The Federal Republic of Aalander is a massive, safe nation, ruled by Director Isebrand Calloven with an even hand, and notable for its national health service, compulsory military service, and absence of drug laws. The compassionate population of 1.203 billion Aalandites are fiercely patriotic and enjoy great social equality; they tend to view other, more capitalist countries as somewhat immoral and corrupt.

The enormous, socially-minded government juggles the competing demands of Education, Administration, and Healthcare. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Algernon. The average income tax rate is 80.5%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The Aalandite economy, worth 58.0 trillion Marques a year, is highly specialized and mostly made up of the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Arms Manufacturing. State-owned companies are common. Average income is 48,249 Marques, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Parents must choose their children's names from a government-mandated master list, space shuttles regularly launch rubbish into space, advert breaks are played at lower volumes to make them easier to ignore, and the new hit series "Aalander's Got Trauma" has corporate executives fleeing the country. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Aalander's national animal is the Brown bear, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is State Atheism.

Aalander is ranked 40,582^nd in the world and 1,360^th in The North Pacific for Most Cultured, scoring 75 on the Snufflebottom-Wiggendum Pentatonic Scale.