A desolate, rocky, windswept world in the Unknown Regions, GH-531 contained unusual atmospheric conditions that scrambled all communications signals made near the world and interfered with all scanning attempts. The planet surface was scoured by regular high winds and ion storms and the air was just barely breathable for most sentient species.
GH-531's unusual atmospheric conditions led to it being chosen by the Galactic Empire as the site for a . The planet's location was not widely known and the Empire maintained this secrecy. During the Battle of Jakku in 5 ABY, the co-ordinates of the base on GH-531 and hundreds of other Imperial bases in the Unknown Regions were stolen from the Star Destroyer Eradicator by Captain Telanasi of the New Republic. However, Telanasi's starship, the CR90 corvette Starlight Wanderer, was shot down shortly afterward and crash-landed on the planet Jakku, which prevented the locations of GH-531 and the other Imperial facilities from being passed on to the Republic.
The base on GH-531 was later taken over by the First Order at some point prior to the outbreak of war between the First Order and the Resistance, and a small military garrison was maintained on the world under the command of Captain Talkar. Shortly after the Hosnian Cataclysm, the Resistance dispatched a group of agents to GH-531 on a mission to retrieve and communications data from the First Order base that could be useful to the Resistance's war effort, having recovered the location of GH-531 from the Starlight Wanderer wreck site.