Byss
Byss is an existing planet from Legends.[1]
Sentients living on Byss tended to mature, procreate and die more quickly than elsewhere. Mas Amedda speculated that this was due to mass sacrifices performed by the Rakata on the planet, which in his view weakened the fabric of the universe separating Byss from the Chaos. Palpatine, by contrast, believed that Byss instead intensified all life, which he thought was the reason the Rakata had chosen it for their activities in the first place.[2]
The planet went through a cloud season every year, in which the entire surface was covered in colorful clouds of such density that Byss looked like a gas planet when viewed from orbit during that season.[2]
In early 6 ABY, the smaller of the two suns in the Beshqek system merged with the larger star, resulting in a supernova that was only barely contained by Palpatine. From then on, the Beshqek system only had a single star, called Beshqek.[2]
Behind the scenes
Byss' cloud season is a retcon intended to explain the depiction of Byss as an apparent gas planet in the Essential Atlas. The merging of the blue dwarf star with the larger star, Beshqek, at the end of Empire of Ashes: Fear explains why Byss is said to orbit two stars in the Dark Empire Sourcebook but placed in a single-star system by Byss and the Deep Core and the Essential Atlas.[3]