Shroud of the Dark Side

[Balrog]

It's a topic that often comes up, usually in versus debates, and sometimes in jest, but I thought we might try to hash out seriously. It seems, from going through the various source material, that there was an actual "shroud" and that it did negatively affect the Jedi. Consider the most obvious piece of evidence:

YODA: Blind we are, if creation of this clone army we could not see.
WINDU: I think it is time to inform the Senate that our ability to use the Force has diminished.

Which looks pretty clear cut; an outright statement that their ability to use the Force has diminished. It has been argued before however that Windu was not making a general statement about Force use, but in the context of talking specifically about foreseeing the future. I've never quite gotten this interpretation; from watching the scene, it looks pretty clear that he's talking about the general cause (diminished Force ability) to their problem (not foreseeing the future). If it was a problem that they were specifically having trouble seeing the future, he would have spoken of it as such.

With the Jedi Order overextended, spread thin across the galaxy, each Jedi is alone, surrounded only be whatever troops he, she or it commands. War itself pours darkness into the Force, deepening the cloud that limits Jedi perception. And the clones have no malice, no hatred, not the slightest ill intent that might give warning. They are only following orders.

This passage, besides giving an origin as to why this event is happening, looks to reinforce the alternate explanation about only affecting farseeing abilities, since it talks about Jedi "perception." But then, even the word perception has many meanings in the context of a Jedi's abilities. After all, a Jedi's powers comes from the Force, and if their ability to connect to it, to "perceive" it, is diminished, then they are diminished as well. Even going with the interpretation that only the Jedi's farseeing abilities are affect, that is still going to have a drastically negative effect on them. On the strategic scale, it means being unable to foresee events like an invasion or planetary disaster. On a tactical scale, it means being more vulnerable to ambushes, less able to deflect and dodge attacks, etc. But this phrase is also used elsewhere in another meaning.

Mace nodded silently..."It's...maddening, Master. If only...I mean, ten years ago, we could have simply reached out-"
"Cling to the past, a Jedi cannot," Yoda interrupted sternly. His green stare reminded Mace not to speak of the shadow that had darkened Jedi perception of the Force. This was not discussed outside the Temple.

Again we see the phrase "Jedi perception", except this time it is perception "of the Force." And it is used in the context of Mace trying to telepathically contact his former padewan, who was back on his home planet and had gone all Apocalypse Now on them. Clearly, whatever the dark side is doing to the Force, it is affecting more than just Jedi abilities relating to seeing the future.

Not because he was responsible for her death. It ate at him because he wasn't.
He'd had no idea she was about to walk into a blaster bolt. The Force never offered the faintest hint of a clue. No trace of bad feeling - or rather: no hint that all the bad feelings he'd had were about to add up to something much, much worse.
Nothing. Nothing at all. That's what sickened him.
What happens to a Jedi when he can no longer trust the Force?

Here we see further evidence, in this case Mace failed to stop a colleague from getting shot, of Jedi's abilities weakened. Obviously, if you are having trouble seeing the future, your ability to operate as a super-police/ninja/general is diminished. Of course not everyone was affected equally; Mace might sound moody now, but he's a Jedi Master, and still able to kick ass in ridicules BAMF ways later in the book. But the rank-and-file were noticing it too.

Shryne hurried to Climber's side while the spec-three was moving through the room, making certain no further surprises awaited them.
Yoda or just about any other Jedi Master would have been able to rid Climber of the battle droid with a Force push, but Shryne needed Climber's help to move the sparking carcass aside. Years back, he would have been able to manage it alone, but no longer. He wasn't sure if the weakness was in him or if, with the death of every Jedi, the war was leaching some of the Force out of the universe.

Here again we see Jedi Force powers, specifically telekinetic abilities, are being affected as well.

For the first time since the Sith War, there would be a generation of Jedi Knights who grew up surrounded by a Force clouded by the dark side.

From the perspective of a Jedi teacher. Obviously, if you are a 'light side user' and the Force is being 'clouded' by the dark side, you might have some trouble using it.

