Inuwarmah is a great dirty snowball of a planet with a thick atmosphere, which attenuates only slowly into a vast sky. The lowlands lie under nearly three times standard Earth atmospheric pressure but high table lands and long mountain chains take much of the surface up to regions where the pressure is only half as much. There are five great icy oceans which never quite freeze over, even in the depths of winter. Strong winds stir a vigorous pattern of constantly changing clouds round the temperate belts. The mix of oxygen in the air is something close to twenty five percent and the gravitational forces too high to be comfortable for most humans, although it is tolerable. On the continent of Eil, three alien species have established small monitoring posts called the off world observatories high in the Patriqua mountains. Here there are roosts of native Inuwar on the Triambic Escarpment, a high tilted limestone fault which overlooks table lands to the west.