Lit How does the Dark Side of the Force affect the user's body?

Many Sith' body were corrupted or even damaged by the power of the Dark Side while they also used its power to heal themselves, but Plagueis could use it to rejuvenate his body and was so close to immortality, he could even revive the dead by using the Dark Side. So maybe other Sith went the wrong way?

 

From what we gather, deterioration of the body due to the Dark Side happens with the Nightsisters (Gethzerion's group), Palpatine (who had a way of fixing it due to the Prequel one being fine), King Ommin, and a number of others like the Dark side Exile's group.

I think it's probably a good idea to just assume the Dark Side CAN ravage the body but it happens rarely. It suspect it's probably related to improper training.

 

Most of the Sith in Old Republic game got corruption on their faces, some also use cyborg parts to help their body.

 

The Dark Side is a laxative of the Light Side. The spiritual is linked to the physical, thus the effect. Embracing the Dark Side is a leading cause of Jaundice.

 

Was there any explanation as to how/why Palpatine got all warped from the electricity in RotS? After all, Luke took a lot in RotJ and he came out looking fine.

 

There's an idea that the "warping" mostly predates RoTS- but he used a technique of Sith Alchemy called "mask" to conceal the ravages of the Dark Side. That lightning basically ripped up his disguise, making it impossible to put it on again.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mask_(Sith_Alchemy)

 

Seriously, that question is a keg of powder. People are divided between two ways to see it:
1) He used more power when trying to kill Windu and got all warped from his own lightning.
2) The "Palpatine face" was a mask which he dropped during the lightning because he didn't need it any more, and "Sidious face" is what he really looks like since he's so Dark Side chief.

You'll find that both sides have their proof and are sure of being right.

 

I'm ok with it being a bit of both- the process of blasting away the mask also added a bit of warping to his face.

He has "ordinary" hands at the start of the movie, and right after the fight, but has pale hands with black nails later, so some disguising was being used.

 

I think we can dispatch with the theory that he was masking a deformity. Unless something really major happened after the events of TPM. Plagueis pretty much backs that up. So I'll go with 1.

 

Palpatine's Force lightning is actually a hybrid Force lightning/Force drain power that gives him back two Force points for every one Force point he drains from his target (he took that "OVERCHARGE" evolution at rank 5). Since it was redirected at himself, he ended up in a feedback loop that gave him POWER, UNLIMITED POWER and supercharged him with dark side energy which warped his entire body, face, hands, everything. It isn't even his final form. /making stuff up

 

Not sure how you quoted me....I didn't post that.

 

The debate:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Palpatine#Disfiguration_debate

discusses the theories- and "a combination of factors" does seem to explain most of the issues.

 

fixed it.

 

Yeah, I prefer Ulicus' direction that it had to do with draining his own body to power the lightning. If it was a mask, it doesn't make sense to drop it willingly at that point. The last thing you'd want to do on Day One of your new Empire is give the populace another reason to be scared of you. Sure, he used it as part of his lies about the Jedi Rebellion, but it seemed more like a cover for an event he had to explain away than something he would have brought on himself on purpose.

I much preferred the old explanation that decades of using the dark side slowly chewed up his body but by the time it became really bad he was rarely seen in public anymore. I would have preferred to see H.I.M. end Episode III hale and hearty, maybe with the yellow eyes and some extra wrinkling, leaving the damage to take place in the inter-movies period, but alas.

 

Hence the idea that he didn't drop it willingly- Mace's reflecting lightning on him destroyed the mask to the point of making it irreplaceable- as well as damaging his face further.

 

Manisphere

No worries. Just wanted to clarify.

 

For years, the "scarred by the lightning" position persisted despite the fact that there was actually no canon evidence supporting it, while there was a large accumulation of sources contradicting it. As stated it does not work with Luke in ROTJ, a problem which its proponents are all too ready to overlook. A famous Hidalgo quote on the situation, when closely read, merely equivocates and says nothing definitive.

Well, that's still part of the scenario under the "true form" theory, because that's supposed to be the reason for the "mask" in the first place. It's not assumed that Palpatine was born looking like that ( or at least I hope not ).

Like other things in the book, the treatment of lightning is ultimately more open to ambiguity than it may appear at first glance. Plagueis insists that to use lightning properly, to utilize the power to its fullest extent, one must have been on the receiving end at some point ( though we see no such thing in the Bane books ). Are we to infer that when Palpatine uses lightning at the end of the book he is not using it properly? What about his use of lightning in ROTS? If we assume for the sake of argument that Palpatine was indeed using the full power of lightning in either of these instances, then according to Plagueis that would mean he would have to have been hit by it at some earlier point. So if lightning indeed has the power to physically transform the victim, there would potentially still be a reason for the "mask" to exist during the prequel timeframe. As a previous Luceno novel stated in 2005, Palpatine's disfigurements - assumed to be the result of the confrontation with the Jedi - were "really nothing new".

 

That is the very first time I've ever heard such an idea, but I have now decided that I support this idea 110%.

What the Sith Emperor can do, H.I.M can do better. Who cares about black eyes when your entire body looks like a shrivelled prune!

 

Agreed. Then there's an extra WHOA factor for those watching in order when the Emperor finally shows his face again in the later films.

Hell, it seems pretty clear that this was the original plan at least as recently as AotC. You can see Ian's been made up in that film to look like he's decaying to some extent, and he's been painted with liver spots and the like. I also remember him giving an interview in the SW magazine (it wasn't called Insider in the UK, back then) where he pretty much out-and-out said that slow decay over the films was how things were going to go. Come the beginning of RotS, this has been abandoned entirely and he looks perfectly hale and hearty until he fries himself.

 

From Insider 82:

 

The way the Dark Side ravages some people's bodies and not others, or the amount of damage caused, has never seemed all that consistent to me. Though it does at least seem to be agreed by everyone that it does effect the body to some extent. Whether its Ommin not being able to move his body any longer, a Nightsister blood vessel, Palpatine's whole mask and later body issue, or just Darth Bane aging a little faster.

And in terms of the Palpatine's face it seems to me that its just a little of both.

 

I think the natural effect is deterioration. However, the dark side of the Force could be used as a tool to make things better.

 

Can it be so that the dark side some time warp the mind and sometime the body? And in some cases both?