Resource Star Wars Planets

Hello all, first post here. If this is the wrong place to put his please move it and let me know where it went...Thanks!

I'm relatively new to the EU, but I've been a fan of the original trilogy for a very long time and I thoroughly enjoyed the Prequels as well. I know, how dumb am I right!?!?

Anyway, upon learning that the EU exists and learning of the vast amount of info involved, I became inspired to write my own fan fiction full length novel Trilogy featuring all new characters in a world where the First Order was recently vanquished and the Jedi Order is struggling to regain the power it once had, if it can even manage to keep itself in existence.I've decided to use some of the more obscure planets in the world, Bestine is the one I am planning to use most in the first book, but I am having some serious issues finding info about the planet...probably because it is so obscure.

I've gathered this much;

-its a watery planet with many islands
-primarily a human population
-creates trade by making ships

I need to know whatever else I can about the planet, but I also need to know about how far from Coruscant it is. Does anyone know any resources or websites where I can find this info. thanks!


Mod edit: Normally I would lock this type of thread and refer the user over to the Fanfic Writers help desk, as we don't allow threads asking for help on a specific story, but Star Wars planets is a HUGE TOPIC and Mav and I want to encourage more resource threads, so I have edited the title slightly so anyone can come in and ask specific questions and have discussions around both canon and legends planets.

 

Mod note: Please be aware that I have expanded the opening post slightly so that this is more of a broad resource topic that can keep going (hopefully).

As for Bestine, your best bet is to start with the wookieepedia page and, although it seems like you are writing in the new canon, some of the legends info might still be relevant and useful.

As for its distance from Coruscant, this website will be super accurate if you can find the two planets on the map, but just going by this table, it is 36 hours, of course, these two things are based on Legends material.

 

Ever since I did some reading/watching on Qui Gon Jin, I have become obsessed with the idea of Grey Jedi. Though my time period or time line may be considered canon, simply since I don't really know any other time lines at this time, I am trying to stray as much from canon as possible. I have read the wookiepedia pages as well as taken some information from a website dedicated to a Star Wars video game. That's really all I'd been able to find.

Those links are awesome! They are exactly what I was looking for! I'm going to have to take some time and learn how to use them and what certain things mean, but I can already tell that once I have them figured out I'll be using them a lot Thanks a ton!

But yeah, I am basically trying to create an offshoot story line, completely outside of canon, that simply hangs off of the current canon story line, so EU references and such are just as likely to appear. Sorry if this is confusing.

 

There is also a Star Wars: The Essential Atlas out there with tonnes of astro-navigational data, eg. planets and regions of the galaxy.

Bestine has page 44 all to itself.

 

I would like to discuss how we see different planets and people use as inspiration for the different planets they use/think of. Is this the right thread to do that?

 

Gamiel - Yeah, I think this would be a great thread for that!

 

I sometimes get drokked up by imagining a planet is one way, and then going to Wookiepedia or some other source, to find it totally different.

I sometimes suspect that Wookiepedia completely changes information or pictures over the months or years.

Last year, I was choreographing a pilot crash-landing on Christophsis, and for MONTHS, thought it was a steaming jungle planet, or at least had sufficient for my pilot to slog through for a few days prior to rescue; do some research for some final details, and the wiki is claiming the entire planet is a windswept ball of rock!

 

I sometime get the same feeling

Now I really want to see how a Christophsis' version of steaming jungle looks like. I image something along the line of crystal based bracken and bracken trees in purple and blue as the main bio-form.

 

A couple more things to keep in mind for the various planets are their day/year cycles and surface gravity, and how these can affect various aspects including the overall biosphere, native sentient species and their culture(s), and/or why they were colonized by some other spacefaring culture. Ryloth, for example, is tidally-locked to its star, so that one side is always facing the sun and the other is cast in perpetual darkness; however, the planet does have a slight axial tilt, so there are seasons—they're just difficult to discern if you're not originally from there. Carida has double the standard gravity, which is but one reason why it was used by the Empire and Republic before it to train soldiers and officers—it also had some rather aggressive fauna, the hunting of which made for some excellent live-fire training exercises.

 

I like this thread!!!

I personally (don't hate me! ) can't stand it when people just make up planets. Oh, you need a convenient planet for Han and Leia to ditch on? BAM INVENT A PLANET!

I use wookipedia a lot for this, as well as star charts (that one you posted is crazy cool Briannakin and I'm totally using it in the future! But personally I use wokipeedia or other resources to figure out where to put my characters once I come up with my story....but usually the planet will end up helping me shape my narrative.

For example...a fic I'm writing now, I was going to reference the Jedi Academy that was re-established on Ossus. I initially wrote it just imagining that it was a "normal" earth-like planet with a perfectly normal ecology. BUT then I googled it...and turns out Ossus USED to be a fertile happy place, but then there was this crazy event, and then it became kinda a rocky wasteland that is only "now" starting to become a bit more able to be cultivated and had some very interesting animal life. So that actually helped me shape part of my story, because I had originally planned for a character to have a garden, and the fact that Ossus wasn't a prime spot to grow things made it even more meaningful for the story. So...yeah.

