Just how powerful is C'Baoth?

Don't you guys just love pointless, unanswerable versus topics? If so, I've got one for you!

(Below are spoilers for The Thrawn Trilogy)

I've read The Thrawn Trilogy twice, and consider them fantastic books. I really enjoy the final fight at the end of TLC. Even so, C'Baoth does seem ridiculously powerful, with Lando even commenting that he's "as dangerous as the Emperor". Granted, "dangerous" is a pretty vague terms; he's mentally unstable, unpredictable, and may very well kill everyone based on a mood swing, as opposed to cold, calculating Emperor who prefers to corrupt and torture his enemies before killing them. However, he could just have easily meant "dangerous" as a substitute for "as powerful". I feel like Zahn also made effort to draw parallels to the Emperor with C'Baoth; him not using a lightsaber, but lightning, him dying in a force explosion, him attempting to corrupt Luke, etc.

Now, I personally believe Luke was only about high-level Jedi Knight/low-level Jedi Master at this point (I don't believe him beating Vader was based entirely on his fighting skill), so it's no surprise why C'Baoth is much more powerful than he is. Still, I am curious how C'Baoth measured up to some of the Jedi council members, and particularly Darth Vader. Is he more powerful than Darth Vader? I personally find that hard to believe, but I don't know. I haven't read Outbound Flight, though I've read that C'Baoth never formally became a Jedi Master because of his maturity. This seems similar to Qui-Gon not being allowed on the council, despite being more powerful than most of them.

Also, random thought; I wish Han would have done more in the C'Baoth fight

 

He is probably a little less powerful than Shon Kon Ray, but maybe slightly more than Obi-Wan in his box dyed bearded era.

 

I don't Know how dose "strength borne from Madness" translate into the force.

The original stoped a missile and crushed it in "Outbound Flight".

You know the saying "Sanity, all you have is logical thinking. But when you're good and crazy the sky's the limit!"

 

Ever since we started discussing TFU2, I've started to wonder whether there's something about clones that makes them, well, more easily capable of becoming stronger in the Force than a normal person. That may sound illogical, and in terms of potential it is, because being a clone by no means makes you more powerful. However, what I'm getting at comes back to Yoda's line "You must unlearn what you have learned".

What happens if you never learned it to begin with?

Any normal person learns the natural laws of physics simply by being born and growing up. Things fall down. Heavy stuff is harder to lift. Etc.

A clone? These rules need not apply. They're programmed from "birth" to believe what they've been indoctrinated to believe: in Joruus's case? That he was the Guardian of Wayland, an all powerful warden that none could stand against. He didn't need to "unlearn" anything: he knew from the moment he was conceived in a test tube somewhere that the Force moves mountains, that gravity does not apply, that his mind controls the universe.

Which, going back to my opening point about TFU2, draws on why I'm curious whether part of the reason characters like Galen and Joruus are so powerful is because they've never needed to question reality: their reality is what the Jedi (or Sith) Code tells them. They've no reason to second guess anything. "I can move a battleship with my mind? AWESOME!!!" They've no sense of ordinary logical processing, no nagging voice of doubt that says "Er, isn't this going a bit TOO far?" which even the strongest Force-user hits every occasion they ask "Can I do this?"

On the plus side for the galaxy, at least "clone madness" seems to kick in when you clone Force-users (which, if the "tank" stuff for TFU2 is anything to go by, may well be because the embryo's mind starts to wander, having visions, etc, waaay too young), so fortunately means very few clones are ever going to manage to make it to genuine threat level before they go off their rockers and go nuts. I guess people should thank their lucky stars no psycho has tried to replicate Joruus's ysalamiri-stabilisation stuff to gestate a Galen-level clone that's fully compliant and doesn't suffer flashbacks to its former life.

 

How powerful is C'baoth?

Insanely powerful...

In ESB, Yoda tells Luke that a lot of the limitations of Force use are "only in your mind"... C'baoth has been indoctrinated as a Jedi, and is completely fragging insane...

