The Nationalist Nation of Mercian Legions is a huge, safe nation, remarkable for its museums and concert halls, parental licensing program, and vat-grown people. The hard-nosed, cynical, humorless population of 531 million Mercians 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 medium-sized, corrupt government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Education, and Law & Order. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Liberty. The average income tax rate is 70.0%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The frighteningly efficient Mercian economy, worth 67.3 trillion Imperial Currencies 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, broadly diversified black market in Information Technology, Tourism, Arms Manufacturing, and Trout Farming. 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 126,788 Imperial Currencies, and evenly distributed, with the richest citizens earning only 2.7 times as much as the poorest.

Summer science camps are regularly raided by narcotics police, stealing from a clothesline is a serious offence, the state auctions off combat drones to fund war reparations, and litter collection has replaced fast food as the most popular after-school job. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Mercian Legions's national animal is the Sand Manticore, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Mercian Legions is ranked 133,202^nd in the world and 2,383^rd in the South Pacific for Largest Gambling Industry, scoring 759.88 on the Kelly Criterion Productivity Index.