Now this topic is often so hotly disputed primarily because it comes up in versus debates about how to treat the Jedi, whether their poor showings during this period is because they naturally suck and would get beat up by an old woman, or they're all Supermen able to break planets apart but had their true potential held back. However I think everyone can agree that the dark side was affecting the Jedi in a negative way during the Clone Wars, specifically by design due to Palpatine's plan, and that in whatever alternate scenario they get put in this probably won't be the case. This doesn't mean your average Jedi is just gonna go around effortlessly snapping their opponent's neck, but that a little leeway might be in order in what they can and cannot do.

[Molyneux]

I don't have much to add to this thread, but that does seem like a reasonable argument.
However...it still doesn't explain, I think, why the OT Jedi appeared to be so much lower-powered than the prequel characters. At that point, the Clone Wars are long over, and the Empire seems to have pretty much any large-scale conflict damped down - brutally so, sure, but still, no major wars breaking out.

[Metahive]

If Mace Windu single-handedly annihilating an entire droid army + a humongous seismic tank represents him with diminished force capabilities I really wonder what he would be like at his peak.

[Balrog]

If Mace Windu single-handedly annihilating an entire droid army + a humongous seismic tank represents him with diminished force capabilities I really wonder what he would be like at his peak.

Hilariously, I was flipping through the latest visual dictionary for the CW cartoons, and this actually came up. It's the scene on Ryloth where Mace is effortlessly killing droids, including causing a dozen or so to just break apart with the wave of his hand, by saying he hadn't felt this strong a connection to the Force since his battle on Dantooine...the one where he single-handedly annihilated an entire droid army + a humongous seismic tank

Even then I still think what he did on the planet contains some exaggeration; even the wank found in the rest of the EU doesn't come close to that.

However...it still doesn't explain, I think, why the OT Jedi appeared to be so much lower-powered than the prequel characters. At that point, the Clone Wars are long over, and the Empire seems to have pretty much any large-scale conflict damped down - brutally so, sure, but still, no major wars breaking out.

The only Jedi in the OT were Obi Wan, Yoda and Luke. Obi Wan spent most of the time sneaking around trying to not draw attention to himself, Yoda wasn't in any fights, and Luke was just a young pup. Even then I'd call Yoda effortlessly lifting an X-wing out of the water impressive.

As for the rest of the timeline, again I don't think this is to be used as an excuse for why all Jedi aren't all effortless telekinetic killing machines.

[Metahive]

Well, the show that Windu accomplishing those feats, 2D Clone Wars, also had about, oh, 10000 or so LAATs fitting into a single Acclamator. Yeah, one could definitely say that they were somewhat exaggerating.

[Shannon]

There is a scene in the novelisation of ROTS after Obi-Wan, Anakin, R2 and Palapatine are captured and led onto the bridge of the Invisible Hand to face Grievous that is of some interest here. Obi-Wan is suddenly able to perceive the Force in all its power and glory, so much so that he is easily able to reverse the situation by becoming one with everything around him. He feels both surprise and wonder at the occurence. Grievous is completely shocked at the reversal. It is never explicitly stated what the cause of this sudden leap in his abilities is, only that it is the first time in years that he has felt this way. It stands in complete contrast to how, minutes earlier, they are caught in the force field trap - and are surprised that they are so easily caught. "Wait a minute. We're smarter than this. How did this happen?" Unfortunately, I don't have the book with me, right now, but I could dig it out and find the exact quotes if anyone is interested.

My own speculative interpretation of that scene is that having acheived the murder of Tyranus at Anakin's hand, Palpatine needed them to escape from Grievous and realised that it was unlikely that they could do so in their present state. As the author of the Shroud of the Dark Side, he has enough influence over it to selectively withdraw its shadow from Obi-Wan, enabling the Jedi Master to effect an escape.

[freker]

This looks very interesting, and I agree with Shannon that Palpatine/Sidious could have had a hand in lifting the veil.

