vs.
Who is more intelligent?
Who has powerful minions to command?
Whose power of the dark side is powerful?
Sith Emperor vs. Emperor Palpatine
vs.
Who is more intelligent?
Who has powerful minions to command?
Whose power of the dark side is powerful?
This is a laughable comparison.
1) Intelligence: Palpatine. This is an easy comparison, considering Palpatine was able to manipulate and do anything he desired in plain, public view because nobody knew who he was. He was easily the greatest manipualator, followed by Traya. Vitiate, on the other hand, was actually practically "being manipulated" - Revan consistently probed his mind and delayed his invasion of the Republic by 300 years. He didn't even realize Scourge's betrayal until it was too late - in fact, nobody in the Empire did. Scourge deceived him for a full three hundred years - plain in his face, and he didn't even know the Dark Council was planning to betray him, either, until Scourge revealed that to him. Palpatine was able to lengthen his term as Supreme Chancellor indefinitely and played both sides of his war against each other. On the other hand, Vitiate was so completely paranoid of death that he constantly attempted to further his powers in the dark side, and with the addition of countless amulets and trinkets, he still wasn't as powerful as Palpatine, even if we only considered the latter's sheer power. We can get to that later, however.
Palpatine also managed to single-handedly transform the Galactic Republic which stood for over twenty millenia into the Galactic Empire.
2) Minions: This is the only debatable issue - Palpatine has Vader, who is more powerful than anybody Vitiate commanded, but Vitiate had more beings who were more powerful - in fact, he had more minions in general, primarily because he had over a millenium's worth of minions as well.
3) Palpatine's sheer power vastly outweights Vitiate's - in fact, he could kill him before he could react, as he could fight faster than Anakin or Leia could see, and he slew Agen Kolar, Kit Fisto and Saesee Tinn before Windu could even react - and Windu only stalemated Palpatine in saber dueling alone through an exorbitant amp, and even then Palpatine could kill him at any time he desired through the Force. He achieved far more than Vitiate could dream of - and was the single most powerful Sith Lord in history.
To illustrate my points:
Palpatine is fighting faster than Anakin can see:
Anakin blinked and rubbed his eyes again. Maybe he was still a bit flash-blind—the Korun Master seemed to be fading in and out of existence, half swallowed by a thickening black haze in which danced a meter-long bar of sunfire. Mace pressed back the darkness with a relentless straight-ahead march; his own blade, that distinctive amethyst blaze that had been the final sight of so many evil beings across the galaxy, made a haze of its own: an oblate sphere of purple fire within which there seemed to be dozens of swords slashing in all directions at once.
The shadow he fought, that blur of speed—could that be Palpatine?
Their blades flared and flashed, crashing together with bursts of fire, weaving nets of killing energy in exchanges so fast that Anakin could not truly see them—but he could feel them in the Force. The Force itself roiled and burst and crashed around them, boiling with power and lightspeed ricochets of lethal intent. And it was darkening.
He could feel the end of this battle approaching, and so could the blur of Sith he faced; in the Force, the shadow had become a pulsar of fear.
Source: Revenge of the Sith
He appears to wield countless blades to Darth Maul:
Sidious raised his saber and flew at Maul, who parried desperately, his mechanical legs whirring as he sought to counter his former Master’s blows. Sidious’s sabers were a blur, a whirling cage of deadly plasma. Maul danced away from one blow, then reversed his movement to avoid another, and then there were too many to count, and then there were even more than that.
Maul’s saber spun out of his hand, bouncing away across the floor.
Source: Darth Maul: Shadow Conspiracy
He kills three masters before Windu knows what has happened:
Before Mace realizes what has happened, Kolar, Tiin, and Fisto have fallen to Sidious's blade.
Source: The Complete Visual Dictionary
He bends Windu's saber with Lightning, stopping short of killing him in order to fake weakness and lure Anakin to the Dark Side. Proof he could have easily killed Windu at any instance:
Lightning blasted the clouds above, and lightning blasted from Palpatine's hands, and Mace didn't have time to comprehend what Palpatine was talking about; he had time only to slip back into Vaapad and angle his blade to catch the forking arcs of pure, dazzling hatred that clawed toward him. Because Vaapad is more than a fighting style. It is a state of mind: a channel for darkness. Power passed into him and out again without touching him. And the circuit completed itself: the lightning reflected back to its source.
Palpatine still made no move to defend himself from Skywalker; instead he ramped up the lightning bursting from his hands, bending the fountain of Mace's blade back toward the Korun Master's face.
Mace's blade bent so close to his face that he was choking on ozone. "Anakin, he's too strong for me—"
This was beyond Vaapad; he had no strength left to fight against his own blade.
Source: Revenge of the Sith
Palpatine overwhelms Yoda's Force Deflection/Absorption:
In the Senate Arena, lightning forked from the hands of a Sith, and bent away from the gesture of a Jedi to shock Redrobes into unconsciousness. Then there were only the two of them. Their clash transcended the personal; when new lightning blazed, it was not Palpatine burning Yoda with his hate, it was the Lord of all Sith scorching the Master of all Jedi into a smoldering huddle of clothing and green flesh.