As far as planets I've used...well, Ossus, Coruscant (obviously), Yavin, and the Roche asteroid cluster.

 

Well, now that we have such resources, and especially once star maps, even rudimentary ones, started becoming available, I found that it felt great knowing that my OC had gone to this or that known planet; or visited that sector.

But remember, Star Wars built up gradually. When something like the Splinter of the Minds Eye came out, there was nothing to indicate where Circarpous was, in relation to say, Yavin.

I created a planet, a long time ago, just to put a refuelling station on. But since then, I have embraced existing ones.

 

Hey now, there's no need to go bashing those of us who have used original planets—they can be as well-crafted and useful, not to mention interesting, as any original character. That said, while I have only ever invented my own planets (or, more accurately, entire star systems) twice, they weren't just created as asides or convenient points for "plot" to unfold. The first one was only ever used as part of a flashback sequence and thus could get by without being expanded upon; that said, I did write up a full entry for it in the Fanon Wiki as well as articles about its system. For the second instance, the planet in question was the sole location for 99% of the novel's events, and it was heavily implied to have been inhabited by an "indigenous" sentient species, yet remaining undetected by the rest of the galaxy despite being smack in the middle of a well-settled (and canon) sector of the galaxy, because of a phenomenon having to do with the Force and the species' somewhat unique characteristics.

Original planets do need a lot of TLC to make them believable and interesting, just like OCs, and as with OCs a little bit of knowledge about the subject matter, a little creativity, and a willingness to put in the work can produce some interesting results. Pre- and post-garden worlds, worlds previously inhabited but now vacant for whatever reason, worlds with unique biospheres based on one or more different characteristics (higher/lower gravity, longer day/year cycle, etc.), or even worlds that were lifeless but were terraformed at some point in the past, all can make for interesting places to have a story. Profic writers have been making up their own worlds for decades, and we only criticize them when they stuff it up, which is rare but it does happen. Done judiciously and with care, original planets can bring new life and different perspectives to a plot.

If it's okay with everyone else, perhaps this thread could serve as a stepping-off point for those looking to create their own planets, for those times if and when an established one just won't do? Believe me, in a galaxy the size of the GFFA, there is plenty of room for this to happen; the number of identified planets in the Legends EU is but a pitiful tithe against the number of worlds purported to be within just the Galactic Empire at its height, and even Palpatine would have admitted that his domain only encompassed a sizeable fraction of what was out there.

 

Findswoman and Goodwood I'm sorry if I in any way offended--wasn't my intention! I agree that a well crafted world is just as convincing as an OC (Mav's world she made for Chrysalis comes to mind). I should have quantified that my frustration is along the lines of what Findswoman said about the new worlds in TFA--why make Jakku when you already had Tatooine?? That is where my irritation is: with hastily-created planets that are just a rock for the story to balance on, rather than a part of the story itself.

It's probably just a preference thing of my own. I feel like Star Wars treats planets like they're all one thing. I've thought sometimes that was odd how a whole planet seemed to be the equivalent to a country. There was no diversity? Maybe it's a bit silly of me to compare it to our planet earth, but...look at the diversity just in one country (India, the US, Japan)...and a whole planet really only has one race? So I suppose I've always just liked the idea that there's a ton of real estate to be discovered on all those planets.

 

My personal feeling on Hosnian Prime is that with the First Order holding the Empire in high regard, they would not do anything to endanger Coruscant.

I have only seen the film, and have the Visual Dictionary, so I don't know how long the New Republic government have been on Hosnian Prime, but for me, it seems like the First Order waited till the government were well clear of the former Imperial Center, and then took it out.

 

No offense taken at all, Irish_Jedi_Jade, and you're hardly alone in the "new planets pulled from one's posterior" frustration—that's just one of many issues I've taken with the new film. Though I will grant them Jakku, as it would've been just silly to re-use Tatooine.

As for planetary diversity, the way I look at it is this: by the time of the films, most of the well-known planets have been colonized for thousands of years at least, and since Star Wars is told from a Human-centered point of view (for good reason), most of those planets were colonized by Humans—and given the choice, Humans have a tendency to settle in places where their culture and preferred way of life is prevalent. This can be especially true in relatively young universes such as Star Trek's, wherein we've only been on the interstellar scene for a few hundred years at most. If you go by the Legends continuity, Star Wars is at least twenty-five thousand years old in that respect, leaving plenty of time for cultures to solidify around various worlds, and even to acquire reputations on other planets; one instance being the perception of Corellians as cavalier ne'er-do-wells. It'd be nice to see a Durostown on Coruscant, certainly (just to churn out an example), and plenty of examples of this sort exist in Legends. The upshot is that this is where fanfic authors can improve upon existing planets, providing deeper aspects to their character (in a manner of speaking, heh) by fleshing things out.