In regards of Mace Windu, and I think also for Anakin. Since Windu is a user of Vapaad and Anakin is slowly slipping over to the dark side (and regularly partly falling to it during strong emotional distress), is it possible that they are less influenced by the veil of the dark side? This would explain why Anakin kept growing in the force and why Mace was still able to kick ass.

[Knife]

I take the tract that the Force has a will and a plan, not as goofy as the Cylon plan though. Republic and Jedi are broken, so you send in Palpatine to trash the system and sweep it away; but you can't leave the galaxy in darkness, so you put in a pressure relief valve. Enter Anakin, a timed pressure relief valve who needs a trigger to go off at the right time and needs to be in the right place. He falls to the Darkside putting him in the right place, now we need the right time; enter Luke Skywalker. Luke is able to percieve goodness in Anakin, turns him to the Light at the right time, where Anakin kills Palpatine after Palpatine has done away with all the old and broken systems of the Republic. Old broken system gone, new destructive system that swept away the old system is now gone. The two people directly responsible for it, Anakin and Palpatine, are gone.

So, hows this relate to the Shroud of the Darkside?

I take the tract that the Force has a will and a plan. You want a super villain to take over the world...er galaxy? You have to feed him enough information so he can do it, Palpatine sees uncannily enough into the future and sees future events enough to plan a take over. Obviously, he can't see his demise or failure, just his victories to build up his self confidence. The Jedi, though, use the Force as well. One could say it is their 'main' power. Sure, they hop around, jump really high, but lets face it, seeing the future is pretty much their base power; however, if they can see the future of Palpatine taking over, they'd stop it, even if their down fall, and that of the Republic, is the main goal of the Force. So, you have blank spots in the 'future' for the Jedi, just like you have a glaring blank spot in the future for Palpy.

Shroud of the Darkside is the Force withholding information from the Jedi it doesn't want them to have. Can't have them stopping the great plan of the universe especially when the plan calls for them to go the way of the Do-do.

[Enigma]

I thought it was mentioned in RotS that the shroud was lifted?

[Knife]

I thought it was mentioned in RotS that the shroud was lifted?

So much as Yoda could Monday morning quarterback and see what Sidious had done, yes.

[Eternal_Freedom]

He said it in AotC I think:

"The shroud of the Dark Side has fallen. Begun, this Clone War has."

[SCVN 2812]

If the force permeates all things, then all things to some degree or another effect the Jedi. Which leads me to the conclusion that the state of the galaxy in general and local conditions more dramatically can impact the Jedi's ability to use the force and, for lack of a better term, its flavor. In the run up to a galactic civil war, misery, anger, hate and general animosity has poisoned the force.

The conditions of prewar, war and brutal oppressive dictatorship (possibly designed to further darken the force for the benefit of the Sith while keeping order) would make it more difficult for the Jedi to maintain their control, tapping a force that is filled with so much dark side emotion, and generally hindering the use of the light side.

As for the power level difference, ignoring cartoons and novels, I think it goes back to the old idea I've seen floated that the original trilogy represents a more pragmatic, less showy and more "energy efficient" use of the force where as the prequel trilogy shows both Jedi and Sith using more of a shock and awe approach that is stunning and impressive but ultimately a wasteful approach that will fall by the wayside as the survivors on both sides refine their doctrine in light of having real, practical experience fighting one another for the first time in centuries.

In the Jedi's case at least, Yoda being fought to a draw, arguably even a defeat by Sidious and Kenobi narrowly snatching a victory against his powerful but brash and less experienced by a decade former padawan, should be very thought provoking. By the same token, Anakin's maiming and Sidious fighting such a close battle against Yoda in spite of the battlefield and the conditions of the force itself favoring them, should likewise caution the Sith against the extravagances of draining your strength hurling Senate pods around like water balloons and unnecessary acrobatics.

The novel Dark Lord shows some of the Sith side of this self analysis and refinement of tactics, at least on Vader's end. Whether Palpatine really learned anything from this, I don't recall. Seeing as he didn't actually fight so much as torture Luke, there's no evidence in the original trilogy one way or the other about whether Palpatine's attitude towards force use became more pragmatic or not.

