Fanclub <=*=> The New Sith Order =*= Return of the Sith <=*=>... v.5

Nonsense. Further the works of yourself, Kevala, and aspire to nothing else. Submit to the order only as it may benefit your own designs, as the Sith as a whole will not benefit from a selfless dedication to some grand collective goal. To strengthen oneself is not the best path - it is the only path. The individual is all that exists.

 

*rises slowly*
Thank you, my Lord. I have placed a link and title within my signature, and I most definitely look forward to any research on Daritha.

How interesting! The name was quite fitting, yes, though the prominence of the claws is what caught my eye. I'm always interested in adding flair.

My focus has always been on things in the realm of what I consider....psychology, along with alchemy. Understanding the minds of others, showing them the truth of the universe, the subconscious and conscious minds of sentients.

The alchemy does cross paths with the art of necromancy, in a way. Much of what I studied on Serenno draws on the alteration and reanimation of creatures, though I prefer the former instead of the latter. You study immortality, though? I am interested to hear some of your theories.

Otherwise I do much prefer sorcery and powers associated with it - though these are not necessarily my specialities. An interest I developed myself, I suppose, since I prefer to dominate any opponents without use of my 'saber.

That is true - a theory always works better if it originates spontaneously. I think such a brilliant idea is likely to have been used. If the theory proves true, I must wonder if there is another incarnation (for lack of a better word) somewhere in the shadows...

 

The Sith Camp, I am not well familiar with this Lord Thanos... but from what I do know, it sounds like the Sith would destroy this Titan easily.

Plagueis did revise the Rule of Two. He let Sidious train Maul, and planned on Sidious and Plagueis becoming equal partners for (eternal) life.

On another note, you must confirm now whether you intend to leave my tutelage and revert to the rank of Sith Peon, apprentice. If not, I have tasks for you.

Darth Formidious, a most impressive history you claim. I was chuckling while reading it, I must admit, for while normally I would dismiss it out-of-hand as being far too overpowered and audacious for a mere apprentice, it fits incredibly well with my own history, and the history of the immortal gods of the Sith who founded this New Sith Order. If you want to get involved in the next role-playing game we'll host in the RPF, this character would work well as a lesser deity under an incarnation of the dark side, Darth Nemesis/Typhojem, and His allies Darth Venomis/Mnggal-Mnggal, Sinre's Darth Yammka and Darth Dreadwar/Ku'ar Danar. For your next task I'll give you some further reading so that you become familiar with our take on the Celestials and their dark side counterparts.

But first, you must change that CS. It is premature to be so powerful, being a mere apprentice in this Order, nor would it make sense given that you answer to several Lords and Ladies born as 'mere mortal men,' and it happens to contradict our ABYVerse fanon history of the primeval Sith pantheon and the Celestials. Congratulations on your haste, however.

I am glad to see we are most similar in our interests, Lady Viscretus. Long have I pondered on the psychopathy/sociopathy of the Sith, for instance, and how psychopathy IRL is merely representative of an evolutionarily stable strategy from a game theory POV not a true mental disorder, and so on.

Yes, I too am fond of the claws, ever since first seeing Exar Kun's and Ulic Qel-Droma's fearsome lightsabers. I also have an exposed red crystal, unstable, and the crossguard, but like you I suspect, I've found that I haven't touched it in years.

And absolutely, it was through alchemy Graush created Korriban zombies, and through alchemical apparatus that Sith Lords are able to bind their spirits to their tombs. I think the compendium on my theories on immortality can be found here.

Well, what's interesting is what makes sense, in-universe, whenever you introduce a character who is brilliant, paranoid and changes identities. It becomes much neater to postulate many loose elements or different characters are in fact one. Case in point, the Sith Emperor Vitiate seems to have just been acting the role of a planet-devourer who wanted to destroy all life in the galaxy, and has kept secret for centuries another more benevolent identity who nobly rules the Eternal Empire. Given that he had this power, he strikes me as exactly the sort of person where it would make sense, and wouldn't be contrived, to think he'd be happy to don the role of Dark Underlord, or Andeddu, and therefore even Bane and Palpatine?

 

I understand my master, It does sound quite overpowered. But I was intending my CS to show a very, very impressive history but then for this my character to be stripped of his power and endure a painful punishment of being a mere mortal. Having a normal power and losing that godly existence it once relished. So in a sense, the character does have a normal power range but great potential for the near future. And having this painful punishment will emphasise the characters conflict and hunger for lost power compelling him to join the Sith Order.

Is there any chance that this modification can be added to the CS to perhaps emphasise my ideas on stripping the characters power? It's just that I became fond with the characters back story.

And yes that reading material would be fantastic! I do find the Celestials to be a fascinating race, my master. And yes the RPF seems like a great idea!

