Instar

Instar is planet on which the Offwhite City city-state is located.

The only political power at the time of the Twine Wars is the city known as Offwhite City, which controls the entirety of the accessible world. Although called Offwhite City in interworld, city the colour of unbleached (insect) silk is the literal translation.

Structure of world

This may possibly change, but is not likely to.

Instar is effectively a hemisphere. The 'equator' is impassable - nobody can see beyond it, or even if there is anything beyond it, and Instarrians claim there is not.

Mutt has more or less given up on making this work convincingly in astronomical terms, because hey, we've got flat, square worlds and shellworlds, so who is de to argue...

Year and seasons

Instar's seasonal year is long. While one side of the hemisphere is in summer, the opposite side is in winter. The midsummer and midwinter points move slowly around the world, completing a circuit every 30 Earth years (approximate).

Instarrian lifetimes are measured in seasonal years, so a one-year-old is well into adulthood. Naturally, they have and use shorter measurements of time too.

Twine Wars involvement

Mutt so far thinks Instar's Offwhite City civlisation will maintain aloof neutrality in the Wars. While playing the political game well enough to keep the others at each other's throats instead of its, Offwhite has actually got an army of its own and can probably mount a capable defence (if somewhat rusty).

All this is likely to change, however, when the planet Imago is discovered. Some insults are too great to be permitted to continue!

Related topics

• Instarrians (the people)
• Instarrian Gender
• Magic (Instar)
• Instarrian language

Culture

• Instarrian beauty
  • Striation
• Instarrian fashion

Kids

Parents legally 'own' their children until they're of age. (I should point out that this is essentially the same in Western Earth, that giving the child's wishes any formal weight is a relatively recent concept here, and that this absolutely does not mean that Instarrian parents will necessarily act in anything other than the best interests of the child.)

Games and pastimes on Instar

• Cotengody sticks

Religion

• Deity (Instar)
• Expressors of Agape with Compassion, one of many religious orders in the city