Source: Revenge of the Sith
The end came with astonishing suddenness. The shadow could feel how much it cost the little green freak to bend back his lightnings into the cage of energy that enclosed them both; the creature had reached the limits of his strength.
Source: Revenge of the Sith
Palpatine destroys a small army with a burst of Lightning:
He is the only being who can create Wormholes, and they destroy the surfaces of planets, annihilate fleets and transport beings across the galaxy:
Gallery
He has mastered all known Force techniques and invented new ones at his leisure:
Palpatine has spent decades studying the most arcane and esoteric Jedi disciplines. It is believed that he has mastered nearly all the known powers, previously unknown powers, and devises new ones at his pleasure.
Source: Dark Empire Sourcebook
Palpatine's essence returns from the void by the sheer force of will alone:
Palpatine's body was destroyed. Separated from his clones, Palpatine was forced to survive in the maddening, bodiless existence of the void. Through sheer will he retained his identity, crossing the gulf of space to again take up residence in his clone body.
Source: Gamer #5
Credit to Silver for this quote
That's a very short section on the extent of Palpatine's powers and abilities (there's more about him casually draining entire planets of life, brainwashing twenty billion citizens effortlessly, inducing fear into his minions and so on), but even now it is evident he is the most powerful Sith. Canon itself has stated that, in fact:
Yoda went after Palpatine in the empty Senate chamber, but could not defeat the most powerful Sith Lord in history.
Source: The New Essential Chronology
Beyond the vision of the Jedi Knights, somewhere within the darkness, the greatest master of evil ever to use Sith power bides his time. As his strength grows, his plans begin to shape the course of the galaxy, and his snares await the unsuspecting.
Source: The Complete Visual Dictionary
Definitely a victory to Palpatine.
@reikai said:
Intelligence: Vitiate. He actually built his resources up from nothing. Sid had everything handed to him, his resources and anonymity passed down from Darth Bane. Vitiate didn't get that option since he was with the remnant Sith people after the Republic and Jedi tried to commit genocide on them.
And know what he did? He took a week-long trip to reach Dromund Kaas into several decades of wandering through the Unknown Regions, for the sole purpose of brainwashing and making the entire Sith people, Lords and all else completely dependent upon him and raised himself up as their Emperor, akin to a God. While at the same time killing anyone who tried to subvert his authority. And for the next 1500yrs he ruled without question. And anytime even one or two Dark Council members started crap with him, he killed the entire group by himself, as a message not to pull those stunts ever again.
And here's another thing. Palpatine's entire goal was ruling the galaxy and destroying the Jedi. Nothing new or original there. Vitiate's goal was to become GOD, by enacting a ritual to strip the entire galaxy of all life to merge it with himself and then move across the universe to learn all things in existence for the rest of eternity. He didn't care about ruling the Empire or knocking off the Jedi in any major way. Being the Emperor and using the war was just a means to an end, and nobody, not even the Dark Council members, perhaps not even the Emperor's Hand, had any idea what his true goal was.
Minions: Vitiate. Hands down. Revan doesn't count since he wasn't intended, and Revan broke free, came back, and was the sole reason why Vitiate didn't start the war three-centuries earlier and steamroll the entire Republic. Palpy only has a handful of Force Users at his beck&call, and the Stormtroopers are useless. Vitiate has the Dark Council, Emperor's Hand, Imperial Guard, and the entire Sith Order, along with the Imperial Military, to do what he wants. That also included the Dread Masters.
The Dread Masters by themselves would decimate Palpy's army of Stormtroopers.
Please don't babble on about nonsense you know nothing about. Palpatine didn't simply seek to rule the galaxy/destroy the Jedi and Republic: If you had actually read anything about Palpatine you would realize his goal was to achieve absolute power; effectively, to become omnipotent. I also like how you didn't even include a section about "powers", and that simply points to Vitiate's inferiority to Palpatine.
For your intelligence points, I fail to see how manipulating the broken and desperate remains of the Sith Empire comes close to manipulating the entire Republic (including the Jedi Order which was at its peak in history) while in absolute plain view. Vitiate has practically concealed himself from his entire empire for over a millenium for fear that he would be killed - he has only revealed himself to those servants that he has specifically bonded himself to or brainwashed.
The Minions part is the only debatable part - but even so, one of his minions, Revan, as you yourself noted, broke free of the Emperor's brainwash. In fact, Malak did as well, and arguably their entire Empire did.
The Dread Masters aren't very special if some Jedi Strike Team managed to kidnap them - and if another Strike Team managed to kill all but one of them that begged for mercy and was spared. Their overly-exaggerated reputation and others' excessive fear of them (mainly because of what they were rumoured to do and because they were Vitiate's personal servants) far exceeds their actual powers.
The Dark Council is Vitiate's biggest advantage in this, and I still think Palpatine's Stormtroopers supersede Vitiate's regular soldiers.
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