Edit: one last note on raw power, while Vader is not as acrobatic as he was as Anakin, he did strangle his admiral who was presumably on the bridge from Vader's quarters, with only a hologram to provide line of sight. Depending on where Vader's quarters are on Executor, that could be a range of a few hundred meters to kilometers.

[JME2]

I take the tract that the Force has a will and a plan, not as goofy as the Cylon plan though. Republic and Jedi are broken, so you send in Palpatine to trash the system and sweep it away; but you can't leave the galaxy in darkness, so you put in a pressure relief valve. Enter Anakin, a timed pressure relief valve who needs a trigger to go off at the right time and needs to be in the right place. He falls to the Darkside putting him in the right place, now we need the right time; enter Luke Skywalker. Luke is able to percieve goodness in Anakin, turns him to the Light at the right time, where Anakin kills Palpatine after Palpatine has done away with all the old and broken systems of the Republic. Old broken system gone, new destructive system that swept away the old system is now gone. The two people directly responsible for it, Anakin and Palpatine, are gone.

So, hows this relate to the Shroud of the Darkside?

I take the tract that the Force has a will and a plan. You want a super villain to take over the world...er galaxy? You have to feed him enough information so he can do it, Palpatine sees uncannily enough into the future and sees future events enough to plan a take over. Obviously, he can't see his demise or failure, just his victories to build up his self confidence. The Jedi, though, use the Force as well. One could say it is their 'main' power. Sure, they hop around, jump really high, but lets face it, seeing the future is pretty much their base power; however, if they can see the future of Palpatine taking over, they'd stop it, even if their down fall, and that of the Republic, is the main goal of the Force. So, you have blank spots in the 'future' for the Jedi, just like you have a glaring blank spot in the future for Palpy.

Shroud of the Darkside is the Force withholding information from the Jedi it doesn't want them to have. Can't have them stopping the great plan of the universe especially when the plan calls for them to go the way of the Do-do.

This is very similiar to the viewpoints I've developed on the Force's role in the saga since the PT came out.

[Metahive]

Time for a very personal rant:

I must say that from a dramatic point of view I detest stories who feature an ineffable, quasi-divine force (force being used here in a general sense) yanking the protagonists and antagonists around either for its own equally ineffable purposes, say, the "greater good". In my opinion said force should only ever be the writer of the story, never something from within it. My SOD tends to get shredded whenever stories go into that direction because through it I get double reminded that I'm watching actors acting out a pre-ordained script, not actual people making their own decisions or even having their own characters.
For me there's nothing tragic about Anakin if he has been a puppet of the Force all along, there's nothing evil about Palpatine if he's just doing what the strings he hangs on compel him to do, there's nothing heroic about Luke destroying the Death Star when him accomplishing it was a foregone conclusion in universe.

I consider these metaphorical visible strings to be as serious a flaw of a story as the actual visible strings Ed Wood suspended his UFOs from.

[Broken]

The Force is not an active manipulator of the Star Wars universe. For the most part, it seems to act as a power source (The Force as a whole) with a damaged, cancerous part (the Dark Side) that can be tapped into by sensitive individuals. So far as I'm aware, the only time the Force directly intervenes on its own is in the creation of Anakin Skywalker. All other actions, in universe, seem to be the result of individual decisions or random chance, not active alterations by an outside actor that so shreds Metahive's SOD. The Will of the Force did not see fit to conjure a destroyer up to deal with Exar Kun or other ancient Sith Lords, which means that perhaps the later Banite Sith Order was a unique threat that required a singular solution.

Now, out of universe, iirc George Lucas once described the Star Wars saga as the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. That implies that while Anakin has a pre-destined role (destruction of the Sith/weakening the Dark Side) the route he took to get there (becoming a Sith himself, helping destroy the Jedi) was not required and was actually a mistake of epic scale. Otherwise it would be the cruel necessity of Anakin Skywalker, not the tragedy.

[Knife]

"Remember, the force is omnipresent. It envelops you as it radiates from you. A Jedi warrior can actually feel the force as a physical thing."
"It is an energy field, then?" Luke inquired.

