The Republic of Eastern Marlan is a very large, genial nation, renowned for its daily referendums, restrictive gun laws, and stringent health and safety legislation. The compassionate, democratic population of 427 million Eastern Marlanians are free to do what they want with their own bodies, and vote for whomever they like in elections; if they go into business, however, they are regulated to within an inch of their lives.

The large, liberal, socially-minded, outspoken government juggles the competing demands of Administration, Education, and Environment. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Talon. The average income tax rate is 64.0%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The sizeable but inefficient Eastern Marlanian economy, worth 18.8 trillion marts a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is quite specialized, is led by the Tourism industry, with major contributions from Book Publishing, Information Technology, and Retail. Average income is 44,040 marts, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Mantis shrimp studies is academia's fastest-growing field, there has been a series of riots between local cannibals and health food advocates, films are funded in accordance with the volume of tears shed when reading the screenplay, and the dessert 'Death by Chocolate' isn't the most lethal dish on the menu. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown. Eastern Marlan's national animal is the White-tailed Tropicbird, which soars majestically through the nation's famously clear skies.

Eastern Marlan is ranked 253,051^st in the world and 1,933^rd in the West Pacific for Most Advanced Law Enforcement, scoring 855.4 on the Orwell Orderliness Index.