The Community of Nethervale is a massive, environmentally stunning nation, ruled by Jason the First with a fair hand, and notable for its museums and concert halls, complete lack of prisons, and stringent health and safety legislation. The compassionate, democratic, cheerful population of 1.31 billion Nethervaleans enjoy a sensible mix of personal and economic freedoms, while the political process is open and the people's right to vote held sacrosanct.

The enormous government juggles the competing demands of Education, Industry, and Administration. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Downtown. The average income tax rate is 81.4%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The frighteningly efficient Nethervalean economy, worth 130 trillion stags a year, is highly specialized and mostly made up of the Tourism industry, with significant contributions from Book Publishing, Basket Weaving, and Information Technology. Average income is 99,300 stags, and evenly distributed, with the richest citizens earning only 2.3 times as much as the poorest.

The nation has become a pariah for giving pirates letters of marque, rumor has it that Jason the First has won three lotteries in a row, the airship business has been driven out of the country by strict regulations and high fines, and robots can only dream of electric sheep and living a long happy life. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown. Nethervale's national animal is the stag, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is none.

Nethervale is ranked 12,188^th in the world and 308^th in the South Pacific for Most Cultured, scoring 104 on the Snufflebottom-Wiggendum Pentatonic Scale.