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Introductio
Here we have another Star Wars revision. I assume you know what I'm about to discuss by reading the title. I know Plagueis has been upgraded and downgraded before, but after seeing Sidious and Vititate being upgraded to 4-B level, I think we must reassess Plagueis.
Darth Plagueis 'The Wise' is currently ranked as Multi-Continent Level (High 6-A). However, I believe he should be upgraded to Solar System Level (4-B) just like Sidious and Vitiate. Let me tell you why.
Feats
First, there's Plagueis' death at the hands of Sidious at the end of The Phantom Menace/Darth Plagueis novel. The way Sidious chose to kill Plagueis is as follows:
-He got him so drunk he was staggering around and crashed out on a chair, deeply unconscious
-He attacked him with a barrage of lightning so potent that Sidious had "never drawn on the Dark Side so deeply"
"The question lingered for only a moment, then Sidious unleashed another tangle of lightning, drawing more deeply on the dark side than he ever had." From (Darth Plagueis novel by James Luceno)
-He choked Plagueis by restricting his airways, causing him to suffocate.
-His respirator was also malfunctioning, and this strangling is what killed him.
Plagueis was caught in the worst situation ever. But Plagueis' response:
-Instead of attacking Sidious or putting up a defence, which he could have, he took the full brunt of the lightning on his body
-He couldn't do much about his destroyed respirator
-But what he did do was, arrogantly, attempt to counter-act Sidious killing him by actively replacing and healing his Midichlorians while being attacked by the lightning
"Crackling from his fingertips, a web of blue lightning ground itself on the Muun's breathing device. Plagueis's eyes snapped open, the Force gathering in him like a storm, but he stopped short of defending himself. This being who had survived assassinations and killed countless opponents merely gazed at Sidious, until it struck him that Plagueis was challenging him! Confident that he couldn't be killed, and in denial that he was slowly suffocating, he might have been simply experimenting with himself, actually courting death to put it in its place." From (Darth Plagueis novel by James Luceno)
Sidious saw that Plagueis was replacing his Midichlorians despite being blasted by the most powerful lightning in the mythos unguarded, completely intoxicated and suffocating. And that's the beauty of this whole feat! It wasn't Sidious' full power lightning barrage that killed Plagueis, he was strangled to death. The fact Plagueis was able to even use Midichlorian Manipulation in this scenario, let alone see visible results from doing so, to the point Sidious opted to choke him to death instead of exerting himself with his lightning, is utterly mindblowing. By tanking the strongest force lightning without any sort of Force barrier, this shows insane Regenerationn abilities as well.
After tanking a second barrage of Sidious' full powered lightning, Palpatine resorted to choking Plagueis. "Oh, yes, by all means gather your midi-chlorians, Plagueis." He held his thumb and forefinger close together. "Try to keep yourself alive while I choke the life out of you." From (Darth Plagueis novel by James Luceno)
Next, Plagueis caused the most severe winter Naboo had ever experienced in its history. The global temperature plummeted drastically, all the rivers, lakes and waterways were frozen solid, and violently shook all the mountains ranges:
"Later it would be said by Naboo and Gungan alike that they couldn't recall a colder winter than the one that followed Hego Damask's autumnal visit to their world. The rivers and even the falls below Theed froze; the rolling plains and tall forests were blanketed three meters deep with snow; plasmic quakes rocked the Gallo Mountains and the Lake Country, the Holy Places and the undersea city of Otoh Gunga; and many of the egresses of the underwaterways that hollowed the planet were blocked by ice floes."
--Taken from Darth Plagueis
The only thing in the mythos comparable to this feat is when Sidious turned Byss into a powerful dark side nexus. Vitiate never caused such a physcial change to a planet with his mere presence. No Sith before Plagueis ever had. Plagueis' death had also created a monumental tremor in the Force that literally affected the entire galaxy (I'm not going to post the quote since its so long, I'm sure many of you have seen the quote before) and was the most potent death tremor to date. Vitiate's death never caused such an effect, nor did his Valkorion form. This is how steeped Plagueis was in the dark side.
