object too strong to directly overpower, and having your back against the wall when your foe has the advantage. As shown at the end, Luke really can pin UnuThul’s whole body to the wall with the Force and UnuThul is unable to break free, but he only does so when Raynar fails the third test. I don’t see how your framing is any more accurate, or “elegant,” than mine.

One thing about my original position I would amend, though, is that I no longer think Luke can undoubtedly one-shot UnuThul from the get-go. The reason for this is because I realized that even though holding someone in an unbreakable Force grip is a sign of vast superiority, it’s not necessarily equivalent to penetrating someone’s active Force barrier directly. As an example, Maul can’t break free from Sidious’s Force grip even when his Master is dividing his efforts between him and his brother, but Sidious still needs to exploit lapses in Maul’s defense in order to toss him around in the first place.

I mean, Luke just stands there, waiting for UnuThul to cease his struggling, and then begins talking in a completely normal, even voice, and pins him to the wall. He intercepts Raynar’s lightsaber from mid-air, removes the focusing crystal from it, and dangles it in front of him before pocketing it, all the while holding him in an unbreakable telekinetic pin, and basically saying “You’ve been a bad boy, so I’m taking your toy away from you. If you’ll be a good boy again in the future, I may return it.” Everything in Luke’s demeanor there comes across as totally casual, with nothing in the text suggesting he’s strained in any way. I suspect this is all a mix-up stemming from how we use terms like “taxed” and “casual” to mean different things, seeing as you’re accusing me of cherry-picking while I’m just plain confused and of the opinion that what I’m saying shouldn't be at all controversial.

What do you mean “Anakin’s hand alone has only so much defensive capacity before it can be overloaded”? Luke is also defending with his hand. Not to mention using hand gestures is more efficient than using some other body part (probably to help with mental visualization) - at least that’s my impression, considering everyone does it all the time, and it’s comparatively rare to see someone use the Force with their mind alone. This argument is honestly a total mystery to me, so I’ll have to wait for you to elaborate further. The length of time obviously matters since it increases the total power accumulating between the combatants.

And yes, I think Obi-Wan scales above the theta storm. I’ve made that very argument in an official SS before. Though I will note Anakin holds the storm off for maybe 5-20 minutes, not hours.

All in all, I basically see no difference between Luke and Anakin defending from UnuThul and Obi-Wan, respectively, except that Luke is not strained at all, seemingly resists for longer, doesn’t have his barrier broken, and is apparently not even putting all his power behind his Force shield (I took rooting himself to the heart of the Force to just be a fanciful way of saying Luke is drawing on a lot of power, but if you want to insist he’s literally rooting himself to the ground, go ahead).

I don't see how anything you’re saying proves he’s “demoralized” or that “there's no reasonable expectation of Unu defending himself after he's already pinned” or that “Unu was in no mind state to resist Luke at the time he was pinned.” Nothing here addresses my point: UnuThul’s expression turns from astonishment to anger to calculation - he’s clearly pissed and deciding on the best way to continue the fight, which he does by trying to summon his lightsaber to his hand. I’d say that’s plenty of expectation for him to try to break free once Luke puts him in a full-body TK pin, as well as the fact that Luke even needs to telepathically talk him down in the first place, only after which “the fight finally went out of Raynar.” He wouldn’t need to if UnuThul was just passively along with being reprimanded like a child and being Force-pinned to a wall.

And I’ve already explained how UnuThul having virtually infinite reserves helps my case: it means he’s fully capable of exerting the same amount of power for the rest of the fight as he is when trying to push Luke, yet his efforts are equally impotent in all cases.

You didn’t need to bring Caedus into this. I’m perfectly aware he uses far less effort there than against UnuThul. If you thought I was essentially treating the two as identical, you’ve misunderstood what my precise stance on Luke vs. UnuThul is. Hopefully this post has shed more light on it.

Why are you extrapolating the dynamic from the telepathy section into the telekinesis section? Luke is not trying to convince him to lay down his arms in the latter, only rebuking him, so obviously it’s not “Luke talking Unu down that’s keeping him constrained,” but Luke’s strength in the Force. Also, how is it apparent that “Unu only making partial efforts to break free of Luke”? In the war of wills, sure, both parties are merely prodding at first before starting to pressure each other more heavily, but how is that the case for the Force pin?

Luke is talking him down to get him to surrender because he’s decided to spare his life. Obviously holding him in a Force grip perpetually is not a long-term solution, even if he could do that for longer than the immediate combat situation requires.

