The Dark Side surrounds the Chancelor? How do you know?

If the sith have been extincted for so long Mace is way to young to know what the darkside actually feels like wouldnt you think? Basically the darkside is something maybe only Yoda has felt firsthand when he was about 25 other than Obi when fighting Maul. I mean does mace just get the eebiie jeebies when hes around Palpatine or does the hair stand up on the back of his neck or does he even possibly smell the chancelor through the force in a way that others cant smell? Geez Anakin couldnt smell or sense anything dark untill palpatine basically told him, hey im into this darkside thing, and Anakin was hanging out with him folicking around alot.

Count Dooku was killed, the war is grinding to and end...and the Senate still decides to give the Chancellor more emergency powers. Sounds kinda suspicious, huh?

Not to mention that he's managed to track Darth Sidious (from Labyrinth of Evil and ROTS novelization) into Palpatine's inner circle, and believed that the Dark Lord was secretly manipulating events from there. All the more reason to send Anakin to spy on Palps.

Well Anakin wasn't your regular Jedi either.

"Remember your mother and the sand people"

He's really what I'd define as a "Dark Jedi." (though lets not get into the pedantics of the phrase).

Palpatine appears to be a very well balanced, normal being and he has always been a father to him. So he's pretty used to it and appreciates some of the dark side, albeit subconsciously.

Mace on the other hand is a Jedi's Jedi. Sidious is very good at cloaking his presence though with the shift in the overall force and all the funny business Palpatine was up to, it was pretty obvious that Palps was noooo good.

Count Dooku was killed, the war is grinding to and end...and the Senate still decides to give the Chancellor more emergency powers. Sounds kinda suspicious, huh?


Not really. The majority of Senators have always liked Palps since the days of TPM. He probably could have gotten those powers even earlier.

The Dark Side surrounds the Chancelor? How do you know?

Yeah, thats always bothered me too. The movies dont give you a clue as to exactly how or what the Jedi are sensing. Do their hemmoroids burn ??

At the end of AOTC they agree to keep an eye on the Senate, after Obi-Wan's converstion with Dooku. I don't think this means wiretaps or following down dark alleys at night, but trying to use the Force to get a better feel for the motivations and desires of the Senators. Of course, we learned in TPM and AOTC that Mace and Yoda can sit 6 feet away from the Dark Lord of the Sith and not sense anything, especially since their ability to use is fading, but they can probably sense something if they are looking for it. Yoda can't sense Sidious right in front of him, but can feel when Jedi are dying across the galaxy, or when Anakin crosses the line.

The party line is that "the dark side clouds everything." But it seems that neither side is able to accurately anticipate what the other is doing. Neither Sids nor Vader could sense where the children were or if Obi-Wan and Yoda were still alive. A good analogy is that the Sith and the Jedi were living on opposite poles of the same planet with no idea what was going on at the other side.

Take old Sids in ROTS for instance, when the Imperial shuttle is approaching the Endor moon with Luke on it. Vader senses him, senses the father/son connection. Sids, on the other hand, does not have a clue that young Skywalker is tantiliziingly close. When Vader tells him Luke is 'here,' Sids remarks how strange it is that he did not sense him, then he scolds Vader and questions him whether his "mind is clear on this matter?"

Sids can, however, sense when Luke is angry, when he wants to strike him down. Sids can feel the dark side is rising within his young prey, and he revels in the glory of that darkness. In the same way Ben feels the millions crying out in terror as Tarkin unleashes the Death Star and Yoda feels the loss of Windu and his posse from across the galaxy.

So the DS enables it adherents to pick up more from emotions like anger and hate, and Luke avoids those states until the very end of ROTJ.

I wish the PT had made more sense of this than a few lines in each movies, dropped in here and there. The Jedi know their power is dimishing, or clouded, and that the DS surrounds the Chancellor. But from the way this info was delivered, it didn't have the oomph it should've. Just some lines delivered woodenly by Mace L Jackson.

He knows through the force.

The Jedi know their power is dimishing

Yes, thats the other part of the "dark side clouds everything" line that bothers me. How specifically did they know ? Did they have tests ? Wouldnt they have assumed as they got older their powers may diminish a bit ? If their powers diminished, would they have the ability to know they are dimished, since they are diminished ? Maybe they just thought their powers were diminished, but really werent.