"It is an energy field and something more. Kenobi went on, almost mystically. "An aura that at once controls and obeys. It is a nothingness that can accomplish miracles." he looked thoughtful for a moment.

"No one, not even the Jedi scientists, were able to truely define the force. Possibly no one ever will. Sometimes there is as much magic as science in the explanations of the force. yet what is a magician but a practicing theorist? Now, lets try again."

"And well you shouldn't," the Jedi Master advised. "For my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it and makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings we are, not this crude matter," he said as he pinched Luke's skin.

Yoda made a grand sweeping gesture to indicate the vastness of the universe about him. "Feel it you must. Feel the flow. Feel the Force around you. Here," he said, as he pointed, "between you and me and that tree and that rock."

So, plenty to feed both sides of the issue; but I will point out that in Ben's explanation the Force can act through you as well as you using it. This implies that it can act on it's own even as you can tap into it for your own need. Yoda's explanation could go either way as well, but the part about Luminous Beings, sounds like souls and thus attaching it to other mythologies.

[Metahive]

For the most part, it seems to act as a power source (The Force as a whole) with a damaged, cancerous part (the Dark Side)]...]

Which brings me to my next pet-peeve. Why was it found necessary to categorize the dark side as a corrupt aberration of the Force? Why give a power as primordial and universal as the Force is supposed to be a moral disposition at all? When one just considers the OT it is possible to categorize light and dark side as being more similar to an eastern, morally neutral "Yin-Yang" style dualism, with the light side governing rationality and the dark side governing emotion, but taking the rest into account it's obvious that it is actualy supposed to be a "Good-Evil" style pseudo-manichean (I'm tempted to call it C.S. Lewisian) relationship, a model I find utterly stock and boring.
In my opinion if a story features grand, primordial forces they should also be portrayed as transcending humanity's comparatively petty ideas of ethics and morals and be much, much larger than life.

But in the end seeing as to how Star Wars ultimately is a fairy tale, albeit one with spaceships, it's not surprising the series is following one of their primary conceits, that of an uncomplicated moral system.

[Broken]

Watch the original trilogy again. Even watch the prequels too. So far as I recall, the words "light side" are never used. The Force and the Dark Side are mentioned repeatedly, but the closest we get to a "light side" statement is in ESB when Luke questions Yoda about how he will know the "good" side from the bad. Only the untrained apprentice considers the idea of a "light side" to balance the Dark Side. The educated, trained Jedi and Sith alike, only speak of the Force and the Dark Side of the Force. In the end, the "light side" is a EU created brain-bug. Of course, if anyone's memory is better then mine and point out the use of the light side in the movies, then that whole argument falls apart.

[Metahive]

It actually doesn't matter one bit what the non-dark part of the force is called in the series. Fact is, there's a division in the force and the division is along moral lines, the dark side is evil and everyone making use of it is either teetering on the edge of or already indulged in baby-eating evil, no exceptions.

[Darth Hoth]

Which brings me to my next pet-peeve. Why was it found necessary to categorize the dark side as a corrupt aberration of the Force? Why give a power as primordial and universal as the Force is supposed to be a moral disposition at all? When one just considers the OT it is possible to categorize light and dark side as being more similar to an eastern, morally neutral "Yin-Yang" style dualism, with the light side governing rationality and the dark side governing emotion, but taking the rest into account it's obvious that it is actualy supposed to be a "Good-Evil" style pseudo-manichean (I'm tempted to call it C.S. Lewisian) relationship, a model I find utterly stock and boring.
In my opinion if a story features grand, primordial forces they should also be portrayed as transcending humanity's comparatively petty ideas of ethics and morals and be much, much larger than life.

How does a reason/emotion or order/chaos (or whatever) dichotomy become any more "transcendent" than a good/evil one? It is still organised after human ideas of binary opposing mental concepts. From what it sounds like you would rather have it be completely alien, incomprehensible and apparently arbitrary; a less anthropomorphic and more powerful version of Cthulhu, basically. Which would of course make for a very different story experience.