I think that ought to be everything. I didn’t respond to every single paragraph or sentence you wrote if I thought the point you were making was already addressed elsewhere. If I left something out that you believed relevant, feel free to point that out.

To finish off, I’ll say that this will in all likelihood be my last post for a long while. I initially tagged you because I perceived an ostensible discrepancy between what you were saying here and what your latest tier list shows. I was not expecting you to disagree so vehemently on the dynamics of Luke vs. UnuThul or for this discussion to blow up to this proportion. Between my studies, the gym, my other hobbies, and my currently waning interest, I have no desire to prolong this past this point. Perhaps one day I’ll reply, but for now you may have the last word.

Well my rationale, as I explained, is that Sheev only has four years at most to grow from ROTJ to DE - he takes over a year to travel from Endor to Byss and "years" to regain his former power, so all in all not a very long time to improve from his original status. Conversely, beginning with his coronation in ROTS he has 23 years leading up to ROTJ during which to study the Force, and we know he sequesters himself in the Imperial Palace, leaving the day-to-day governing of the Empire to his subordinates, and "gathers the greatest works of knowledge from over a million worlds,""studies the Force in all its guises throughout the galaxy," "spends decades studying the most arcane and esoteric Jedi disciplines," "plumbs depths of darkness unknown before," "gathers all the greatest lore of the Dark Side and collects it," and so on, with the end result being "nearly unlimited Force powers" and a belief that "he has mastered nearly all the known powers, previously unknown powers, and devises new ones at his pleasure." Being cloistered on Byss for far less time wouldn't yield nearly the same harvest, especially when the most notable difference that results from his edification there is his heightened control of the Force storm technique, something which he is already capable of as early as 18 BBY, only to a lesser degree.

I think you have to have ROTJ Sheev in Luke's ballpark if you have DE Sheev above him, unless you disagree with the above logic.

Well, I still can't gather from your post why you believe that. You've laid out your issues with my claim that Luke one-shots UnuThul, but I don't see where you've actually explained why you think UnuThul is more powerful than Luke, or possibly ROTJ Sidious.

While it's true that it's disproportionately difficult to shatter an active Force shield, it's mainly the way the scene is framed that leads me to think Luke is supposed to come off as stronger than UnuThul. He's given a description so flattering that it drove the debating community into a frenzy, and he's basically just casually waiting for UnuThul to cease his efforts, which the latter does after a while, having failed to budge Luke a single centimeter. I don't think if, say, Maul blocked Dooku's Force push, it would be written like this: "Dooku had all the darkness in the universe to draw upon, and he did that now, swinging his remaining hand up to hurl Maul down the corridor as he had done before. But this time, Maul was ready. He placed his own hand in front of Dooku's and stood that way, waiting. Dooku continued to struggle, trying to hurl Maul down the corridor, trying to move him a single centimeter. Maul did not budge, and finally Dooku stopped struggling and met his eyes with a stunned and anguished gaze." Essentially, I think Luke is characterized with a particular air of dominance that transcends whatever technical argument one might make about the mechanics of Force defenses. Even if you dispute Luke being able to outright one-shot UnuThul, I think this still portrays him as stronger, and at the very least heavily calls into question the notion of UnuThul being the more powerful of the two.

Additionally, we can look to the case of Anakin and Obi-Wan to draw a comparison. According to the Revenge of the Sith script, what seems like a telekinetic tug-of-war on-screen is actually Obi-Wan initiating a Force push and Anakin extending his own hand to block it, so basically an identical situation to Luke and UnuThul. Despite the disproportionate difficulty of breaking a Force barrier, Anakin is clearly taxed in his defensive efforts, and after only seven seconds the accumulating Force energy proves too much to contain.

(1:42)

OBI-WAN and ANAKIN lock sabers. OBI-WAN puts out his hand to use the Force to push ANAKIN away. ANAKIN puts out his hand to block OBI-WAN.

Both combatants are blasted backwards onto the control panels.

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith script

It's unclear for how long exactly Luke blocks UnuThul - long enough for his bugcrunchers to move into defensive positions, at least - but my impression is that UnuThul continued to struggle for some time before relenting since Luke is described as "waiting." Now, with Anakin and Obi-Wan the defending party is the stronger one, but with Luke and UnuThul you maintain Luke, the defender, is the weaker of the two - yet the discrepancy that creates with the broader lore suggests the opposite is the case. Luke is taxed less than Anakin (i.e. not at all) and most likely maintains his shield longer.

