what if....

[Jaepheth]

So, what do you guys think would happen if the Emperor discovered the Valley of the Jedi?

And what exactly is this valley? (all I know about it is what's presented in the games)

[Spanky The Dolphin]

It's the Sith Empire's hiding place for their legendary, long-lost stash of candy.

[Robert Treder]

The Valley of the Jedi is an ancient battleground on Ruusan. About a thousand years before the Battle of Yavin, there was a revolution in the Jedi Order, which saw many knights rally against the old ways and embrace the dark side. They called themselves the Sith, though they had no real connection to previous incarnations of the Sith Empires other than their general ideology. The Jedi waged war on these Sith upstarts, and eventually sequestered them to Ruusan, in the Colonies. There they embarked on the last large-scale Jedi military operation before the start of the Clone Wars. The Sith leader, fighting a losing battle, invoked an ancient Sith trick and consumed the Force essences of the many Jedi and Sith on the battlefield, trapping them in the Valley of the Jedi. This was manifested in the corporeal world by the presence of an unusually powerful "Force nexus" at the valley, which could be manipulated by a sufficiently powerful and skilled Force user to various ends.
(Incidentally, one of the few survivors of the Battle of Ruusan was a Sith by the name of Darth Bane. Having watched as politics, egoism, and testosterone led the Sith uprising to mismanaged disaster, he invents the so-called "rule of two" and ensures that the Sith will bide their time over the next thousand years, not revealing themselves until the time is right. Talk about long-term planning.)
Flash forward 1000+ years, and you get the events of Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, where Kyle Katarn and Jerec race to find the valley. As we know, Kyle defeats Jerec and his followers and sets the spirits in the valley free.

Now, as far as what would happen if Palpatine found the valley? My guess is he knew about it. It's hard to reconcile the thought of him not being aware of it, since there should be records of the battle and its outcome both in the Jedi and Sith archives. Of course, we know that the Jedi entrusted the Valley's location to Jedi Master Qu Rahn, who absconded with the coordinates during the Clone Wars, escaping Lord Vader's purge, and ultimately entrusting them with the Katarns. It's possible that these were the only Jedi records of the Valley, and that Palpatine did not therefore have access to them via the Jedi. But Palpatine's Sith Order was founded by a guy who was at the battle, and we know that Palpatine is steeped in Sith lore, so it shouldn't have been difficult for him to figure out.
Besides, the Valley isn't hidden beyond the Outer Rim or anything. It's in the Colonies, relatively near to the Hydian Way (according to SWI). If he could find the Rebel Alliance, I bet he could find a planet hiding in plain sight.
So, what would happen if he used the Valley? Well, what happened to Kyle when he used it in the alternate, "dark" ending? He used his increased power to become Emperor. Palpatine was already Emperor of the Known Universe and practically a living God to boot. I can't imagine that using or not using the Valley would make too much of an impact on his regime.

As an aside, the Valley's story has some fishiness. If the Valley's spirits could be freed by a single Jedi, why didn't the Jedi free them right after the battle? Did Kyle really free the spirits at the end of Jedi Knight, or did he simply prevent Jerec from feeding on the spirits? (I know the cutscene implies that he freed the spirits, but I don't remember whether or not it's explicitly stated ... did Kyle tell Jan just what the hell he was doing?)

[Lord Revan]

Snip

The Force Nexus is still there in Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

It's candy, I tell you! CANDY!!

[Kurgan]

Well apparently he didn't free them all in the sense of "sending them to heaven" or the Jedi equivalent, since the Valley is still powerful enough to be used in the subsequent games (Jedi Outcast for example).

To reconcile them, I've got a couple of theories:

1) "Freeing" the spirits just means they can float around the planet rather than being trapped in that one room.

2) "Freeing" them means that they don't become slaves to a powerful Jedi who enters and wants to use them. To use the power you'd need their direct cooperation.

3) He only freed the "Good ones" (leaving the bad ones) or freed some but not all of them, not having enough power on his own.

4) Possible off the wall fourth theory... Kyle only freed the spirits that Jerec had been holding captive (a portion of the total). The rest remained, and Kyle didn't know of any way to free the rest without doing what Jerec did and risking becoming corrupt from all of that power at his fingertips (including the influence of evil Jedi spirits).

The trouble with #3 is that it would imply Kyle used the evil ones to regain his "link" with the Force (shock his system back after he'd "rejected" the Force and let his powers grow dormant over a short period of time without practice or training).