That aside, I personally tend to see any statements the Jedi make about the Force that cannot be empirically supported as merely their theology, which as such should not be taken at face value. In the EU, and indeed in the films themselves, there are multiple different theories and mythologies about how the Force works, and as far as I know none has been proven conclusively right to date. Some, such as the Sith, view the Force merely as a morally neutral power source, while others, such as the Jedi, develop elaborate theologies and anthropomorphise the Force with an independent will. Some recognise a Dark Side and believe it evil; others, that it is morally neutral, but merely the governor of emotion, in opposition to a Light Side of restraint (similar to what you put forth; see the Dark Empire Sourcebook); and others still do not recognise a Dark Side at all (e.g., Vergere in the NJO, although this was possibly ret-conned).

[Metahive]

How does a reason/emotion or order/chaos (or whatever) dichotomy become any more "transcendent" than a good/evil one? It is still organised after human ideas of binary opposing mental concepts. From what it sounds like you would rather have it be completely alien, incomprehensible and apparently arbitrary; a less anthropomorphic and more powerful version of Cthulhu, basically. Which would of course make for a very different story experience.

Not necessarily. The force could be entirely alien and incomprehensible and as you say, whatever is said about the Force in the movies simply be chalked up as the romantic musings of a "true believer". That said I didn't bring up the "reason/emotion" divide as an example of transcendece but as what I myself got out of the description of the Force in the OT. I would have prefered if it had developed in that vein because that would have offered chances to make the dark side a viable alternative and the whole Jedi-Sith relationship a lot more complex, meaning every Jedi and every Sith actually has to carefully weigh pro and contra before aligning himself, something that simply doesn't really work from a storytelling POV with the whole "Dark Side = Evil" conceit that was ultimately chosen.

Also, not Cthulhu, Azathoth.

[PainRack]

Which brings me to my next pet-peeve. Why was it found necessary to categorize the dark side as a corrupt aberration of the Force? Why give a power as primordial and universal as the Force is supposed to be a moral disposition at all? When one just considers the OT it is possible to categorize light and dark side as being more similar to an eastern, morally neutral "Yin-Yang" style dualism, with the light side governing rationality and the dark side governing emotion, but taking the rest into account it's obvious that it is actualy supposed to be a "Good-Evil" style pseudo-manichean (I'm tempted to call it C.S. Lewisian) relationship, a model I find utterly stock and boring.

Not really. Hindu mysticism view both creation and destruction as neccessary via Vishnu and Shiva. If we think of the Light side as the forces of creation and the Dark Side as the forces of destruction, we can still see why people are reluctant to think of the Dark side as neccessary or vital. Indeed, this plays into the whole Force out of balance whack. The Jedi order under Yoda had held on so tightly to the Light side, the powers of creation that the Republic and possibly, the Force itself has become stagnant.


Shouldn't it be more important to establish why that when Luke powers became ascendant, Palpatine powers never diminished?

[Darth Tedious]

It actually doesn't matter one bit what the non-dark part of the force is called in the series. Fact is, there's a division in the force and the division is along moral lines, the dark side is evil and everyone making use of it is either teetering on the edge of or already indulged in baby-eating evil, no exceptions.

I got the impression that this idea was Jedi propaganda. Maybe I just listen to Palpatine too much...

[Havok]

It is propaganda to a point. It seems to only apply to certain species. IIRC, in one of the accompanying Visual Dictionaries for the prequels states that Plo Koon, can delve much further towards the "dark side" than a human Jedi could.

We've had this argument before. The Force is like a gun. It is neither evil or good. It is the intention of the usage that matters. Is a Jedi that uses Force Lightning to start spaceships with dead batteries really delving towards the dark side?

[Darth Tedious]

There is the whole issue of the Dark Side consuming people too, that might be why the Jedi tend to fear it. I'm guessing Plo Koon would have some immunity to that effect.

Is a Jedi that uses Force Lightning to start spaceships with dead batteries really delving towards the dark side?

Wait, has someone actually done that?