The Exalted Empire of Azde is a gargantuan, safe nation, ruled by Emperor Azde V with an iron fist, and notable for its pith helmet sales, sprawling nuclear power plants, and ubiquitous missile silos. The hard-nosed, cynical, humorless, devout population of 28.57 billion Azdeans 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 government — a sprawling, bureaucracy-choked, corrupt, socially-minded, well-organized morass — juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Defense, and Education. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Edes Azde. The average income tax rate is 87.1%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The enormous but underdeveloped Azdean economy, worth a remarkable 1,079 trillion shals a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is highly specialized, is mostly made up of the Arms Manufacturing industry, with significant contributions from Information Technology. Average income is 37,779 shals, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Promising seven years of bad luck leads to seven years of community service, the family summer vacation has become a thing of the past following the introduction of the year-round school year, children's bedrooms are often decorated with posters of successful accountants, and government theft from poor artists to give to rich allies has been dubbed the "reverse Robin Hood" policy. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Azde's national animal is the blood falcon, which soars majestically through the nation's famously clear skies, and its national religion is The Church of Azde.

Azde is ranked 307,990^th in the world and 28^th in Asela for Nicest Citizens, with 0.77 average smiles per day.