 

I would disagree with the notion of psychopathy/sociopathy as an evolutionarily stable or advantageous state. It's a popular trope, the romanticized idea of the sociopath unbound by emotional concerns and able instead to do all the callous things necessary to get ahead. In truth, however, sociopaths, psychopaths, and those with antisocial personality disorder are typically at a marked disadvantage since they have the same emotions as everyone else, but are less stable and generally have a much harder time working and cooperating with peers due to their low emotional IQ and inability to relate to or empathize.


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Okay, I have not played SWTOR and have only lightly explored the SWTOR universe through my reading. I am intended on playing it soon though...

So my question was... Apparently, this is the Sith emperor, how did he transform into this creature? I am aware Darth Vitiate can transfer his essence into any other host body, is this image just another case of that? To me, that looks like a brain as the whole upper half of the head.

 

Darth_wanderguard, The Wisdom of Psychopaths by Kevin Dutton and The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins could probably explain this (and evopsych and how evolution actually works in general) a lot better than I, but psychopathy can nevertheless be understood as an evolutionarily stable strategy, although not precisely an inherent, in-all-situations advantage in of itself and definitely one that shouldn't be romanticised.

There's many cases in nature where psychological or physiological traits confer advantage dependent on their frequency in a population. This equilibrium between 'rival,' interacting traits, is the Evolutionarily Stable Strategy. One hypothesised example in humans is left-handedness vs right-handedness; in the ancestral environment, being left-handed would be advantageous since you're surprising your enemy with a strike from your stone-axe from an unfamiliar direction. This trait would flourish, but only up to the point where it's found in roughly half of the population, in which case it's no longer a surprise and then you'd see a fall again. Evidently, the equilibrium in our species is 1 in 10 individuals being left-handed, although this probably 10,000 years "out of date" so to speak now that there's little selection pressure on how well you fare in a sword fight.

Psychopathy is essentially an expression of the concept of Defecting in game theory/Prisoner's Dilemma terms. A tribe of 100 perfectly altruistic humans would work very well. A tribe of 100 humans devoid of conscience, morality and altruism would not work. Unfortunately, in a tribe of 99 'neurotypicals' and one psychopath, everyone is consistently Cooperating with the psychopath while he sneakily Defects against all of them, and he rises to the top very quickly and passes on his psychopathic genes (now tentatively identified as MAOA-L). Of course, if this gene becomes sufficiently prevalent, we begin to see the advantages conferred by being entirely selfish decrease, and so an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy is reached with an equilibrium of roughly 1 in 100.

In the markedly different modern environment, psychopaths still tend to do quite well if not better. What psychopaths lack is Affective Empathy, aka sympathy, not non-affective empathy (which neuroscientists believe is merely our brains simulating others' brains; 'from the inside' that is the feeling of empathy). In other words, they 'think' rather than 'feel' emotion, and are entirely amoral. But by the only criterion that natural selection cares about - the propagation of genes - psychopathic traits are advantageous to the individual as long as their frequency in a population is sufficiently low, and even in a career/material sense, we see very high concentrations of psychopathy in business and politics compared to the average population, approaching the oft-quoted 30% as opposed to 1%. We also see psychopaths in fact giving better answers on many moral dilemmas (at least better to a utilitarian) than the ostensible 'neurotypical,' e.g. the Trolley Problem, so perhaps psychopathy in politics actually is good for the species as well, if psychopaths are the ones with the neural architecture more geared towards making the difficult moral decisions that have to weigh up lives and so on.

It shouldn't be romanticised, it shouldn't be tabooed or decried either, it simply... is. Evolution and game theory don't care how things optimally 'should be.'

Oh I understand the intent, Formidious, I myself having done much the same. But unfortunately in its current state it conflicts with our ABYVerse (said reading material BTW, which because of your interest will be the basis for your next task), which already has its fallen Celestials and incarnations of dark energy and so on. When you become familiar with it, then yes this character and backstory, with some modifications, would fit in eerily well as one of the background villains in the upcoming RPG.

But for now, for your current identity here as a Sith Apprentice, we need something more mundane, without the fallen Celestial element.

That is not a creature, but a human wearing a mask. Yes, it is the Sith Emperor, albeit in one of his many host bodies; one of his other host bodies is my avatar. His original, immortal body is a Sith pureblood one that we haven't seen on-screen.

 

Ugh. Richard Dawkins. He makes atheism so much less palatable.


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Whatever's one thoughts on the common perception of Dawkins being a militant atheist (personally I strongly disagree), he was and is one of the greatest biologists of our age, and his seminal works The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype really lay the groundwork for current understanding of evolution (ending the foolish argument between the 'group selection' and the 'individualist' camps back in the 70s who were, as often happens in academia, both wrong )...

 

An interesting theory - one we will have to discuss at length in the future. I have my own thoughts on such things, both IRL and in the context of the GFFA.

Red crystal, of course. The typical crimson or another shade?
Perhaps I can just request a link to a photo?

Thank you for the link, I've browsed through and will hopefully have a chance to weigh in. From what I've seen, the discussion of biological immortality and transfer essence are most in line with my personal interests.

