What did Sidious teach Vader?

[Shannon]

We know that Darth Sidious inducted Anakin into the Order of Sith Lords as Darth Vader. The novelisation of ROTS tells us that he teaches Vader to embrace his fury and take on the perspective of a Sith.

However, Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader relates that Vader is chafing at the lack of Sith knowledge passed on to him by Sidious. It seems as though Sidious is deliberately keeping him in the dark (no pun intended) and limiting his education.

What do we know of any other Sith education/knowledge passed on to Vader by Sidious? Is there anything we can point to that is distinct from Anakin's own Jedi training or his own improvisation (e.g. adapting his lightsabre skills to the suit's limitations) that is identifiable as Sith knowledge?

[Stark]

Actually, how much actual Sith stuff do we know Vader actually knows? From the movies, he certainly uses the 'dark side' through anger and we know he's in the Sith Order, but does he do anything directly Sith-related? Does he ever demonstrate knowledge of Sith secrets and all the crazy sorcery stuff Sith guys can do, or the sort of thing the Emperor was into?

[Darth Yoshi]

The only thing that I can think of which even remotely counts is in TESB when he stops that blaster bolt with his hand, but that's might simply be raw power instead of any Sith magic.

[Shannon]

Exactly my point. I recall reading (on Wookiepedia or in game fluff) that his suit fed him Sith-generated chemicals intravenously, but IIRC they were supplied by Sidious as a means of keeping him on a tight leash.

It seems that the only thing making Vader a Sith is Sidious bestowing the title on him. All the rest is his own considerable power, his anger, and his Jedi training and adaptations thereof.

[Stark]

I think in the ESB novel, he tries to use Sith magic to heal himself but he can't. He believes thsi to be due to his lack of 'pure hate' or whatever, but maybe Sideious just taught him a load of shit?

[Shannon]

I think what you're referring to was in Shadows of the Empire. He hates as much as he can (mostly against Obi-Wan and the sheer 'unfairness' of it all) and his lungs and breathing passages start to heal. The moment he feels elation, the effect ends. He manages about 30 seconds outside the meditation chamber, which is longer than he's done before. He concludes that once he has fully banished the 'weak' Anakin part of himself, he'll be able to make the effect permanent.

[Stark]

If that was how it worked, it'd be hilarious for some Jedi healer to get cranky and stomp his feet... and everyone he ever healed had the effect disappear. I've never read SOTE, however, but it's an amusing thought.

[Eleas]

In all honesty, my impression was always that Sidious taught Vader deeper applications of already familiar techniques, rather than anything substantially new. We also know from Nick Gillard's statements that it's around that time in the movie that Anakin outpaces Obi-Wan in terms of swordsmanship; possibly, it's an application of focused anger that grants him extra speed and striking power.

It's hard to say when looking solely at the movie, though. Perhaps the novelization might shed further light on it. I will say, however, that based on ESB, Vader seems to have learned or taught himself a few techniques for turning other people to the Dark Side, as per the ridiculously titled "Dun Möch".

[ExarKun]

I think in the ESB novel, he tries to use Sith magic to heal himself but he can't. He believes thsi to be due to his lack of 'pure hate' or whatever, but maybe Sideious just taught him a load of shit?

This is SOTE. He uses the dark side to heal his wounds including lungs, then, as soon as he becomes happy that they are healing, he loses the touch with the dark side, and the healing is undone.

[Duckie]

Well, if we want to be realistic it probably would be less "Jedi healer gets mad and people he healed start bleeding again" and more that Vader attempted to heal himself and that the small amounts of success were soothing feeling and started to reverse all the crap that's happened to his lungs.

After he gets happy, the healing stops, the anti-pain effect of healing one's self wears off, and the lungs are still slightly better but still screwed up beyond all measure and probably going to just get worse via any tissue he healed necrotising by the time he tries again.

[Lord Pounder]

IIRC in the RotS novel Dooku realises that Anakin is using his fury to become stronger as their duel goes on, making him a "natural sith". Palpatine had nothing specifically sith he could teach Vader.