The Force being diminished for the Jedi would be like a person of great physical strength feeling their strength leave them.

The Darkside "clouds" everything. The Jedi are not blinded, not without "sight". It would be more akin to walking into a fog bank.

First of all, the Jedi are aware of the dark side. Globally speaking, the Force, which is both light and dark, permeates everything. Locally, all sentient beings like Mace are going to have anger, pride, ambition, and ego. It is the job of their Jedi masters to enable their padawans develop their powers without succumbing to selfishness, pride, and lust for power. The Jedi know something of the Dark Side from their training, from their own anger and temptations that most of them face and overcome, and from the fact that the War itself is a manifestation of the Dark Side. That, and they know that the Sith are behind the Confederacy. Bc Mace can sense Palpatine's lust for power and willingness to extend this devastating war, even if he does know that Palps may be in league with the Sith or in fact a Sith, he can sense the Dark Side surrounding Palps.

Well the jedi can feel light and dark energies.Not only Sith can have dark side powers with the abilities to make tremors in the force. They can feel it just a little in all evil beings.

In Hard Contact Etain Thinks to herself, as she is thinking about sleep,"Then suddenly, every nerve in her body lept at once. Heart pounding, Etain thought at first that she'd had one of those half dreams that sometimes came when she was dozing off. But now she was fully awake and she knew that she hadn't. Something in the Force had been altered,and forever . She jumped to her feet, suddenly clear what it was; she needed no training or education to understand it. Every instinct coded in her genes cried out. Something-someone-was gone from the Force. "Master" End Quote

-Star Wars Rebublic Commando
Hard Contact
By: Karen Traviss

aye exactly. Just because there is no sith around doesnt mean that bad things, and even dark side of the force energies arent abound. Fear and anger are props and guises of the Dark side....

well ther is one way you can tell when he kill's his master

How exactly is it that Mace is able to tell the Dark Side surrounds Palpatine, yet he has no clue that Palps is a Sith???

The Darkside surrounded Dooko I'm sure too. He's a sith and Mace ran into him in AotC.

Also I'm sure that Jedi could sense a some sort of darkness in the force without knowing exactly what it was.

The shroud of the Dark Side is clearing up and the Jedi are starting to see things more clearly. When the Clone Wars began, the Jedi could sense the Dark Side was everywhere. But they couldn't pinpoint the Sith as clearly as they are capable of. They have to wait until they use the Dark Side, before they can sense it in someone. However, because things have been going to hell as they have, the Dark Side is starting to center itself around Palpatine. Mace can finally sense it's aura around Palpatine, but he doesn't know why this is. He's not sure if it's because he's a Sith or if he has been corrupted by the war and the Sith, that he's going to become an agent of evil.

Up until Palpatine admited to knowing the dark side to Anakin, the council thought that there was someone "around" Palpatine, possibly an aid or advisor that was the Sith Lord. They thought that Palpatine was being manipulated by the Sith Lord, not that he actually was THE Sith Lord.

That's why Mace is surprised when Anakin tells him that Palpatine all but confessed.

And there wisdom worked against them. They didn't suspect Palpatine of being a Sith Lord out to take over the galaxy because he was already in charge of the galaxy as the Chancellor.

Mace was basically 2nd in command of the Jedi, so I'd like to think he had some strong areas. You see him looking very thoughtful in the movies. In TPM, when Anakin shows up, Mace is deep in thought. In AoTC, after the attempt on Padme's life, Yoda is already springing into action talking about what they are going to do while Mace is shown quietly thinking about something greater, in RoTS before he utters "The Dark Side Surrounds the Chancellor" he appears to think for a little while. I noticed these things even before I was aware of his ability to see "Shatterpoints" as shown in the EU. Now, of course we won't bring EU into this but Mace's apparent scrying at important times gives me the impression that he is gifted at reading into certain people and events. I think the answer was always on the tip of his tongue but he was too afraid to say it in case he was wrong, or too afraid to think it....in case he was right.

Carnage