Also, it's unprecedented to unbalance the Force and delve into Midichlorian manipulation the way Plagueis did: it's like Valkorion's wet dream come true - Dark Side sovereignty over the galaxy and biological immortality - but Plagueis pulled it off without spending "thousands of years plundering the deepest depths of the Dark Side".
Statements
Here are several statements that further analyze Darth Plagueis' power.
Darth Plagueis was adept in some of the most arcane and unnatural applications of the Force:
"Plagueis, the wise, was an adept of some of the most arcane and unnatural applications of the Force." ('StarWars.com Databank: Darth Sidious)
Darth Plagueis attained unprecedented mastery over life and death, a realm of ability described as the 'ultimate power':
"Darth Plagueis: Like all Sith Lords before him, he craves absolute power. But like no Sith Lord ever, he possesses the ultimate power—over life and death." ('Darth Plagueis, Novel Synopsis)
"For like no other disciple of the dark side, Darth Plagueis learns to command the ultimate power … over life and death." ('Darth Plagueis, Novel Synopsis)
"His inward turn had enabled him to master the equally powerful energies of order and disorder, creation and entropy, life and death." ('Darth Plagueis)
Palpatine perceived Plagueis through the Force as terrifying nexus of energy able to contain the full power of the dark side:
"Seen through the Force, he was a nuclear oval of mottled light, a rotating orb of terrifying energy. If the Maladian attack had weakened him physically, it had also helped to shape his etheric body into a vessel sufficiently strong to contain the full power of the dark side." ('Darth Plagueis)
Plagueis came to understand that there were no powers he could not achieve through sheer effort of will, and that if a Sith of equal power had preceded him, their secrets had been lost to history:
"But Plagueis now understood that Tenebrous had been wrong about sorcery, as he had been wrong about so many things. Yes, the gift was strongest in those who, with scant effort, could allow themselves to be subsumed by the currents of the Force and become conduits for the powers of the dark side. But there was an alternative path to those abilities, and it led from a place where the circle closed on itself and sheer will substituted for selflessness. Plagueis understood, too, that there were no powers beyond his reach; none he couldn't master through an effort of will. If a Sith of equal power had preceded him, then that one had taken his or her secrets to the grave, or had locked them away in holocrons that had been destroyed or had yet to surface." (Darth Plagueis)
This above quote is very important for understanding Plagueis' true power. Plagueis is very well aware of Vitiate's past existence and so does Sidious. Several ancient Sith holocrons were kept by Darth Plagueis and were presumably inherited by Darth Sidious. Plagueis said that there's no Sith that have ever equaled his power to his knowledge. He's certainly aware of Vitiate's exploits, as well as other well known exploits like Nihilus', Revan and Malak's, etc. as the novel indicates. This suggests that Plagueis is confident that he has eclipsed or has the means to eclipse all known feats of power previously in the mythos, which would include Nihilus' Drain, Vitiate's Ziost instance, etc. He knows he's more powerful than anyone who came before him, which includes Vitiate. Don't forget that Plagueis was so powerful that he could learn any power through sheer force of will, even if he wasn't naturally gifted with the ability to use it. Who else can claim that?
Plagueis' willpower was sufficient to uncover just about all Dark Side abilities we're familiar with. Midichlorian Manipulation is the most unprecedented one of them all to master, because the Force actively resists having it's Midichlorians - it's "proxy army" to quote - being manipulated by mere mortals. That's why Plagueis was the only one able to use it; he unbalanced the Force on a galactic scale, again, by directing his willpower towards it in meditation, and thus subverted the Force's resistance to manipulating Midichlorians. Plagueis was also stated to have the ability to increase his own Midichlorian count as well.
Plagueis has an accolade of being the most powerful Sith Lord to have ever lived up to his time.