The spirits did have personality, and they were able to drive some Imperial officers mad, who were near them. Some of the spirits were good, some evil, some insane themselves. Jerec sought to control them all, Kyle seemed to bond with some of them. Anyway, feel free to re-read the novel "Jedi Knight" and play the game for more info. That's what I remember.

Unless of course there is some "Force Aura" that remains which doesn't include any individual spirits, but I didn't get the impression that such a thing was powerful enough to zap somebody back into the Force, much less give the Force to people who had no previous powers to begin with.

Jedi Outcast hinges on the idea that Jedi Spirits could be "trapped" inside those crystals they use, and thus forced to "power" the soldiers, with Desann coordinating the control I suppose.

In Jedi Academy, Tavion uses the Sceptor of Ragnos to "infuse" her followers with the Force, which she's taken from various places in the galaxy (places much like Yoda's "cave"). Once she's defeated, her followers lose their powers.

Or it may be candy, as Spanky suggests.

[Stark]

Candy explains all the offensive lameness of the Valley of the Ghosts... er. Jedi quite well. See, Kyle had had a bit too much sugar one time....

[Chris OFarrell]

Or

#5. The spirits were all freed from the Valley, but the place (like the Jedi Temple on Courscant) was either built over or became a Nexus of raw force energy that remained regardless of if the spirts were freed.

[NecronLord]

Anyway, feel free to re-read the novel "Jedi Knight"

I never got that Novel. Did it mention what happened to the Vengance?

[Panzer Grenadier]

If the Emperor knew about it why not use it? Wouldn't it make his power almost unbeatable?

[Armored Goldbar]

Not if the Emperor couldn't use it for some reason.

Palpatine is the culmination of thousands of years of Sith plotting, because we don't know just what that means in terms of the Force it's possible he can't use the Valley for anything of worth.

[Kurgan]

Or

#5. The spirits were all freed from the Valley, but the place (like the Jedi Temple on Courscant) was either built over or became a Nexus of raw force energy that remained regardless of if the spirts were freed.

Yeah, I was thinking...

Unless of course there is some "Force Aura" that remains which doesn't include any individual spirits, but I didn't get the impression that such a thing was powerful enough to zap somebody back into the Force, much less give the Force to people who had no previous powers to begin with.

Jedi Outcast hinges on the idea that Jedi Spirits could be "trapped" inside those crystals they use, and thus forced to "power" the soldiers, with Desann coordinating the control I suppose.

Or you're saying there was a "force nexus" there even before the battle? That's an interesting theory, but again, the novel & game imply that the spirits are the source of the power. And with them gone, would some remaining "force juice" be strong enough to do what we saw done in Jedi Outcast? In Jedi Academy they had to "drain" the force juice from a dozen planets or so in order to "power" their gang of Sith Cultists.

As far as the Emperor not knowing about the Valley, let's be realistic here. According to the EU at least, Palpy is NOT all-knowing. If he was, he wouldn't have lost to a bunch of punk rebels. He would have actually wiped out the Jedi instead of leaving them and hundreds of "force sensitives" lying around including powerful ones from the Old Republic days. He would have actually USED the super weapons he had at his disposal instead of "saving them" for when he was a possessed Clone commanding a rag-tag force of idiots years later. Palpy's lack of omniscience and general arrogance shows that he could simply have missed it.

Now if it were the historical site of the Sith's great defeat, you'd think that he'd have known about it. The JK history doesn't say they were sith, it only says a great battle was fought between some Jedi and some Dark Jedi. The rest of the EU ties it together with the Terry Brooks history of the Sith. Then again, Sith history need not be all available to Palpatine just because he is one. This could have been lost as well.

The information in the Terry Brooks TPM novelisation is from an omniscient narrator, not from Palpatine himself or from Maul, right? So the Jedi and the Sith may not have known about it.

Or, maybe Palpatine, (his usual over-confident self) was "saving" the Valley for later, and he simply wasn't able to use it in time. (Somebody correct me if I'm wrong... did Dark Empire come before or after Jedi Knight?)

[Darth Sephiroth]

My thoughts on it was that it was a Force Well sort of like the one on Coruscant under where the Jedi Temple was as described in NJO, just not as strong.

[Kurgan]

Can you explain this well a bit more?

[Darth Sephiroth]

In the book it super amped up all force abilities to a level of extreme power, to the point of flying around and all sorts of other fun.

[NecronLord]

I never got that Novel. Did it mention what happened to the Vengance?

Wow. I found Soldier for the Empire the other day. Interesting co-incidence. I rather liked it too, though I'll never be free of the image of Imperial Commandos eating doughnuts now.