The Empire of City 29 is a massive, safe nation, ruled by City Administrator Gabe Faust with an iron fist, and renowned for its disturbing lack of elderly people, anti-smoking policies, and complete lack of prisons. The hard-nosed, cynical, humorless population of 1.707 billion citizens 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 large, corrupt, moralistic, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Law & Order, and Administration. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Citadel. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 73.3%.

The thriving City 29ian economy, worth 187 trillion tokens 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 large, well-organized black market in Arms Manufacturing, Information Technology, Book Publishing, and Door-to-door Insurance Sales. 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 an impressive 110,098 tokens, with the richest citizens earning 7.6 times as much as the poorest.

The armed forces are locked in an expensive and bloody war abroad to stamp out possible terrorists, motorbike jousters live young and die fast, tourists are kicked out if they express interest in their national sport, and the sound of wooden legs echo throughout City 29 after the recent introduction of the Foot Tax. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. City 29's national animal is the headcrab, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to heavy metals seepage into national waterways, and its national religion is Loyalism.

City 29 is ranked 208,623^rd in the world and 529^th in Europe for Fattest Citizens, with 9.28 Obesity Rate.