"Plagueis was the most powerful Sith Lord who ever lived." (Darth Plagueis, Novel Synopsis)
Through midi-chlorian manipulation Plagueis was able to tap into the deepest strata of the Force in ways that his ancient Sith predecessors had not:
"In the same way that the pre-Bane Sith had been responsible for their own extinction, the great dark side Lords of the past had doomed themselves to the nether realm through their attempts to conquer death by feeding off the energies of others, rather than by tapping the deepest strata of the Force and learning to speak the language of the midi-chlorians." ('Darth Plagueis)
According to James Luceno, had it come a battle between Plagueis and Sidious, the former would more have emerged victorious:
Q: Do you feel that, had it come to a contest of lightsabers or Force powers, Sidious would have prevailed anyway?
A: If it had come to a duel, I think Plagueis may have found a way to undermine his apprentice.
James Luceno, Facebook Q&A
Despite being over a decade into his training, Plagueis' remained powerful beyond Palpatine's comprehension:
"Palpatine hadn't been attempting to flatter Plagueis when he had called him wise-not entirely, at any rate. The Muun was powerful beyond Palpatine's present understanding." ('Darth Plagueis)
At the end of his training, despite his powers increasing tenfold since, Palpatine remained uncertain whether he was as powerful and masterful in the Force as Plagueis:
"Sidious knew that his own powers had increased tenfold over the decades, but he couldn't be certain he had learned all of Plagueis's secrets—"his sorcerer's ways," as the Sun Guards referred to them—including the ability to prevent beings from dying. He sometimes wondered: Was he a level behind? Two levels behind? Such questions were precisely what had driven generations of Sith apprentices ultimately to challenge their Masters. The uncertainty about who was the more powerful." ('Darth Plagueis)
Some two decades before Plagueis' prime, Sidious believed that alongside himself his Master was more than equal to the Jedi's most powerful members:
"While he accepted that he and Plagueis were more than equal to the most powerful of the Jedi Order, he understood that they were no match for their combined strength—the Sith imperative notwithstanding." ('Darth Plagueis)
This above quote suggests that a pre-prime Plagueis was already more than a match for the most powerful Jedi of their time, which includes Yoda and Mace Windu.
While traveling to Aborah, Sidious has a vision of Aborah and perceives it inordinately saturated in the dark side, a result of Plagueis' use of the Force while there:
"A standard month after the events on Coruscant, Plagueis summoned Sidious to Muunilinst. Sidious had visited the High Port skyhook but had never been invited downside, and now he found himself soaring over one of the planet's unspoiled blue oceans in a stylish airspeeder piloted by two Sun Guards. As the speeder approached Aborah, he settled deeply into the Force and was rewarded with a vision of the mountain island as a transcendent vortex of dark energy unlike anything he had ever experienced. It was something he would have expected to encounter only on Korriban or some other Sith world."
Conclusion
Darth Plagueis needs to be upgraded to Solar System Level (4-B) or at least Large Star Level if you don't agree with me. When Sidious killed Plagueis, why did he do so when the Muun was asleep? TPM Sidious knew he was no match for him and feared him:
"Was it possible that the wily Muun had deceived him? Had Plagueis unlocked the key to immortality, and survived after all? Never mind that it would constitute a petty move for one so wise—for one who had professed to place the Grand Plan above all else. Had Plagueis become ensnared in a self-spun web of jealousy and possessiveness, victim of his own engineering, his own foibles? If he hadn't been concerned for his own safety, Sidious might have pitied him. Wary of approaching the corpse of his former Master, he called on the Force to roll the aged Muun over onto his back. From that angle Plagueis looked almost as he had when Sidious first met him, decades earlier: smooth, hairless cranium; humped nose, with its bridge flattened as if from a shock-ball blow and its sharp tip pressed almost to his upper lip; jutting lower jaw; sunken eyes still brimming with menace—a physical characteristic rarely encountered in a Muun. But then Plagueis had never been an ordinary Muun, nor an ordinary being of any sort. Sidious took care, still reaching out with the Force. On closer inspection, he saw that Plagueis's already cyanotic flesh was smoothing out, his features relaxing. Faintly aware of the whir of air scrubbers and sounds of the outside world infiltrating the luxurious suite, he continued the vigil; then, in relief, he pulled himself up to his full height and let out his breath. This was no Sith trick." (Darth Plagueis)
Here we have another Star Wars revision. I assume you know what I'm about to discuss by reading the title. I know Plagueis has been upgraded and downgraded before, but after seeing Sidious and Vititate being upgraded to 4-B level, I think we must reassess Plagueis.