 

I have not invented a planet myself, but I have extensive fanon on Sacorria, Vagran and Aurea and I'm filling in the missing bits for Endor, which might as well be a planet with most canon and legends locations otherwise.

But I am guilty of [VERY RANDOM BALKANS TOWN WITH HORRIBLE HISTORY]...IN SPACE!, [A CUTE CAPITAL OF A NEARBY COUNTRY]...IN SPACE!.

I think creativity should not be limited as long as things make sense and that there is no reason one should't be inventing things.

 

But some time you need to fill in space, like how the there exist a whole Kiffar sector but we only know of two planets and then there is the whole Unknown Region that is mostly, well, unknown.

And then there are people like me who just come up with stuff because why not reasons.

I was introduced to Ossus through Dark Empire II and to me it is a post-götterdämmerung planet and my image of it is coloured by the other after-the-catastrophe media that I was reading at that time, like Mutant 2 and Mutant: Undergångens arvtagare (Swedish after-the-catastrophe RPG:s) and WarZone: Dark Eden (diesel-, cyberpunk tabletop miniature wargame where Earth is a poisonous wasteland).

In my mind so is there countless of tribes, tribe-alliances, city-states and small realms on Ossus, most of them guided by Force-users, if not fully made up by them, with the Ysanna as the most knowledgeable in the Force thanks to Ood Bnar subconsciously implanting parts of his jedi knowledge into the tribesmen when they do their adulthood ritual. The technological level is from advanced tribal stone-age to around WWII with many groups creating items that are much more advanced then their overall "tech-level", and electricity would probably be a bit hard to master since the sun have a tendency to spit out Solar EMP at any time.

If I could get a good idea (that would last more then two chapters) so would I love to do a story about some of Luke's jedi just traveling and exploring Ossus and its different inhabitants.

P.s. have you read the Dark Empire II comics or have you only looked it up on the Wook'? Becous the Wook' use some pics that is not representing what we see in the comic.

P.s.s. I have some written down fanon about Ossus if you are interested

P.s.s. If you want suggestions of natural catastrophes stuff that could happen on Ossus and make civilization and your characters daily life harder do I have some idea.

Please make your next fanon post about this, that sounds like a planet I would like to know more about.

Also do you know about Galidraan?

I have no problem with that, my problem is that most of the new planets are boring with nothing that makes them stand out.

 

I've both used pre-existing planets and created planets of my own. When I create planets, I usually do so trying to create a sense of relative unfamiliarity both in-universe and out. Such ideas include a lava world that's in its prehistoric state, a planet going through a perpetual nuclear winter, sites of ancient civilizations, and planets that are stuck in a cycle of primitivity. Some of these planets were also created as base worlds for one of my OC organizations, and since the organization in question is a once-dormant superpower, I couldn't let them have total control of too many familiar worlds from the get-go.

 

To the melody of It's a Small World:

There's a billion stars in this galaxy
But we keep returning to two or three
Coruscant, Tatooine, and the few more we've seen
It's a small world after all


I prefer to pull planets out of a hat unless there is sufficient reason for the story to take place on a pre-existing one. Ditto characters. I want the GFFA to be an enormous place and feel that reusing planets (and moons, and comets, and asteroids, and accretion discs, and . . .) is somehow limiting.

And, of course, I'm too lazy to do the research.

 

I think it is better that we use it as both a place to discuss how we see existing planets and talking about how to best create our own fanon planets.

Well, there is that we usually only see one part of any planet, usually less then landmass of Danmark so for all we know so is the other parts of the world different (Naboo is an excellent example of different cultures on the same planet)

 

I agree with Gamiel regarding Ossus.

The Dark Empire comic showed a barren world with one tree that turned out to be an arboreal jedi master guarding lots of lightsabres.

Later references to a Jedi academy that came under siege by Sith, just get frowned at, because I don't know if there has been a retcon or what.

My Games Master seems to excel at finding obscure worlds or sectors that I have never heard off, and that have little enough known about them, that players can start with a clean slate, just as if we had created our own world, and yet, we can still find them on the galactic map.

 

But we have to remember that we only saw a small part of Ossus, there are possibly great areas of the planet covered in forests. Now, Ossus is probably rather geological instable with hard, chaotic weather and a chance of meteorites so whatever trees (and/or trees substitutes) Ossus have is probably quick growing or is very sturdy with deep roots. Forests made up by things similar to bamboo, poplar and acacia would probably grow in the hard environment of Ossus with some more slow growing trees existing on the more geological stable areas.

 

It is possible that Ossus at some point in the NJO era was the subject of an extensive Jedi-led terraforming project, which at least succeeded in restoring a fair amount of land around the Academy established there. After all, there are plenty of examples of Jedi talented in using the Force to "encourage" the growth of plants (cough cough AgriCorps cough), just as many Jedi seem to have an affinity for animals and the like.

That, and terraforming technology in the GFFA is probably quite good—just ask the Telosians.