The Utter Desolation of Nouveauterra is a mammoth, safe nation, ruled by Guy Laclare with an even hand, and renowned for its barren, inhospitable landscape, frequent executions, and pith helmet sales. The hard-nosed, devout population of 5.831 billion Nouveauterrans are highly moralistic and fiercely conservative, in the sense that they tend to believe most things should be outlawed. People who have good jobs and work quietly at them are lauded; others are viewed with suspicion.

The relatively small government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Education, and Administration. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Pointe-d'Espoir. The average income tax rate is 18.2%, but much higher for the wealthy.

The Nouveauterran economy, worth 350 trillion marks a year, is broadly diversified and led by the Retail industry, with major contributions from Information Technology, Book Publishing, and Arms Manufacturing. State-owned companies are common. Average income is 60,043 marks, and evenly distributed, with the richest citizens earning only 2.9 times as much as the poorest.

Lobbyists are trying to convince government to recategorize most natural disasters as "non-critical naturogenic inconveniences", the ruling party has a devil of a time keeping order in the ranks, Nouveauterra has been recently classified as an international menace after 'liberating' several nearby territories, and there is a thriving underground gay scene. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a capable police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Nouveauterra's national animal is the horse, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation.

Nouveauterra is ranked 89,821^st in the world and 749^th in the West Pacific for Highest Poor Incomes, with 33,955.13 Standard Monetary Units.