Darth Plagueis 'The Wise' is currently ranked as Multi-Continent Level (High 6-A). However, I believe he should be upgraded to Solar System Level (4-B) just like Sidious and Vitiate. Let me tell you why.
Feats
First, there's Plagueis' death at the hands of Sidious at the end of The Phantom Menace/Darth Plagueis novel. The way Sidious chose to kill Plagueis is as follows:
-He got him so drunk he was staggering around and crashed out on a chair, deeply unconscious
-He attacked him with a barrage of lightning so potent that Sidious had "never drawn on the Dark Side so deeply"
"The question lingered for only a moment, then Sidious unleashed another tangle of lightning, drawing more deeply on the dark side than he ever had." From (Darth Plagueis novel by James Luceno)
-He choked Plagueis by restricting his airways, causing him to suffocate.
-His respirator was also malfunctioning, and this strangling is what killed him.
Plagueis was caught in the worst situation ever. But Plagueis' response:
-Instead of attacking Sidious or putting up a defence, which he could have, he took the full brunt of the lightning on his body
-He couldn't do much about his destroyed respirator
-But what he did do was, arrogantly, attempt to counter-act Sidious killing him by actively replacing and healing his Midichlorians while being attacked by the lightning
"Crackling from his fingertips, a web of blue lightning ground itself on the Muun's breathing device. Plagueis's eyes snapped open, the Force gathering in him like a storm, but he stopped short of defending himself. This being who had survived assassinations and killed countless opponents merely gazed at Sidious, until it struck him that Plagueis was challenging him! Confident that he couldn't be killed, and in denial that he was slowly suffocating, he might have been simply experimenting with himself, actually courting death to put it in its place." From (Darth Plagueis novel by James Luceno)
Sidious saw that Plagueis was replacing his Midichlorians despite being blasted by the most powerful lightning in the mythos unguarded, completely intoxicated and suffocating. And that's the beauty of this whole feat! It wasn't Sidious' full power lightning barrage that killed Plagueis, he was strangled to death. The fact Plagueis was able to even use Midichlorian Manipulation in this scenario, let alone see visible results from doing so, to the point Sidious opted to choke him to death instead of exerting himself with his lightning, is utterly mindblowing. By tanking the strongest force lightning without any sort of Force barrier, this shows insane Regenerationn abilities as well.
After tanking a second barrage of Sidious' full powered lightning, Palpatine resorted to choking Plagueis. "Oh, yes, by all means gather your midi-chlorians, Plagueis." He held his thumb and forefinger close together. "Try to keep yourself alive while I choke the life out of you." From (Darth Plagueis novel by James Luceno)
Next, Plagueis caused the most severe winter Naboo had ever experienced in its history. The global temperature plummeted drastically, all the rivers, lakes and waterways were frozen solid, and violently shook all the mountains ranges:
"Later it would be said by Naboo and Gungan alike that they couldn't recall a colder winter than the one that followed Hego Damask's autumnal visit to their world. The rivers and even the falls below Theed froze; the rolling plains and tall forests were blanketed three meters deep with snow; plasmic quakes rocked the Gallo Mountains and the Lake Country, the Holy Places and the undersea city of Otoh Gunga; and many of the egresses of the underwaterways that hollowed the planet were blocked by ice floes."
--Taken from Darth Plagueis
The only thing in the mythos comparable to this feat is when Sidious turned Byss into a powerful dark side nexus. Vitiate never caused such a physcial change to a planet with his mere presence. No Sith before Plagueis ever had. Plagueis' death had also created a monumental tremor in the Force that literally affected the entire galaxy (I'm not going to post the quote since its so long, I'm sure many of you have seen the quote before) and was the most potent death tremor to date. Vitiate's death never caused such an effect, nor did his Valkorion form. This is how steeped Plagueis was in the dark side.