I don't think that's the right way to look at it. Firstly, the fact that Luke expects UnuThul to use Force lightning, and the fact that the latter tries to "call his lightsaber back, to attempt to continue the battle that he obviously could no longer win," suggests to me he isn't at all "demoralized" and is doing what he can break out - "the expression in his captive's pained eyes turned from astonishment to anger to calculation." And right after the excerpt you quoted Luke does in fact pin his whole body with telekinesis while removing the focusing crystal from Raynar's lightsaber. And contrary to popular belief, it actually is not all that hard to break out of a Force grip: Mace Windu does it to Kar Vastor, someone stronger than him who "has power on the scale of Master Yoda, or young Anakin Skywalker," while musing that "Jedi Padawans learn to counter Force kinesis before they even begin lightsaber training." Though Raynar is obviously not as skilled as he is powerful, he was a Jedi Knight in Luke's academy and should thus know this rudimentary technique taught to all PT Padawans before even the basics of lightsaber combat.

But when Raynar’s free hand rose, it was not to summon the Force lightning that Luke had expected. It was to call his lightsaber back, to attempt to continue the battle that he obviously could no longer win.

It was in that moment that Luke finally decided that the life of Raynar Thul would be spared. He intercepted the weapon and used the Force to pin Raynar’s remaining arm against the wall along with the rest of his body. Then he opened the hilt of the captured lightsaber and removed the focusing crystal. He held it up in front of Raynar.

“Someday I may return this—but for now, it’s staying with me.” He zipped the gem into a pocket of his vac suit, then reached out to Raynar in the Force and spoke in a softer voice. “Your days as UnuThul are done, Raynar. It’s time to surrender and come home.”

Star Wars: Dark Nest III - The Swarm War

Vastor turned his dive into a roll and spun to face the Jedi Master from one knee, and before Mace had even finished speaking the Force whirled around him and Mace found himself wrenched off the ground, hurtling backward through the air to slam against the smooth-barked gray trunk of a meter-thick lammas tree. The whole tree shivered with the impact, and a spiral galaxy birthed itself inside Mace's head.

He thought, I was wondering when we'd get to this part.

Vastor's face tightened. Strength must have been returning to his nerve-punched arms already, because he managed to raise one and gesture as though throwing a stone; Mace was whirled forward from the tree to crash against the skull of an astonished akk dog.

The impact folded him over the dog's head and blasted the breath from his lungs; the dog's crown spines gashed Mace's abdomen, and when it tossed Mace aside with a twitch of its head like a Nymalian water-ox, his blood ran down the black outer shells of its eyes.

Jedi Padawans learn to counter Force kinesis before they even begin lightsaber training. Still in the air, Mace sensed the flow of power that held Vastor's grip upon him; with a sigh, he allowed his center - Vastor's point of Force contact - to relax and ground Vastor's power back into the jungle around them...

And that jungle came to life.

A gripleaf trailer snaked down from above and seized one of Mace's ankles in its unbreakable clutch. His airborne tumble became a wide-swinging head-down arc.

Star Wars: Shatterpoint

However, I am unsure on this detail of your argument: you say UnuThul "expended his power" trying to move Luke - do you mean you think he emptied his tank, so to speak, or was at least incapable of mustering that same degree of strength again? Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding you, but UnuThul is said to be drawing on the Force potential of the entire Killik Colony in the attempt to budge Luke, so if he was in any way depleted from that, you'd basically be arguing Luke's Force shield absorbed energies siphoned from trillions of life-forms in their entirety in the span of maybe 10-20 seconds... Even if it's not in their entirety but still some portion significant enough to noticeably diminish UnuThul's output afterwards, that still demonstrates a ludicrous disparity between him and Luke. Obi-Wan still had plenty of juice to wage a marathon duel with Anakin after shattering his barrier, by contrast.

Now, if I've misunderstood you and that's not your argument, then UnuThul should still be capable of drawing on that same resource for the rest of the altercation, and in fact he does when engaging Luke in a telepathic contest, harnessing the combined Will of the Colony. I didn't see you address this section, so I don't know if you think telepathic tugs-of-war are more proportional to Force strength or willpower, but regardless, Luke does effectively subdue an entire species here. If TP is mostly power-based, then this denotes direct superiority over UnuThul by Luke; and if TP is mostly will-based, then one can easily argue Sidious (comparable large-scale TP feats and other retarded willpower feats) or even Krayt (FOTJ comparison) can mentally wrestle UnuThul into submission without ever needing to initiate a proper fight (cf. Vitiate enslaving most of his opponents without having to lift his ass from his seat). Even if it's some indeterminate combination of the two, Luke still comes off looking very good against UnuThul on the sheer power front, I'd say. At least, again, the onus is on you to prove why UnuThul is the stronger of the two.

