Darth Krayt's Identity to be Revealed in Legacy #15 (spoilers, obviously)

He lost that eye somehow, DarthMane2.

Clearly, it doesn't kill him.

 

Whatever turned someone like Krayt to the dark side can turn someone like Cade....besides, as Caedus would say (or think), there is no better apprentice than one who blames you for their parent's death.

 

It would if the Saber went all the way through his head. If not the eye ball shot, then there are plenty of other Illiad death scenes to choose from.

the one dude that took it through the ear for example. I think Achillies did that. I think it was a spear through the belly, and sword through the side of the head.

 

Er, where people get the idea that Kit wasn't a good fighter is beyond me. He survived Geonosis, was acknowledged by Obi-wan to be a better saberist in The Cestus Deception(although this was a bit more than a year before ROTS), treated Magnaguards like they were nothing in Labyrinth of Evil, and lasted several seconds longer than fellow master saberists Agen Kolar and Saesee Tiin against ol' Palps. He's not one of the greats, but to say that A'Sharad would hand him his squishy butt on a platter is a bit of an assumption. If Tholme or Quinlan could do it, Kit stands a pretty good chance of being able to as well. He definitely could back in the day; in Legacy, we really don't know yet. Other than seeing Krayt dispatch a bunch of no-name Imp Knights, what has he done that seems all that powerful?

 

I don't think the argument is that 19 BBY Hett > 19 BBY Fisto, but rather that 137 ABY Hett > 19 BBY Fisto. What the point of said comparison is, I don't know.

Personally, it's entirely subjective. It's quite likely that 137 ABY Fisto > 137 ABY Hett, but we'll never really know that.

 

Other than seeing Krayt dispatch a bunch of no-name Imp Knights, what has he done that seems all that powerful?

Living a century, dominating a vast number of lesser powered force wielders?

I have no difficulty believing A'Sharad Hett could defeat Fisto.

He was a great warrior but I tend to think Hett was special.

 

Oh, he's fine. He's a very good bladesbeing. He's just not on Hett's level.

So did Barriss Offee. Now, I love Barriss to death, but let's get real.

Obi-Wan perpetually downplays his own abilities. Kit's great, but Obi-Wan is much, much better. You could make an argument that Obi-Wan is actually the greatest swordsman in the Order by the time of ROTS and it wouldn't be totally crazy.

Yes, he did, but that still doesn't put him in the top rank. I don't think Hett's in the top rank at that point, either, but he's sort of in the gap between the real heavy hitters and the merely very good.

No, no, it's definitely the former, not the latter. 137 ABY Hett > 19 BBY Fisto is obvious. 19 BBY Hett > 19 BBY Fisto is the argument.

 

LOL I can't beleive you all are arguing over if Hett is better than Kit....sigh....Hett is better obviously....in both time periods....

 

Eh, sorry dizfactor, but I see no evidence that supports your argument as to their relative strengths in 19 BBY. The only comic they appear together in is Obsession, and neither do anything particularly spectacular in it.

Hett's other exploits amount to beating up Anakin (for which we all, I'm sure, love him greatly) and killing some Morgukai and flying around a starfighter at Saleucami. I see a capable, middle of the road Jedi. I don't see anything that speaks to him being somehow in the upper echelons of swordmastery, particularly nothing that says he outclasses a Jedi Master who is an acknowledged master of Form I, a Jedi Council member and, more importantly, someone with several decades of experience on Hett. I think your estimation of his ability is wishful thinking.

 

Reading Republic . . . Hett is good. But he's like Aayla: a very good Jedi of moderate power and abilities, probably with an edge over her in combat to be distinctly better-than-average but not on the same level with the "Top swordsmen" of the Order -- of whom Fisto is one, like it or not. Skywalker, Kenobi, Windu, Yoda, Dooku, Bulq, Kolar, Fisto, probably Tiin -- all those guys are pretty much definitively over Hett. Hett might have a shot at your Mundi or your Ti or your Vos -- he's good -- but he wasn't one of the greats, which Fisto was. I think we could pull out a lot better examples than Fisto. Give him 100+ years . . . and yeah, "I got better."

