The Official Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

They don't suck the midichlorians out of someone.

 

The Force is about more than just midichlorians.

Look at why Force Draining works; you're not eating people's midichlorians, you're draining people of their strength. The Jedi do the same thing in a less vampiric form when they join together in a Force Meld or use Battle Meditation.

Kell Douro may have been a nutter, but he certainly thought that drinking a person's soup made him stronger. As indeed it should do: through passion, I gain strength, and all that. A person's soup means their memories, their emotions, their pain, their love, their suffering, their fear... all the things that make a Sith stronger. Knowledge is as much a source of power as one's physical potential.

Just... the consequence of all this is what we already know: Nihilus. Ingest too many people's pain and it may bring with it absolute power, but it'll also rip apart your own essence in the process. So I expect an Anzat that drank too many people's soup would probably end up a madman. Power, yes, but mad... very, very mad.

 

Not having read much on Anzati save knowing that they have tentacles in their cheeks and live for 1,000 years, I assumed 'soup' just meant the liquified brains that they absorbed out of the person's skull.

 

Nah. Its way more sinister than that, EECHUU. They suck the essence, the memory, and the strength of their victims... at least as far I know. Thats how I took the comic explanation. Sourcebooks are woeful, we need context to flesh out these kind of powers.

 

Kell was seeking an understanding of the universe or something like that. He was seeking enlightenment every time he drank. He didn't get more powerful. He got a "fix" and didn't have to deal with, or be distracted by his cravings when he was doing something important.

Battle meditation clouds, confuses and heightens feelings of fear and doubt in your opponent. That or it can organize and inspire your own troops. Depends on how you practice it. It doesn't suck the strength out of them.

 

Fair enough (although it does to some extent depend which type of Battle Meditation one refers to, as I was talking about the TotJ type that was a lot more like what we now call Force Melds when they joined together to create the wall of light to incinerate Yavin and trap Exar Kun). In any case, that doesn't change the main point that there is more to the Force than just midichlorians. (Jorj Cardas, anyone?)

As I mentioned, Force Melds allow people to benefit from each others Force potential; see a bunch of apprentices hurling a fleet of Star Destroyers out of Yavin, or UnuThul drawing on the Force potential of every single mind in the Killik Colony to be able to stand against Luke Skywalker and deflect an entire turbolaser barrage from a Star Destroyer. On the other end, there is Force draining, which as established in KOTOR2 was the basis of Nihilus's power as he was draining other people dry and becoming ever more powerful, only when he tried to drain the Exile it backfired tremendously as there was nothing of her left to drain.

It doesn't take a huge leap to envisage a dark side Anzat that was like Nihilus.

Although that isn't actually what I was referring to. That's been done already with Nihilus, so would be too much of a rehash. As I said, what I had in mind was more a character who, um, "drank people's minds". (We're now entering too much like Abeloth territory, aren't we? ) As a person's soup contains the sum of their life, that offers a whole range of possible ideas for precisely what that entails because we've never truly seen what an Anzat acquires when they kill someone--although with Vos, the comics seemed (to me at least) to imply they took his memories of his youth, as when Vos was seeing his life flash before his eyes, I took that as meaning that's what the Anzat was also seeing, i.e. violating his private thoughts for a perverse pleasure in experiencing them for themselves.

We do know Anzat are drawn to particularly strong Force-users, such as the ones on Tatooine who went into overdrive when they sensed Cade... which adds a new element of interest, as, sure, maybe they're not all like Nihilus and out to drain people's Force energy, but that doesn't stop one of them being out for more than just a kick--especially a Force-sensitive one who has something more palpable to gain from someone else's memories than just a perverse pleasure in people's negative experiences.

So, rather than a character like Nihilus who drains people's Force energy, I can picture an Anzat who instead is actually more like Kreia and values the power of knowledge more than raw potential. To give a crude example:

Anzat: Teach me Force lightning.
Master: You are not ready.
Anzat: I'll tell you when I'm kriffing ready.
*Anzat drinks his Master's soup then blasts him with Force lightning*

As the saying goes, it isn't just the size that matters... it's how you use it.