[Darth Fanboy]

IIRC in the RotS novel Dooku realises that Anakin is using his fury to become stronger as their duel goes on, making him a "natural sith". Palpatine had nothing specifically sith he could teach Vader.

And yet later on in that novel, Sidious does teach him one thing. The bit where Vader had to imagine himself standing on top of a mountain or something similar. Just because Vader is a "natural" Sith does not mean there is nothing for Sidious to teach him.

[Darth Hoth]

IIRC in the RotS novel Dooku realises that Anakin is using his fury to become stronger as their duel goes on, making him a "natural sith". Palpatine had nothing specifically sith he could teach Vader.

Sith Healing per Freedon Nadd? Force storms? Generic "Sith magic bullshit"?

[Shannon]

Lord Pounder wrote:
IIRC in the RotS novel Dooku realises that Anakin is using his fury to become stronger as their duel goes on, making him a "natural sith". Palpatine had nothing specifically sith he could teach Vader.


And yet later on in that novel, Sidious does teach him one thing. The bit where Vader had to imagine himself standing on top of a mountain or something similar. Just because Vader is a "natural" Sith does not mean there is nothing for Sidious to teach him.

Agreed. IIRC, during their duel Dooku realised that Anakin was 'half Sith already and didn't even know it', because he was already drawing on the dark side to fuel his power. But this just makes him a Dark Jedi, not a Sith. I had always thought (and admittedly this is based on the EU) that being Sith meant that one had access to a different, or at least expanded, skill set or pool of knowledge. Especially since power is an end in itself to a Sith, so they are less likely to shrink from applications of the Force that a Jedi wouldn't necessarily consider.

When Sidious taught him the mental state that Darth Fanboy mentions, that seemed to help Anakin to focus his power more intensely than before and without reservation. But as Darth Hoth mentions, there is so much more to learn, e.g. Force Storms. Where, if anywhere, do we see Vader exhibiting purely Sith knowledge or techniques?

[Solauren]

WHo says there are any pure Sith techniques for Sidious to teach him?

Have we ever seen, or read anything, that the Sith could do, that the Jedi were not aware of?

For all we know, Anakin becoming Darth Vader, merely opened up the possibility of learning those techniques, or rather, if the Jedi taught the basics as 'avoid doing this', exploring what he already knew.

[Havok]

IIRC Dooku himself was already teaching himself Sith magic/alchemy/techniques on his own while he still a Jedi by using the Sith holocrons the Jedi had captured. I don't think Sidious had a any more knowledge than what was in the holocrons, but he certainly had more experience and insight into the intricacies of the techniques contained in them. Obviously though, not every thing was contained in the holocrons, such as Plaegus's immortality knowledge. Sidious also seemed quite capable of creating his own Sith magic as well.

[Darth Fanboy]

WHo says there are any pure Sith techniques for Sidious to teach him?

Have we ever seen, or read anything, that the Sith could do, that the Jedi were not aware of?

For all we know, Anakin becoming Darth Vader, merely opened up the possibility of learning those techniques, or rather, if the Jedi taught the basics as 'avoid doing this', exploring what he already knew.

Dark Lord has a passage where Sidious is reflecting on the nature of the Sith Holorons recovered by Vader from the conquered Jedi Temple, describing them as "Sith disinformation" and that he had seen the "actual holocrons." This leads me to believe that there was knowledge posessed by the Sith that the Jedi did not, and that the Order of the Sith as designed by Darth Bane held at least some unique knowledge during its thousand years of existence.

[Lord Pounder]

IIRC in the RotS novel Dooku realises that Anakin is using his fury to become stronger as their duel goes on, making him a "natural sith". Palpatine had nothing specifically sith he could teach Vader.

Sith Healing per Freedon Nadd? Force storms? Generic "Sith magic bullshit"?

And where did I actually say anything about "Sith Magic Bullshit"? I know English isn't your first language but don't put words in my mouth.