@ils said:

Do you have a reason for presuming UnuThul to be stronger than Sidious? And how does that factor into your current rankings, given you have Luke below Sidious, unless that has changed since we last spoke? Luke is capable of doing this to UnuThul:

Luke felt the Force stir as Raynar made a final exertion. “They’re coming. Prepare for—”

The far hatch suddenly ruptured inward, bringing with it a short-lived decompression squall that rocked Luke back on his heels and hazed the corridor with airborne dust. He glimpsed a tall figure in a black pressure suit.

Then the figure flicked one of his hands, and Luke found himself flying backward, bouncing off YVH droids and tumbling out of control. He reached out in the Force, grabbing at passing hatches, the ceiling, even Raynar himself, but he was whirling too fast to catch hold of anything.

He hit the end of the corridor with a tremendous clung, unsure whether he was upside down or sideways, then crashed to the floor struggling to remain conscious.

By the time his eyes came back into focus, the corridor had erupted into a crashing storm of cannon bolts and shatter gun pellets. The lower two-thirds of the corridor was blocked by a wall of laminanium bugcruncher armor, but the upper third of the passage belonged to Raynar’s Killiks. Still in their pressure carapaces, they were scurrying through the smoke along the walls and ceiling, pouring shatter gun pellets down on the droids’ heads, trying to get past so they could launch an attack from the rear.

Luke rolled to his feet … and watched in astonishment as his helmet dropped to the floor in two pieces. He glanced at the wall behind him and saw a fist-deep depression where its impact had dented the durasteel.

“Can’t let him do that again,” Luke groaned. He opened the seals on his vac suit gloves, shook them to the floor, and snatched the lightsaber off his belt. Then he averted his eyes and spoke into his throat mike. “Dazers!”

The corridor erupted in rainbow iridescence; then a piercing squeal came over Luke’s earpiece and the smell of ripe hubba gourds filled his nostrils. Stunned by the Dazers’ aura-deadening properties, several Killiks dropped off the ceiling into the midst of the bugcrunchers. The rest of the insects were soon spread overhead in yellow smears.

Luke had already rushed forward, only to find himself trapped behind his own bugcrunchers and unable to see the rest of the battle. “Make a hole!” he ordered. “Coming through.”

Three bugcrunchers blocking his way obediently stepped aside, and Luke found himself staring up ten meters of corridor packed chest-high with Killik corpses and twisted YVH frames. At the other end, with his black helmet lying in a melted gob before him and the fingers of his vac suit gloves burned off by all the Force energy he had been throwing around, stood Luke’s melt-faced opponent. Raynar Thul.

Luke jumped onto the pile of chitin and metal in front of him. Two of Raynar’s Unu bodyguards immediately popped up and sent a burst of shatter gun pellets zipping down the corridor toward him.

Luke flicked his hand and Force-batted the projectiles into a wall, then the bugcrunchers at his back sent a stream of cannon fire down the hall. Raynar ignited a gold lightsaber and deflected most of the volley, but a few of the bolts made it through and splattered his bodyguards across the walls.

“It’s not too late to surrender.” Luke started forward at a walk. “I’m not eager to do this.”

Raynar’s burn-scarred lips twitched in a faint hint of a smile. “We are.”

Raynar raised his lightsaber and jumped onto the carnage heap.

Luke ignited his own blade and raced forward, using the Force to keep himself from stumbling over debris. A loud crunching erupted behind him as his surviving droids raced after him, then half a dozen of Raynar’s bodyguards leapt up from the other end of the pile and started forward, firing shatter guns with their lower set of arms and carrying flame tridents with their upper pair.

A flurry of cannon bolts zipped past Luke from behind and took out three insects. Raynar pointed at the attacking droids. A muffled thump erupted inside one of them, and it went down in a sizzling, popping crash of laminanium. Luke killed the last of Raynar’s bodyguards by Force-slamming them into the wall so hard their thoraxes burst, then the two Jedi were on one another, their lightsabers flashing toward each other’s heads with all the speed and might they could summon.

That was the trouble with powerful men—especially younger ones. Awed by their own strength, they so often believed strength was the answer to every problem. Luke was older and wiser. While Raynar swung, he pivoted.