I like the idea of an apprentice who isn't necessarily the strongest Force-user in the world, but who through his natural traits has the means to rip the information he wants from people's minds. We're already potentially seeing something similar set up in the great mind drinking void of oneness that is Abeloth, but if she doesn't turn out that way and instead just ends up a dark side Callista or something similarly uninspiring, then I can see an Anzat has having a whole host of potential as a future Sith Lord.

We often see Force-users who are out just for raw power and draining other people's Force-energy, but the idea of someone not being so much out for upping their raw power but more for acquiring a huge pool of knowledge and wisdom is something rather more subtle and uncommon. I can think of Kreia, perhaps Set Harth to a degree, and non-exclusive of the raw power side Palpatine and perhaps Wyyrlok... but more often than not it's "I want to drink your Force energy!" rather than "Give me all your holocrons!" An Anzat has the potential to fall into the latter group, but with the twist of them not needing to learn t

 

Why just through the nose and not with a kiss? The tenticles bore through the back of the throat and up into the brain cavity...

 

"Kiss of Death" -- would take on a whole, new meaning EECHUU.

 

You are so right. I never thought of it like that. I think that this is the only talk of common sense i've heard so far. Good Job.

 

Let's assume for the sake of argument that Bane's katra is still in Zannah, and someone takes Bane's severed arm and creates a clone, and later they all fly to Vulcan or something and Bane's katra goes into the clone. Would you still call that Bane? I would be tempted to call it something like "Bane II" myself. I think that whatever happens with the vestige of Bane imprinted on Zannah's mind, the real Bane is now dead.

 

Kind of like when the Klingons brought back Kahless.

 

Interesting idea of it not being his "soul" as much as simply his "memory". I'm reminded of the way MGS4 explained the "Liquid in Ocelot's arm" from MGS2.

 

Nanomachines and hypnotism?

Made all the stranger by the fact the previous game had successfully established that Ocelot was the son of The Sorrow, a man who could channel spirits through his body to assume their abilities and memory, and implied that the (ridiculous) Liquid-arm thing was tied into his having inherited the ability.

Sorry, do I sound bitter? I think I am.

 

Heh. Yeah... I felt the explanation in MGS4 was a cop out, too. I was so looking forward to The Sorrow explanation. Heck, or even that nanomachines were so advanced that he'd inherited Liquid's "mind" via the nanomachines, but IIRC I think MGS4 explicitly ruled that out... in favour of the hypnotism explanation... riiight. I'd been so looking forward at the end of MGS2 for the proper Liquid Snake, not Liquid Ocelot.

Oh well. At least if anything ever happens with Zannah, it's unlikely to be Zannah Bane, but the The Sorrow method.

 

I pm'd Chris and asked him to take a stab at some Zannah.

 

Just read this novel, and I don't think Bane "mindjumping" into Zannah undermines what happens with Palpatine later.

The novel is clear that if one is unsuccessful at mindjumping into the new target, one's soul is eternally banished into oblivion. My speculation, and one that makes a lot of sense, is that BaneZannah got greedy at mindjumping at some point in the future and felt he would be immortal forever. But then he would make the mistake of choosing a target whose will is too powerful and then he will fail at the mindjump and be banished. Whether this will occur with Cognus, or maybe Millenial (if BaneZannah successfully mindjumps into Cognus) is uncertain.

But the point is, I doubt that Bane hopped from body to body for the next thousand years and eventually became Plagueis. I think he did fail at one point.

 

Well Drew stated in his blog (or was it an interview?) that he intended for it to be that Zannah won and was just adjusting as you said, but because of the ambiguous ending it is still argued.

 

Drew actually came on the boards and confirmed it himself that darth Zannah won, which was really cool of him.

 

At this point, Drew himself confirming it means nothing imo. What he did/didn't want to happen is irrelevant. His website blog =/= canon/continuity, not by a long shot.

Though I suppose nothing really matters, retcons happen all the time

 

Agreed. Especially in this instance, where he firmly believed that it wasn't an ambiguous ending at all. To him, both as author and reader, the point was very clear: Zannah won. 1- Why would s/he lie? 2- Why would the narrator keep using "She" if it was a He? Even in real-life, if someone is genetically/anatomically male, but identifies as female, you use She. If Bane was in Zannah's body, the narrator would use He.