... so, if he gets annoyed by random Imperial officers, he responds with Palpatine-class Force-lightning...

... and if threatened by someone genuinely worthy of breaking a sweat over, he kicks Rhett-class ass...

... but mostly, he quietly and casually mindtricks Skywalker-class Jedi into doing his bidding with no apparent effort...

... and he can coordinate an entire battle fleet inside his head, extending his own Jedi reactions to hundreds of thousands of personnel working in synch, ensuring that every ship is in exactly the right position, and getting specific crewers on a specific ship to fire a specific turbolaser with the accuracy and timing on a lightsaber...

So while his raw power might not be on the Vader/Luke level, I'd say he's definitely on the Palpatine/Rhett/Bane/Yoda broadband, and more importantly, his perception of the Force and his awareness of what he can do... is probably equal ONLY to Palpatine in the entire franchise...

The interesting question here is whether C'baoth's insanity is intimately connected to his Force abilities. I suspect it is, but if so, it's maybe not for the reasons you might think - not just because he's crossed a boundary in terms of focusing power through himself in the way that Mace does...

... if a man can make things perfect, making the Force sing symphony in a hundred armored hulls and a million souls... then having to deal with the flawed compromises of ordinary reality is... really kriffing disturbing?

Joruus C'baoth... meet Jacen Solo.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Well, to be fair, Palpatine could do most of the things you make out C'Baoth doing and he was NOT insane (per se; at least in the PT/OT), merely convinced of his own superiority.

 

Interesting posts. His clone madness could and most likely does have at least something to do with his power (it was implied that his "force scream" was a result of his madness). That also makes me wonder if Joruus C'Baoth is more powerful than a cloned Galen Marek.

I don't know why, but the first time I read TTT, I spent a great deal of time wondering if C'Baoth is more powerful, and therefor a bigger thread, than Vader. I think he's important because, unlike Vader, who Luke was able to turn away from the dark side, he really has no hope of that for C'Baoth, and therefore has to fight a Jedi Master all on his own (with his friends and Mara, of course). I always thought that Luke was able to beat Vader by momentarily turning to the dark side, which he didn't do with C'Baoth (the first half of the fight I don't think Vader was going for the kill), so I'm really not sure.

I always assumed that him controlling Thrawn's fleets was an advanced form of Battle Meditation.

 

I think Jorus C'Boath is less powerful than Palpatine or Vader but he shows just how much damage a Jedi Master turned to the Dark Side can really do if they cut loose.

 

Already used this quote in a conversation earlier today, but it DEFINITELY describes what you're talking about. It's from Coruscant Nights, regarding the difference between a Sith (in this case Vader) and a non-Sith dark sider (in this case the undeniably powerful Kar Vastor):


"There was no doubt in Nick's mind that, were Kar Vastor somehow to be pitted against Darth Vader, the feral Balawai renegade wouldn't stand a chance.
The Force was powerful in Vader; even the dim wattage of Nick's connection could feel that. It was far more powerful than it had been in Kar Vastor. It had pulsed from Vastor in waves of fury, blasted like an open furnace. In Vader, it was- contained. Pent.
Waiting."

In other words, Kar Vastor may seem like a beast, and that's because he IS- but you compare a mad dog like Kar to a true Sith like Vader, and there's just no comparison. The Sith is so much more powerful, but they keep that power contained, focused, and only unleash it when and against whom they choose, not in pointless displays of power.

Same thing is, I suspect, what's going on with our mad cloned Dark Jedi Master C'Baoth.

 

I think he was powerful for his time. But then again, there really wasn't any other Sith or Dark Jedi around at the time to compare him to. He might've been more powerful than Palpatine because, really, we only see him in combat a time or two. His real strength was his manipulative ways and the Force. Whereas you stated, C'Baoth would go into mood swings and just destroy anyone nearby, giving us the full extent of his power. So, to me, C'Baoth is a pretty powerful Sith/Dark Jedi. But if he is as or more powerful than Palpatine is purely upon the viewer.