It does. It matches the personality well. I agree that he would be at the least satisfied by donning such roles. In fact, it strikes me as out of character (from what I understand) for him to be satisfied with any sort of concrete end.

 

My issue with Dawkins' approach to atheism is the same issue I take with creationism - both sides represent a fundamental misunderstanding of faith and belief. There is no proving or disproving the existence of God, or of any gods for that matter. The question is simply whether you choose to have faith. True faith is to hold true without justification or logic - this is why Kierkegaard insisted that belief must include some element of doubt, because to know is not to believe. Science aspires to the opposite, thus any attempt to find scientific justification for a belief renders it invalid, and any attempt to disprove it can only hope at best to disprove the believer and not the belief itself.

As far as Dawkins' work as a biologist, I have no doubt he is a brilliant scientist. This does not make him a brilliant philosophical or theological thinker, and the elementary logic I've seen him use in arguments against believers is evidence of this.

Keep in mind, I don't say any of this as a person of faith - I realized a long time ago I'm not brave or humble enough to believe in much of anything.

But we should probably get back to talking about Sithly things.


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One last word on it, if I may: I agree entirely. I like A. J. Ayer's thoughts on the matter, and logical positivism/logical empiricism in general: "Godtalk," and anything metaphysical in general, falls outside of the verification and falsification principles (other than the religious phenomenon/concept in a historical context) that, in this linguistic school of thought, are necessary for words to have meaning. I thus subscribe to igtheism than conventional atheism or theism.

This kind of thinking does have some implications for Star Wars metaphysics, though. I've often been fond of the view that there is no meaningful 'light side:'

 

How and where did this scene originate? It's interesting, to put it mildly.


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Facebook post. Just a one-shot.

Inspired by this Reddit thread, and the r/rational subreddit in general.

 

Thanos? The Mad Titan in Marvel? Infinity Gauntlet guy? Darkseid Lookalike? Really? So even a low-ranking 'arrogant' Sith could take on Thanos? Considering what he could do with the Infinity Gauntlet ...

I have already no longer expressed interest. The moment I said Free-Ranging Sith = I STAND ALONE. Which means I'll still stick to the dog-eat-dog Massassi are nothing but animalistic brutes and endless cycles of violence - doesn't matter in 1000 or 2 vigintillion billion quadrillion Gogolplex standard years - I see a weakness of Sith being always angry, never friendly with one another and always bloody pain when you could avoid it ...

 

Very well Sith Camp.

Excellent. I look forward to our discussions.

Typical crimson, although unstable like Kylo Ren's. I'll send it to you when I find it again.

Indeed. I am impressed with what TOR have done with Vitiate. Few immortal Dark Lords - Sauron, for instance - are portrayed in a realistic way, which is to say, with immortality would come boredom and the desire to live and experience everything, including many different lives... and also outgrow primitive thinking (e.g. basic Sith thinking, with Valkorion coming to view himself as having transcended the identity of Sith).

 

So I've been mulling over it since I have to pick a path for my character to eventually go down whether it be a Sith Assassin, Warrior, or Sorcerer. And my choice is hinging on your answers. Would a Sith Assassin be a mix of both the Warrior and Sorcerer? Such as oh a good duelist, but no where near a warrior, and strong with the force but not dipping into it fully like a Sorcerer. Or is it something unique to itself?

 

RabidBunny, an Assassin is something of a mix, yes, a jack of all trades and master of none as it were, although they do bring with them a unique flavour, of patience, deception, secrecy and shadow...

 

Darth Dreadwar
Thank you for that answer. You have made me make my choice. I just wanted to be sure what I'd be looking at when I made my choice.

The Masters better watch their backs or else I may take their places.

 

*chuckles*

We shall see, little one. We shall seee.

I believe he just might be ready, Lord Haretisch Darth_wanderguard...

 

Two things I want to see in canon are Sith holocrons and Sithspawn. I wonder if "Ren holocrons" and "Renspawn" exist.

 

The way I look at the assassin class is as being balanced between lightsaber and force skills, stealthy and cunning, and well-trained in a number of non-force disciplines like piloting, repair, computers, etc., so basically the KotOR scout/sentinel class.


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Indeed, the Sith equivalent to Jedi Sentinel in KOTOR II is Sith Assassin. A Mara Jade type, I always envisaged it as.

I really wish they'd had Sith holocrons in the periphery of Ren's 'Vader shrine' room, a la Atris' chambers in KOTOR II. It'd have been a neat link to the EU that the visual dictionary could have gone nuts on.
I doubt Renspawn or the like exist. To me, it seems, given Kylo Ren is their Master and perhaps their only lightsaber wielder, the Knights of Ren are more of a mercenary army (inspired by Lucas' original drafts for the Sith), subservient to the Sith or whatever dark side group Snoke belongs to.

 

It's been confirmed that Ren himself is not a Sith, although it's interestingly unclear whether this is due to his training being incomplete, or if Snoke is not a Sith either.


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