But to say Hett was that good . . . it's like the lionization of Vos simply because he was in a lot of duels and was a main character who won against the odds. He was good . . . but any time he went up a genuinely top-tier foe (Dooku, Kolar, Bulq) he went down hard.

 

Listen to Havac, you should.

 

Except we see Hett hold his own with Anakin Skywlaker.

We also know that Hett is an apprentice of Howlrunner Hett who WAS one of the Order's top swordsmen.

 

Bah, once we see more of Hett's past will see who's truly better, him or squid face.

 

Except we see Hett hold his own with Anakin Skywlaker.

Irrelevant. Considering we have no idea how Fisto may have fared in such a circumstance, as we have nothing to compare with.

We also know that Hett is an apprentice of Howlrunner Hett who WAS one of the Order's top swordsmen.

And Fisto WAS one of the Order's top swordsmen. What's your point?

 

Wait, when did this happen?

 

I'll address Skywalker later. Kenobi, Windu, Yoda, Dooku, no argument. Kolar, Fisto, I think you're wrong but it's not crazy. Tiin, you're absolutely smoking crack. Tiin's never been shown to be an exceptional duelist. Pilot, sure, but duelist? Whatever.

Except for that whole bit where he killed Bulq.

Mace and Dooku take Vos to school, sure, but no one's saying he's on their level. He beat Bulq, he beat Karrko, he held his own against Ventress and Tol Skorr at the same time by himself for quite a while until Obi-Wan showed up, even though Ventress by herself is pretty much death walking on two feet as far as anyone who isn't named Windu, Kenobi, or Skywalker is concerned.

Vos is just plain better than most people think, though if anything, he also goes to illustrate the huuuuuge gap between the very top (Mace, Dooku, Yoda, Palpatine) and the lower ranks.

Exactly. Even mid-CW Anakin, especially Anakin when he's in a blood-crazed Dark Side rage, would kick the holy hell out of most people, including Kit Fisto. This is Anakin half way between the time he beat the bejeezus out of Ventress on Yavin, and the time he killed Dooku before cutting a bloody swath through the galaxy on his way to Mustafar.

Ventress never gets to the Dooku/Windu level, but very few people under that power level can handle her. That said, when Anakin decided to tap into his anger and his hatred, it was over. The raging Chosen One is all but unstoppable, as Dooku would learn not too long afterwards (read the ROTS novelization for a good take on that from Dooku's perspective).

When Anakin fought Hett, he was raging. Not only was he raging, but he basically thought that A'Sharad was one of the Tuskens who had tortured his mother to death. If there's anyone who ever got a real taste of Anakin with the gloves off hitting as hard as he could, it was A'Sharad on Aargonar.

Not only did A'Sharad not get cut into a million tiny pieces, he arguably defeated Anakin. He soundly demonstrated that he was at least Anakin's equal and possibly his better in combat, at least at that stage in Anakin's development. The number of people in the entire galaxy who could say that at that point is very small indeed.

Another good point. It's interesting to note that Sharad Hett was indisputably one of the top swordsmen of his time, and that he was killed by Aurra Sing in one-on-one combat. I know that we'd all like to think of Aurra Sing as a sort of sad, washed-up wannabe joke, but in her prime she was hell on wheels.

That said, she did lose to someone, namely a Padawan named A'Sharad Hett. Yes, he had to tap into the Dark Side to do it, but considering that that doesn't seem to be an issue now, it's hardly relevant.

I understand that it's more complicated than Just About Everyone < Sharad Hett < Aurra Sing < A'Sharad as a Padawan < A'Sharad as a Master, but come on, she didn't get those sabers on her belt from the corner store.

Here's what I would consider to be a reasonable ranking of Clone Wars-era duelists:

FIRST RANK: Darth Sidio

 

I agree, and in any case, it's been over a century, and now plus Sith Teachings, plus dark side, plus Vong armour. I think Krayt was good, and is now even better. One doesn't lead lead the most populous legion of Sith in at least 5,000 years by being a mediocre fighter.

