Tyras

Tyras was a planet in the and a member world of the Golden Empire. The home of the Ky`Knomi, Tyras was renowned throughout the Empire for its artistic achievements.

Geography
Tyras was a world with numerous geographical features. Its surface was roughly 59% water, ranging from deep oceans to shallower seas and lake chains. The equatorial region of Tyras was mostly composed of jungles and rain forests, while regions to either side of the equator were more temperate, some heavily forested and others wide open praries and grasslands.

Due to its geological stability, Tyras did not experience earthquakes and had only one active volcano on the entire planet.

Tyras had twelve moons, leading to unusually bright nights and weak night vision in the Ky`Knomi.

Society and culture
The Ky`Knomi were the only native sentient species of Tyras. Their artistic bent and appreciation for nature kept many natural areas of their homeworld pristinely preserved, despite their high level of technological achievement. Ky`Knomi cities were enormous and sprawling, with numerous buildings over a hundred stories—due to their desire to preserve natural spaces, they accommodated their billions of citizens with a few major cities rather than many smaller ones. Even in major cities, however, gardens and other natural features such as waterfalls were incorporated into city design, and the layouts of the cities were crafted more for aesthetic pleasure than efficiency of travel.

Smaller villages existed in otherwise undeveloped areas, but were generally of markedly lower technological development, in order to avoid polluting nature or drawing attention away from the environment. Most Ky`Knomi preferred one existence over the other, though there were some living in cities who desired to move to the countryside, but could not due to space or population restrictions.

The Ky`Knomi were not opposed to offworlders moving to their planet in theory, but they insisted that any such immigrants respect their preservation of nature. As such, other species tended to confine themselves to major cities where they could live in the high technology to which they were accustomed.

Under the Golden Empire, Tyras was considered the artistic center of the Empire and one of its cultural capitals. The already-distinguished Samayus Palace of Opera gained even greater fame throughout the Empire as a whole, and performance there became the career goal of many ambitious artists.

History
Geologists theorized that Tyras had always been fairly geologically stable due to the absence of mountains on the planet. Though some continental drift had occurred, it had apparently be so smooth and gradual that landmasses met and merged with little conflict.

The Ky`Knomi evolved with a distinct appreciation for artistry which governed much of their settlement of Tyras. Spreading quickly from their origins in the southern hemisphere, they migrated around the world in the space of little more than a millennium. While they were not so aesthetically oriented as to eschew war altogether, conflicts were highly ritualized, and deviating from this model was met with scorn. As a result, large-scale conquest was very rare and usually quickly suppressed.

Centuries before the, the Ky`Knomi had unified Tyras under a single government and begun to explore its moons and neighboring worlds. In 114 ABY, the Golden Empire intercepted a probe dispatched from Tyras and followed it to that world. Though the ruthlessly brutal military style of the Empire's Armada was offensive to Ky`Knomi sensibilities, the Ky`Knomi still saw the benefit of spreading their achievements to other worlds and being able to visit those cultures themselves, broadening their own artistic horizons. This, combined with the certain knowledge that other species existed "out there" and the desire to be securely protected from them, led the Ky`Knomi to bring Tyras into the Empire.

When they came to the Empire in 146 ABY, Princess Jasmine Auroras and her family were given a private estate on Tyras.