The People's Republic of Terlas is a huge, orderly nation, remarkable for its keen interest in outer space, state-planned economy, and suspicion of poets. The compassionate, cynical population of 713 million Terlasians are ruled with an iron fist by the dictatorship government, which ensures that no-one outside the party gets too rich. In their personal lives, however, citizens are relatively unoppressed; it remains to be seen whether this is because the government genuinely cares about its people, or if it hasn't gotten around to stamping out civil rights yet.

The enormous, socially-minded, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Education, Healthcare, and Law & Order. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Shanhong. The average income tax rate is 75.9%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The Terlasian economy, worth 49.6 trillion remimbis a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is quite specialized, is led by the Information Technology industry, with major contributions from Tourism, Uranium Mining, and Book Publishing. Average income is 69,525 remimbis, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Every week is blindness awareness week, space shuttles regularly launch rubbish into space, mantis shrimp studies is academia's fastest-growing field, and the once prosperous capital is in utter decline. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Terlas's national animal is the tiger, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Terlas is ranked 39,621^st in the world and 621^st in The Communist Bloc for Smartest Citizens, with 42.12 quips per hour.