The Great of Hansa Federation is a colossal, orderly nation, ruled by Big Francis with an iron fist, and remarkable for its barren, inhospitable landscape, avowedly heterosexual populace, and keen interest in outer space. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical, humorless, devout population of 7.048 billion Hansans are kept under strict control by the oppressive government, which measures its success by the nation's GDP and refers to individual citizens as "human resources."

The medium-sized, corrupt, moralistic, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Industry, and Administration. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of New Lubeck. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 49.0%.

The frighteningly efficient Hansa Federationian economy, worth a remarkable 1,052 trillion Baldwin Bucks a year, is quite specialized and mostly comprised of black market activity, especially in Retail, Uranium Mining, Furniture Restoration, and Woodchip Exports. Average income is an impressive 149,286 Baldwin Bucks, but there is a vast disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 1,099,922 per year while the poor average 6,139, a ratio of 179 to 1.

Aristocratic family trees are beginning to resemble tumbleweeds, door-to-door salesmen are frequently beaten up by 'vigilantes', billions of Baldwin Bucks are being blown on orbital weapons development, and spies caught red-handed are served cocktails on their first-class flights home. Crime is all-pervasive, possibly because it is difficult to make it through a day without breaking one of the country's many regulations. Hansa Federation's national animal is the Printer, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation, and its national religion is Printerism.

Hansa Federation is ranked 8,141^st in the world and 3^rd in Lands End for Most Subsidized Industry, scoring 10,369.69 on the Gilded Widget Scale.