As Raynar’s gold blade sliced the air where Luke’s head had been, Luke’s boot was kicking him behind the ankles, knocking his legs out from under him and stretching him out flat.

But Raynar was a Jedi, and all Jedi were quick. He caught himself in the Force, levitating himself just long enough to bring his golden blade sweeping in at Luke’s shoulder.

Luke had no choice but to block with his blade, and no place to block but the forearm. Raynar’s lightsaber went spinning off, still securely in the grasp of his three-fingered hand, and caught one of Luke’s bugcrunchers squarely in the back. The weapon sliced through six centimeters of laminanium armor before the severed forearm flew free. The blade deactivated, and the hilt disappeared into the tangle of death and destruction at the droid’s feet.

The pain of losing an arm might have forced a common Jedi to stop fighting, but Raynar was no common Jedi. He had the Force potential of the Colony to draw on, and he did that now, swinging his remaining hand up to hurl Luke down the corridor as he had done before.

But this time, Luke was ready. He placed his own hand in front of Raynar’s and rooted himself in the heart of the Force, and when he did that, he became the very essence of the immovable object. Nothing could dislodge him—not one of Lando’s asteroid tuggers, not the Megador’s sixteen ion engines, not the black hole at the center of the galaxy itself.

Luke stood that way, waiting, dimly aware that his surviving bugcrunchers were moving into defensive positions, one at his back and the other just inside the burst hatch. Raynar continued to struggle, trying to hurl Luke down the corridor, trying to move him a single centimeter.

Luke did not budge, and finally Raynar stopped struggling and met his eyes with a stunned and anguished gaze.

The Master sighed and shook his head. “What am I going to do with you, Raynar Thul?” he asked. “You learn nothing from your mistakes.”

Luke deactivated his lightsaber and picked Raynar up by the collar and slammed him against the wall. He used the Force to pin him there, waiting for an answer to his question, watching as the expression in his captive’s pained eyes turned from astonishment to anger to calculation.

But when Raynar’s free hand rose, it was not to summon the Force lightning that Luke had expected. It was to call his lightsaber back, to attempt to continue the battle that he obviously could no longer win.

It was in that moment that Luke finally decided that the life of Raynar Thul would be spared. He intercepted the weapon and used the Force to pin Raynar’s remaining arm against the wall along with the rest of his body. Then he opened the hilt of the captured lightsaber and removed the focusing crystal. He held it up in front of Raynar.

“Someday I may return this—but for now, it’s staying with me.” He zipped the gem into a pocket of his vac suit, then reached out to Raynar in the Force and spoke in a softer voice. “Your days as UnuThul are done, Raynar. It’s time to surrender and come home.”

The eyes beneath Raynar’s lumpy brow flashed with alarm. “The Colony is our home.”

Luke shook his head. “That can’t be anymore, Raynar,” he said. “The Colony can’t be anymore. If you stay with the Killiks, the entire species will die.”

Raynar curled his scarred lip. “Lies.”

“No.” Luke touched Raynar through the Force. “You’re still a Jedi. You can sense when a person is telling the truth. You can sense it in me, now.”

Hoping to force his Will on his captor, Raynar accepted the contact—as Luke had known he would—then gasped in astonishment as he sensed the truth in what Luke was saying. “How?”

“Because as long as you are the Prime Unu, Lomi Plo will be the queen of the Gorog.” Luke began to press, as though he were trying to force his will on Raynar. “And as long as there is a Gorog, the Colony will be a threat to the Chiss.”

Raynar began to pull, learning from Luke’s earlier tactics and trying to use Luke’s own attack against him. “The Chiss are a threat to the Colony.”

Luke went along with Raynar—in fact, he pushed even harder.

“That’s right. The Chiss are a threat to the Colony,” Luke said. “They have developed a weapon that can wipe out the entire Colony. They tried to use it here. Jaina and Zekk stopped them … but we both know they have more.”

Backed by Luke’s strength, the truth was too much for Raynar. His Will broke, and his resolve turned to panic. “We know,” he admitted.

Luke continued to push. “And they’ll use it—if you stay with the Colony.”

Raynar shook his head. “We can’t let them.”

“Then you have to leave,” Luke said. “It’s the only way to save the Killiks.”

A terrible sadness came to Raynar’s melted face. He lowered his burned eyelids and reluctantly began to nod—then suddenly stopped and glanced toward the hatch through which he had burst earlier.

“Not the only way.” Raynar’s voice assumed a dark tone, and Luke knew his true target was finally preparing to show herself. “Maybe there is a weapon to kill the Chiss?”

