The Republic of Qaracukhur is a huge, genial nation, renowned for its museums and concert halls, compulsory military service, and absence of drug laws. The compassionate, hard-working, cynical, devout population of 734 million Qaracukhurians are rabid consumers, partly through choice and partly because the government tells them to and dissenters tend to vanish from their homes at night.

The medium-sized, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Industry, Education, and Administration. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Metropolis. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 33.7%.

The frighteningly efficient Qaracukhurian economy, worth 79.7 trillion Papers a year, is broadly diversified and led by the Retail industry, with major contributions from Book Publishing, Basket Weaving, and Uranium Mining. Average income is an impressive 108,543 Papers, but there is a significant disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 386,253 per year while the poor average 21,960, a ratio of 17.6 to 1.

A fashion designer has been arrested for inciting hatred after claiming redheads couldn't pull off vermillion, lifeguards are more concerned with watching for sharks than struggling swimmers, seven-year-olds debate for weeks on the merits of the Oxford comma, and people think garlic bread counts as one of their "five a day". Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a capable police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Qaracukhur's national animal is the Shark, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to heavy metals seepage into national waterways.

Qaracukhur is ranked 183,933^rd in the world and 3,616^th in The East Pacific for Largest Black Market, with 43.4 billion Standard Monetary Units.