The TAOP Founder of Compassionate Pilgrims is a gargantuan, orderly nation, remarkable for its barren, inhospitable landscape, keen interest in outer space, and stringent health and safety legislation. The hard-nosed, cynical, humorless population of 27.732 billion Compassionate Pilgrimsians 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 medium-sized, corrupt, moralistic, socially-minded, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Law & Order, and Social Policy. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Anconia. The average income tax rate is 59.0%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The enormous but underdeveloped Compassionate Pilgrimsian economy, worth a remarkable 1,341 trillion Lires a year, is fairly diversified and dominated by the Uranium Mining industry, with significant contributions from Woodchip Exports, Automobile Manufacturing, and Basket Weaving. Black market activity is rampant. State-owned companies are common. Average income is 48,364 Lires, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Compassionate Pilgrims's first free elections in recent memory have been successfully concluded, fashion stores are exploding in sales as clothing is reintroduced to the country, prisoners work-share to cut down rising costs of keeping them in jail, and elections have become procedural nightmares due to voters persistently rejecting candidates. Crime is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Compassionate Pilgrims's national animal is the Parrot, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to toxic air pollution, and its national religion is Atheism.

Compassionate Pilgrims is ranked 75,242^nd in the world and 1^st in The Association of Proletarians for Most Devout, with 706.96 prayers per hour.