 

All the speculation is moot anyway, the only thing that matters is who the force is with that day. I don't think that Kenobi was a better duelist than Anakin, and I don't think Palpatine was a better duelist than Yoda. It just so happens that the force was with Kenobi and Palpatine that day, one good, one bad, balance.

And I could have sworn Aurra Sing was just killed by Jacen's daughter in one of the LotF books...

 

Not killed, disabled. Jacen's forces then restrained her and put her in a holding cell in the Anakin Solo.

 

Unfortunately, she wasn't killed. I'm half-expecting her to break out sooner or later and go back on her same old, boring Jedi-hunting bounties in LotF (they need something to stretch out the series, Jacen the moron can't take up the entire remaining four books), or to show up in Legacy sooner or later. With all the Jedi on the run, she'd probably have a field day. All those femme fatales just never, ever stay dead and just keep on coming back for more beatings. Though the Hat is still stronger than all of them, of course.

I think Obi-wan was probably a better duelist than Anakin. Obi-wan doesn't command as much raw power as Anakin, of course, but in terms of skill and concentration, that more than makes up for the power difference. Mustafar is the best example, given that that was Anakin was at his prime, and Obi-wan won. Barely, but he still decisively won that duel.

Wonder if that YV armor can stand up to direct lightsaber hits. I remember amphistaffs could easily parry lightsabers, but can't remember if voduun crab (or whatever Krayt's wearing) could handle it. And at least Krayt can take off the armor, but the rest is probably stuck, given how desperate Krayt's health situation seems to be.

And never trust Obi-wan's own esimates of his skill when he's talking to someone, he's extremely modest, but also extremely competent. By the end of the Clone Wars, Obi-wan could take on just about anyone short of Palpatine. Though Obi-wan also didn't view himself as too weak or anything, he just was very modest.

 

So Krayt is A'Sharad Hett, I've been saying that since last year!

Link for pic and spoiler:

http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/5513/kraytpu9.jpg

 

It's called grunt syndrome. Any villain can own heaps and heaps of nameless good characters and be in command of heaps of nameless bad characters, but once they fight a named character they get pwned bad. (eg. Gundam Seed, Seed Destiny)

It's much the same here. The majority of Sith are most likely going to be grunt status. I don't really think that John and Jan are really going to name 10,000 individual Sith.

 

On the first part: I think the general impression we're supposed to get from Anakin and Obi-Wan is that they're equal, but different in terms of duelling ability. They're yin and yang: Anakin is a one-man wrecking crew who very well may have been the most offensively-skilled fighter in the Order by that point (not to say the most skilled overall, but in terms of pure attack, perhaps the best). Obi-Wan's the precise opposite, and the absolute master of defensive duelling. As it stood, it basically turned out that Obi-Wan was uniquely suited to defeating Anakin. Through the combination of simply knowing Anakin as well as he did (IE the whole "knowing every move he'd make before he made it" sort of thing), and the fact that Anakin's preferred fighting style was extremely tiring (being focused on overwhelming his opponent with power and ending the fight quicklky), while Obi-wan's was all about staying power. He basically just outlasted Anakin. He was undisputably, however, a smarter and more strategic duellist than Anakin.

On the second part: Yes, the Vodouun Crab armor was indeed resistant to lightsaber strikes. It generally took multiple hits or prolonged contact in the same spot to breach it...or learning to find the weak points and striking at those (as the Jedi eventually discovered in NJO). So yeah...that might indeed be something to take into account when considering things like Krayt taking on three Imperial Knights at once. How often were Imperial Knights fighting armored Yuuzhan Vong warriors to know where the chinks in the armor were?

Or to put it another way: Remember how much trouble the Jedi had with even run-of-the-mill YV warriors at first? Now give a top-tier YV warrior a pair of lightsabers and the force and imagine how much more trouble he'd be. Krayt's superiority may not simply be based on power and skill, but assisted by the addition of equipment that gives him a distinct edge against his preferred opponents, if they're not prepared/trained to overcome it.

 

It doesn't take much to be a top swordsmen in the PT-Jedi-order.