Also, it's unprecedented to unbalance the Force and delve into Midichlorian manipulation the way Plagueis did: it's like Valkorion's wet dream come true - Dark Side sovereignty over the galaxy and biological immortality - but Plagueis pulled it off without spending "thousands of years plundering the deepest depths of the Dark Side".
Statements
Here are several statements that further analyze Darth Plagueis' power.
Darth Plagueis was adept in some of the most arcane and unnatural applications of the Force:
"Plagueis, the wise, was an adept of some of the most arcane and unnatural applications of the Force." ('StarWars.com Databank: Darth Sidious)
Darth Plagueis attained unprecedented mastery over life and death, a realm of ability described as the 'ultimate power':
"Darth Plagueis: Like all Sith Lords before him, he craves absolute power. But like no Sith Lord ever, he possesses the ultimate power—over life and death." ('Darth Plagueis, Novel Synopsis)
"For like no other disciple of the dark side, Darth Plagueis learns to command the ultimate power … over life and death." ('Darth Plagueis, Novel Synopsis)
"His inward turn had enabled him to master the equally powerful energies of order and disorder, creation and entropy, life and death." ('Darth Plagueis)
Palpatine perceived Plagueis through the Force as terrifying nexus of energy able to contain the full power of the dark side:
"Seen through the Force, he was a nuclear oval of mottled light, a rotating orb of terrifying energy. If the Maladian attack had weakened him physically, it had also helped to shape his etheric body into a vessel sufficiently strong to contain the full power of the dark side." ('Darth Plagueis)
Plagueis came to understand that there were no powers he could not achieve through sheer effort of will, and that if a Sith of equal power had preceded him, their secrets had been lost to history:
"But Plagueis now understood that Tenebrous had been wrong about sorcery, as he had been wrong about so many things. Yes, the gift was strongest in those who, with scant effort, could allow themselves to be subsumed by the currents of the Force and become conduits for the powers of the dark side. But there was an alternative path to those abilities, and it led from a place where the circle closed on itself and sheer will substituted for selflessness. Plagueis understood, too, that there were no powers beyond his reach; none he couldn't master through an effort of will. If a Sith of equal power had preceded him, then that one had taken his or her secrets to the grave, or had locked them away in holocrons that had been destroyed or had yet to surface." (Darth Plagueis)
This above quote is very important for understanding Plagueis' true power. Plagueis is very well aware of Vitiate's past existence and so does Sidious. Several ancient Sith holocrons were kept by Darth Plagueis and were presumably inherited by Darth Sidious. Plagueis said that there's no Sith that have ever equaled his power to his knowledge. He's certainly aware of Vitiate's exploits, as well as other well known exploits like Nihilus', Revan and Malak's, etc. as the novel indicates. This suggests that Plagueis is confident that he has eclipsed or has the means to eclipse all known feats of power previously in the mythos, which would include Nihilus' Drain, Vitiate's Ziost instance, etc. He knows he's more powerful than anyone who came before him, which includes Vitiate. Don't forget that Plagueis was so powerful that he could learn any power through sheer force of will, even if he wasn't naturally gifted with the ability to use it. Who else can claim that?
Plagueis' willpower was sufficient to uncover just about all Dark Side abilities we're familiar with. Midichlorian Manipulation is the most unprecedented one of them all to master, because the Force actively resists having it's Midichlorians - it's "proxy army" to quote - being manipulated by mere mortals. That's why Plagueis was the only one able to use it; he unbalanced the Force on a galactic scale, again, by directing his willpower towards it in meditation, and thus subverted the Force's resistance to manipulating Midichlorians. Plagueis was also stated to have the ability to increase his own Midichlorian count as well.
Plagueis has an accolade of being the most powerful Sith Lord to have ever lived up to his time.
