The Blessed Empire of Almaaz is a massive, safe nation, remarkable for its rum-swilling pirates, ban on automobiles, and punitive income tax rates. The cynical population of 4.011 billion Almaazians 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, socially-minded, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Education, Welfare, and Defense. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Almaaz. The average income tax rate is 72.3%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The large but underdeveloped Almaazian economy, worth 139 trillion H2s a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. However, for those in the know, there is a slick, highly efficient, highly specialized black market in Trout Farming, Information Technology, and Pizza Delivery. The private sector mostly consists of enterprising ten-year-olds selling lemonade on the sidewalk, but the government is looking at stamping this out. Average income is 34,673 H2s, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

The government has little issue with allowing its citizens to languish in foreign jails, cinemas play art-house movies to ever-shrinking audiences as film critics rule the industry, politicians bribe ten-year-old geniuses to sit their aptitude tests, and a major religion has been named as Almaaz's national religion. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Almaaz's national animal is the Aurigaen, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Almaaz is ranked 258,023^rd in the world and 59^th in Thegye for Largest Cheese Export Sector, scoring -8.2 on the Mozzarella Productivity Index.