The Mega-Lyceum of Kharostia is a colossal, genial nation, ruled by Professor-General Istvan Batory with an iron fist, and notable for its complete lack of prisons, pith helmet sales, and keen interest in outer space. The compassionate, cynical, humorless, devout population of 5.186 billion Kharostie are ruled with an iron fist by the dictatorship government, which ensures that no-one outside the party gets too rich. In their personal lives, however, citizens are relatively unoppressed; it remains to be seen whether this is because the government genuinely cares about its people, or if it hasn't gotten around to stamping out civil rights yet.

The enormous, corrupt government juggles the competing demands of Education, Law & Order, and Industry. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of New Budapest Central Lyceum. The average income tax rate is 90.5%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The frighteningly efficient Kharostian economy, worth 603 trillion Textbooks a year, is quite specialized and led by the Information Technology industry, with major contributions from Book Publishing, Tourism, and Basket Weaving. Average income is an impressive 116,460 Textbooks, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

The Kharostia Enquirer offers weekly cash prizes for 'most blasphemous song, story, or cartoon', elderly citizens regularly buy posh multimillion-Textbook mansions, managed media presence leaves Professor-General Istvan Batory's family smelling as sweet as roses, and former slave-owners hope there are no hard feelings when they apply for jobs from their erstwhile charges. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Kharostia's national animal is the Kharostin Writable Penguin, which frolics freely in the nation's sparkling oceans, and its national religion is Church of Textbooks.

Kharostia is ranked 13,800^th in the world and 824^th in Osiris for Most Advanced Public Education, scoring 9,629.76 on the Edu-tellignce® Test Score.