 

As of TTT he was as powerful as Vader was in the prequel trilogy (That nugget of information comes from the WEG source book), as a Jedi Master he was probably at Qui Gon/Kenobi level.

 

Lets just say I wouldn't pick his clone to win a ligthsaber battle.

 

Thats a great quote there.

 

I don't know...depends on how you define "insane". Just look at him when he fights Yoda...

I mean, if wielding the dark side is at its core about chaotic, unrestrained destructive power, then I would think insanity would come in handy marshalling it.

 

By "Vader in the prequel trilogy", do you mean before he was cut in half and had to be rebuilt? Or just after that?

Also, I believe I read somewhere that, in terms of power, Qui-Gon ranks up there with Mace Windu. I imagine he's a different kind of fighter, though.

 

Well, it's why I specifically mention PT/OT. I mean, by the time we roll around to DE he seems to have functionally lost it -- but, realistically, you very likely can't do all of the scheming, planning and galaxy-conquering in the manner that he did so and then kept everyone at bay for as long as he did from pre-TPM to ROTJ if he were really bug-nuts like he became in DE.

 

As someone already said, Palpatine doesn't seem exactly sane in the one Lucas-proofread look inside his head we get, in the Revenge of the Sith novellization...

That said, I suspect that Palpatine's insanity is different than C'baoth's or Jacen's, both of whom are IMHO frustrated by a reality that seems to get in the way of the higher reality of the Force...

... but then again, you never know...

Yes, I agree - I was trying to get people to think about what that means - essentially, every ship and crewer in the Fleet acquires the speed and accuracy of Jedi reactions, and the coordination of a single will...

And when you think about the implications of that, you start to see why C'baoth is crazy (and Caedus too); not because they're in some way incomplete, but because they have difficulty dealing with the times and places where that clarity doesn't work...

The tragedy is that their ego and willpower (and perhaps even their Jedi training) seems to have corrupted their instincts...

I think you're right about all that, though... C'baoth can't really be reasoned with, or at least, not in the way that Luke achieved with Vader...

Did C'baoth really go throwing himself around in the Force? I don't remember that much of that....

Yes, he's crazy and he threatens people, but that's more about his character than his abilities. There's... if not a restraint, certainly a lack of apparent effort in his actual Force-use - early on, he breaks sweat during large-scale battle meditation, and is a little annoyed by that; but once he's begun to practice, it proves easy to mindtrick Luke, and to coordinate an entire fleet...

Getting tangential here, but is Vader powerful because he's a "true Sith", or because he's got a high Force potential even compared with most "really powerful" characters? Doesn't Kar come across as massively powerful in Mindor - and remember he's a cousin of Mace Windu, not some random dude?

You forgot the massive mind-control.

You could be right, but bear in mind how C'baoth mindtricks Luke, Pellaeon et cetera... and

 

Palpatine's level of narcissim goes into the realms of insanity quite easily.

"I am the Senate" in RotS

"I am the galaxy" in the RotJ novelization.

"I am the Dark Side" in DE.

 

At least in ROTS, that's effectively true; the Senate has no will of their own, just rubber-stamping what Palpatine wants.

As for the other two... well, he's been through a few clones by then, of course he's touched in the head.

 

I'm pretty sure that Leland Chee confirmed that Palpatine was lying about having died before.

 

Oops my bad, I meant he?s as strong as original trilogy Vader.

In my mind out of 10, Qui Gon is a 7 & Mace is an 8 or 9.

 

I've never thought about those three quotes together that way before... that's a really neat observation.

 

The third one is actually the most accurate; both in and out of universe, to most people, he's pretty much the anthropomorphic manifestation of evil.

 

I think you also have to take into account the time frame in which the novels were written. The EU was still fairly wide-open and there was not much information about how powerful Force-users could actually become. The prequels and their EU were not around yet either to show a wider variety of Force-skills. I forget when the comic adaptations were done, but I think there were some adjustments made to take into account information regarding the prequels.

In my opinion, there would be quite a few differences if they were written after the prequels.