You mention Healing and Force Storms, where exactly are they described as a Sith only technique?

[Darth Hoth]

And where did I actually say anything about "Sith Magic Bullshit"? I know English isn't your first language but don't put words in my mouth.

You did not; it is a (possibly somewhat corrupted) quote (from Illuminatus Primus, if I recall correctly) that I took a fancy to when first I saw it and thereafter use as a catch-all term for the Sith magic of Tales of the Jedi in its more childish manifestations (zombies, voodoo dolls, witches with cauldrons and magical crystals, &c.). My apologies for any misunderstanding its use caused.

You mention Healing and Force Storms, where exactly are they described as a Sith only technique?

As for the Force Storm, I shall have to concede the point; the Tales of the Jedi Companion apparently describes it as useable by Jedi. Freedon Nadd's particular variant of healing, which also caused the corruption of the spirit (perhaps akin to the workings of various "Sith poisons", though this is mere speculation on my part), does appear rather unique to the Sith tradition; it resembles neither traditional Jedi healing nor the technique Vader was attempting to perform in Shadows of the Empire.

For the generic magic, we have illusions affecting sensors (possible overlap with "Doppelgänger", the Sith magic technique Luke Skywalker used in Dark Empire, having learnt it from Palpatine), necromancy, mutation/alchemy (of which Palpatine has made explicit use), projection of Marvel-like beams of brightly coloured concussive force (per King Ommin of Onderon, Exar Kun and others) and various other tricks.

[Publius]

It is known, for example, that the Sith maintain their own body of knowledge. The Complete Locations makes repeated reference to Sidious's stores of information ("ultra-secret Sith lair, with its archives, Sith Holocrons, and other artifacts," "environmentally controlled display case for Sith Scrolls," "a massive Sith Holocron uncovered on Korriban"), and the Dark Empire Sourcebook notes that the Clone Labs inside the Imperial Citadel on Byss were furnished with "a full library of Dark Side texts for the master's personal study."

Whether these materials contain information completely different from the library of the Jedi is unknown, and perhaps unknowable; if two techniques result in the same actual manifestation -- say, psychokinesis -- but operate on completely different psychic mechanisms, how does one determine whether they are the "same" or not?

The Sith regard knowledge as power, and it is no surprise that Darth Sidious could be exceedingly mean about sharing it. In The Dark Side Sourcebook, Sidious warns specifically in his manuscript The Creation of Monsters against creating 'a perfect specimen' because it cannot be controlled and can too easily be turned against its creator (which matches his own reluctance to share with Darth Tyranus, as Attack of the Clones: The Visual Dictionary comments that Sidious did not give him a Sith holocron to study, but instead only "holographic cells containing mystic teachings of shadowy power"). Of course, this attitude toward sharing knowledge is not unjustified, as revealed by Return of the Jedi:

Vader felt complete at the Emperor's side. Though the emptiness at his core never left him, it became a glorious emptiness in the glare of the Emperor's cold light, an exalted void that could encompass the universe. And someday would encompass the universe... when the Emperor was dead.

For that was Vader's final dream. When he'd learned all he could of the dark power from this evil genius, to take that power from him, seize it and keep its cold light at his own core -- kill the Emperor and devour his darkness, and rule the universe. Rule with his son at his side.

It may be useful to distinguish between the 'proprietary knowledge' of the Sith Lords (such as the Doppelgänger of Dark Empire and the 'dark side empowerment' of Dark Empire II) and Palpatine's own efforts. Palpatine himself is probably the foremost scientist in Star Wars, seeing that he actively pursued new data and experimentation, and made a concerted, decades-long effort to integrate virtually all known information about the Force. The Dark Empire Sourcebook mentions that after becoming Galactic Emperor he "gathered the greatest works of knowledge from over a million worlds" and "studied the Force in all its guises throughout the galaxy, whether it was the shamanism of the Jarvashqiine or the tales of the Tyia," to the point that "he had long ago gone beyond any knowledge to be found in the recovered teachings of the Krath or the Heresiarchs." In The New Essential Guide to Characters, the scribe writes that "Palpatine was known to have studied [the Sorcerers of Tund] prior to their destruction."

