The United Republic of Germanischer Rat is a massive, efficient nation, ruled by Davlos Ahren with an iron fist, and remarkable for its barren, inhospitable landscape, infamous sell-swords, and pith helmet sales. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical, humorless population of 2.432 billion Westlichsteans are ruled with an iron fist by the corrupt, dictatorship government, which oppresses anyone who isn't on the board of a Fortune 500 company. Large corporations tend to be above the law, and use their financial clout to gain ever-increasing government benefits at the expense of the poor and unemployed.

The tiny, corrupt, moralistic, pro-business, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Industry, and Law & Order. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Hauptstadt. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 6.6%.

The frighteningly efficient Westlichstian economy, worth 330 trillion Marks a year, is broadly diversified and led by the Retail industry, with major contributions from Information Technology, Arms Manufacturing, and Furniture Restoration. Average income is an impressive 135,745 Marks, but there is a vast disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 1,223,621 per year while the poor average 1,849, a ratio of 661 to 1.

Stockbrokers dream of getting rich by writing textbooks, politicians' smiles are legally considered a form of disaster relief, Maxtopian tourists make expensive pilgrimages to Hauptstadt to enjoy their national art, and whales in captivity live in little more than glorified goldfish bowls. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a capable police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Germanischer Rat's national animal is the Eagle, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to toxic air pollution, and its national religion is None.

Germanischer Rat is ranked 291,090^th in the world and 246^th in Aesica for Most Cultured, scoring 52 on the Snufflebottom-Wiggendum Pentatonic Scale.