American Hominid said:
"And did you tell her about my kidnapping by the Bpfasshi Dark Jedi? That's where it all really began.
It was a terrible experience, possibly the first time in my life I'd felt truly and genuinely terrified. He was half mad with rage - maybe more than half mad - with all of Darth Vader's power and none of his self-control.
...
I won't try to describe their battle. Even after forty-five years of thinking about it, I'm not sure I can. For nearly a day and a half the swamp blazed with fire and lightning and things I still don't understand. At the end of it the Dark Jedi was dead, disintegrating in a final, massive blaze of blue fire."
- from Zahn's Vision of the Future
That's approximately what I would have expected. Sort of like if two motherships from Close Encounters were fighting each other.
I definitely thought the Masters were above using physical weaponry.
The Emperor's pure energy even works well within my personal model of Force use, with users like Yoda directly the flow subtly, using mostly normal physical possibilities to influence things, while dark siders like the Emperor just go straight for brute power.
Also note that the Dark Jedi in the story explodes in blue fire the same way the Emperor does in ROTJ.
...
I miss the pre-prequel inference-based models of SW.
I miss it as well. The idea of Dark Jedi to me is so much more interesting than the prequel version of Sith. Especially since each of them didn't need the 'Darth' title.