Luke resisted the temptation to look toward the hatch. Lomi Plo would not show herself if she knew she was expected.

“Even if there was such a weapon, it wouldn’t be right to use it,” Luke said. “The Jedi won’t permit speciecide against the Chiss—any more than we would against the Killiks.”

“But you could … if it was self-defense.” Raynar bared his jagged teeth in a try at a grin. “Destroying the Chiss would be self-defense, so you would have to permit it.”

Raynar began to push back now, filling Luke’s chest with the dark weight of UnuThul’s Will.

“If it were self-defense, we might have to permit it,” Luke said, playing along—and again using Raynar’s own attack against him. “But even that wouldn’t save the Colony. It cannot survive as it is. We know that.”

“How do we know that?” Raynar demanded angrily. “We know no such thing.”

“We might,” Luke insisted, exerting his own will through the Force again, reeling Raynar in. “If the Colony grew too large, it would devour its own worlds and destroy itself.”

“There are always more worlds,” Raynar countered.

“Not always,” Luke said. “Sometimes all of the other worlds are taken. That could have been what happened when the Killiks disappeared from Alderaan.” He paused, then used the Force to pull as hard as he could, trying to draw Raynar into his own view of reality. “In fact, I’m sure that’s what happened on Alderaan. The Killiks devoured their own world and tried to take someone else’s. That’s the reason the Celestials drove the Killiks into the Unknown Regions.”

The fight finally went out of Raynar. “You’re sure?” He folded his cauterized forearm stump across his stomach and cradled it with his other arm, his lips quivering in pain and tears welling in his eyes. “You know—”

The question was drowned out by the roar of a blaster cannon, and Luke glanced down the corridor to see the bugcruncher stationed there suddenly powering down. The droid fell out of the opening backward and crashed to the deck, then Lomi Plo scuttled through the hatchway on her mismatched set of legs—one human, the other insectile. She turned her bulbous eyes and noseless face down the corridor, then extended her crooked upper arms toward the lightsaber in Luke’s hands.

The last remaining bugcruncher opened fire, forcing Lomi Plo to ignite the lightsaber in her lower set of hands. Her blocks and parries came so slowly that she was barely able to deflect the cannon bolts and she was forced to swing her upper arms toward the droid and drain its power. Raynar, thankfully, continued to stand dazed—and seemingly impotent.

Star Wars: Dark Nest III - The Swarm War

He slices off UnuThul's saber hand in a few seconds, roots himself to "the heart of the Force" and tanks UnuThul's telekinesis without budging a single centimeter, then pins UnuThul to the wall physically and holds him there with his own telekinesis, simultaneously engaging him in a telepathic tug-of-war to get him to surrender. Do note that for the duration of this fight UnuThul has "the Force potential of the Colony to draw on," which consists of "trillions" of Killiks, and the capital W in his Will refers to the Colony's hive-mind, so this UnuThul is as strong as he is at any other point in the story as far as I'm aware, yet Luke is able to both telekinetically and telepathically resist and overpower him. There is no version of UnuThul that is stronger than Luke - in both a saber duel as well as a wizarding battle, he is getting humiliated.

Of course, UnuThul is a monster - he is empowered by trillions of other beings and can telekinetically bend turbolasers, and among the NJO baddies he is one of the few who has earned my respect. However, to assert he is above Sidious is a lofty claim given the Dark Lord's copious and consistent top-tier wank that I'm sure you're aware of, though if you're skeptical I can go over his best feats in detail. Moreover, Return of the Jedi is only six years away from Dark Empire where Sidious hits his peak and, again, is above Luke on your own list. Unless you're one of the people who assign a huge difference to his ROTJ and DE iterations, I don't understand how UnuThul could be more powerful than ROTJ Sheev, much less "by a decent amount" - and under that model you'd effectively have to say DE Sheev can one-shot ROTJ Sheev, which cycles back to the suspect claim of UnuThul being stronger than ROTJ Sheev due to the latter's extrapolated, humongous scaling over ROTS Sheev (23 years of growth as opposed to four at most between ROTJ and DE).

Zhao's the obvious pick, but my memory is iffy on what firebending-only Aang or Kyoshi have accomplished to merit a higher placement. I'd appreciate if someone could give me a run-down to justify them going over Zhao, whose skillset, even if ultimately middling, nonetheless serves as a solid baseline for any aspiring firebending master to reach, in my eyes. Aang and Kyoshi were still pretty much total novices.

Joker