What's more, Palpatine is known to have described his research and body of knowledge as the "Science of Darkness," and was in the process of recording it in an encyclopedic Dark Side Compendium, "a great assemblage of Dark Side Lore" which was intended to contain the sum total of his 'Science.' The Dark Side Sourcebook claims that studying each volume of the Compendium requires "96 hours of reading time, over the course of a minimum of two weeks." He completed two volumes, The Book of Anger and The Weakness of Inferiors, with a third volume, The Creation of Monsters, still in manuscript at the time of his death over Pinnacle Moon in Dark Empire. The Dark Empire Sourcebook and The Dark Side Sourcebook both remark that he intended to write hundreds of volumes, but met his final death before he could do so.

[Shannon]

Thank you, Publius.

This appears to definitively answer the question of whether Sidious had additional esoteric knowledge to share (though how much was purely Sith knowledge is open to specualtion). It also notes that he was reluctant to share all he knew with his apprentice, though his extensive note-taking and recording could be taken as an indication that he intended to share it with someone.

By the point where he was transcribing his knowledge into the volumes noted by Publius, Sidious seems to have given up on the 'Rule of Two' in favour of his own serial immortality via cloning. Prior to that, he had focused on corrupting the younger Skywalker to the dark side. And as noted, he did share knowledge such as the Doppleganger technique with him. However, prior to his becoming aware of Luke's existence, Vader was still his strongest and most apparent heir. That is why I originally asked the question; Vader is most definitely a Sith Lord, but I was and I remain curious as to what Sith knowledge was actually imparted to him. The Return of the Jedi quote provided by Publius clearly implies that he had been learning from Sidious, but it is never made clear exactly what he learned.

As an aside, this

As for the Force Storm, I shall have to concede the point; the Tales of the Jedi Companion apparently describes it as useable by Jedi.

quote from Darth Hoth took me completely by surprise. Does anyone have a direct quote of this passage?

[Cykeisme]

However, Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader relates that Vader is chafing at the lack of Sith knowledge passed on to him by Sidious. It seems as though Sidious is deliberately keeping him in the dark (no pun intended) and limiting his education.

In Dark Lord, Sidious is constantly goading and pushing and encouraging Vader to let loose and fully embrace the Dark Side, as well as get back his self-confidence, because they are prerequisites for his real training to begin.

The "enlightenment" toward which Sidious is driving Vader doesn't happen until the incident on Kashyyk, after Vader kills Shryne. He feels, for the first time, the cold rush of the full power of the Dark Side rushing through him.

Presumably his training in actual Sith knowledge and techniques takes place in the time between the end of Dark Lord and the beginning of the Original Trilogy.

On an out-of-universe note, Lucas didn't really take into account the cloning/doppelganger idea of Palpatine's immortality, so Sidious was indeed looking for a worthy heir. And then he died. The end.. ha!

[Illuminatus Primus]

Palpatine doesn't have practical immortality on hand in ROTS or Dark Lord, so there's no contradiction. I think if you found out you could possibly genuinely live forever, it just might change your plans too.

[Cykeisme]

Palpatine doesn't have practical immortality on hand in ROTS or Dark Lord, so there's no contradiction. I think if you found out you could possibly genuinely live forever, it just might change your plans too.

I'm still of the opinion that Dark Empire dilutes the strength of the plot in the movies.
This is entire out of universe, though. I'm fully aware that the EU is official.

Didn't the cloning process make him lose a bit of his identity each time, though? He went insane, didn't he?

[Karza]

Didn't the cloning process make him lose a bit of his identity each time, though? He went insane, didn't he?

There's a quote somewhere about each subsequent clone being more insane than the one before, but damned if I can remember where. Maybe in the Dark Empire writer's notes or one of the Essential Guide to Characters?