The Armed Republic of North Manthera is a very large, safe nation, notable for its barren, inhospitable landscape, compulsory military service, and hatred of cheese. The hard-nosed, cynical population of 378 million North Mantherans are ruled without fear or favor by a psychotic dictator, who outlaws just about everything and refers to the populace as "my little playthings."

The enormous, corrupt, moralistic, socially-minded, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Defense, and Healthcare. The average income tax rate is 72.4%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The sizeable but sluggish North Mantheran economy, worth 11.1 trillion marks 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 dominated by the Trout Farming industry, with significant contributions from Uranium Mining, Door-to-door Insurance Sales, and Information Technology. Average income is 29,271 marks, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Leader is strangely popular with male politicians' wives, toddlers are wielding machine guns in the name of national defense, the practice of capital punishment proves divisive, and pedants defending Leader observe that psychopaths and sociopaths aren't exactly the same thing. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. North Manthera's national animal is the horse, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation.

North Manthera is ranked 151,056^th in the world and 6,896^th in Balder for Highest Poor Incomes, with 23,796.07 Standard Monetary Units.