The Cornelian Dominion of Maritzal is a titanic, cultured nation, ruled by Cornelius I with an even hand, and remarkable for its parental licensing program, public floggings, and irreverence towards religion. The hard-nosed, hard-working, humorless population of 21.504 billion Maritzalians are highly moralistic and fiercely conservative, in the sense that they tend to believe most things should be outlawed. People who have good jobs and work quietly at them are lauded; others are viewed with suspicion.

The tiny, corrupt government juggles the competing demands of Administration, Defense, and Industry. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Meridian. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 65.1%.

The frighteningly efficient Maritzalian economy, worth an astonishing 11,894 trillion Pistas a year, is mostly comprised of black market activity, especially in Information Technology, Retail, Arms Manufacturing, and Book Publishing. Average income is a breathtaking 553,146 Pistas, with the richest citizens earning 9.6 times as much as the poorest.

Maxtopians are both starving and giddy after the Maritzalian military unleashed its biological weapons, citizens ask "how many crooks could a nunchuck hook if a nun had nunchucks too?", party affiliation is just as irrelevant as campaign promises, and foreign governments regularly accuse the Maritzalian military of war crimes. Crime, especially youth-related, is all-pervasive, with the police force struggling against a lack of funding and a high mortality rate. Maritzal's national animal is the Cat, which is also the nation's favorite main course, and its national religion is The Order Of Our Lord Cornelius.

Maritzal is ranked 67,582^nd in the world and 489^th in Europe for Most Developed, scoring 71.54 on the Human Development Index.