"Plagueis was the most powerful Sith Lord who ever lived." (Darth Plagueis, Novel Synopsis)
Through midi-chlorian manipulation Plagueis was able to tap into the deepest strata of the Force in ways that his ancient Sith predecessors had not:
"In the same way that the pre-Bane Sith had been responsible for their own extinction, the great dark side Lords of the past had doomed themselves to the nether realm through their attempts to conquer death by feeding off the energies of others, rather than by tapping the deepest strata of the Force and learning to speak the language of the midi-chlorians." ('Darth Plagueis)
According to James Luceno, had it come a battle between Plagueis and Sidious, the former would more have emerged victorious:
Q: Do you feel that, had it come to a contest of lightsabers or Force powers, Sidious would have prevailed anyway?
A: If it had come to a duel, I think Plagueis may have found a way to undermine his apprentice.
James Luceno, Facebook Q&A
Despite being over a decade into his training, Plagueis' remained powerful beyond Palpatine's comprehension:
"Palpatine hadn't been attempting to flatter Plagueis when he had called him wise-not entirely, at any rate. The Muun was powerful beyond Palpatine's present understanding." ('Darth Plagueis)
At the end of his training, despite his powers increasing tenfold since, Palpatine remained uncertain whether he was as powerful and masterful in the Force as Plagueis:
"Sidious knew that his own powers had increased tenfold over the decades, but he couldn't be certain he had learned all of Plagueis's secrets—"his sorcerer's ways," as the Sun Guards referred to them—including the ability to prevent beings from dying. He sometimes wondered: Was he a level behind? Two levels behind? Such questions were precisely what had driven generations of Sith apprentices ultimately to challenge their Masters. The uncertainty about who was the more powerful." ('Darth Plagueis)
Some two decades before Plagueis' prime, Sidious believed that alongside himself his Master was more than equal to the Jedi's most powerful members:
"While he accepted that he and Plagueis were more than equal to the most powerful of the Jedi Order, he understood that they were no match for their combined strength—the Sith imperative notwithstanding." ('Darth Plagueis)
This above quote suggests that a pre-prime Plagueis was already more than a match for the most powerful Jedi of their time, which includes Yoda and Mace Windu.
While traveling to Aborah, Sidious has a vision of Aborah and perceives it inordinately saturated in the dark side, a result of Plagueis' use of the Force while there:
"A standard month after the events on Coruscant, Plagueis summoned Sidious to Muunilinst. Sidious had visited the High Port skyhook but had never been invited downside, and now he found himself soaring over one of the planet's unspoiled blue oceans in a stylish airspeeder piloted by two Sun Guards. As the speeder approached Aborah, he settled deeply into the Force and was rewarded with a vision of the mountain island as a transcendent vortex of dark energy unlike anything he had ever experienced. It was something he would have expected to encounter only on Korriban or some other Sith world."
Conclusion
Darth Plagueis needs to be upgraded to Solar System Level (4-B) or at least Large Star Level if you don't agree with me. When Sidious killed Plagueis, why did he do so when the Muun was asleep? TPM Sidious knew he was no match for him and feared him:
"Was it possible that the wily Muun had deceived him? Had Plagueis unlocked the key to immortality, and survived after all? Never mind that it would constitute a petty move for one so wise—for one who had professed to place the Grand Plan above all else. Had Plagueis become ensnared in a self-spun web of jealousy and possessiveness, victim of his own engineering, his own foibles? If he hadn't been concerned for his own safety, Sidious might have pitied him. Wary of approaching the corpse of his former Master, he called on the Force to roll the aged Muun over onto his back. From that angle Plagueis looked almost as he had when Sidious first met him, decades earlier: smooth, hairless cranium; humped nose, with its bridge flattened as if from a shock-ball blow and its sharp tip pressed almost to his upper lip; jutting lower jaw; sunken eyes still brimming with menace—a physical characteristic rarely encountered in a Muun. But then Plagueis had never been an ordinary Muun, nor an ordinary being of any sort. Sidious took care, still reaching out with the Force. On closer inspection, he saw that Plagueis's already cyanotic flesh was smoothing out, his features relaxing. Faintly aware of the whir of air scrubbers and sounds of the outside world infiltrating the luxurious suite, he continued the vigil; then, in relief, he pulled himself up to his full height and let out his breath. This was no Sith trick." (Darth Plagueis)