The Republic of Mephita is a huge, cultured nation, remarkable for its museums and concert halls, irreverence towards religion, and punitive income tax rates. The compassionate, democratic population of 320 million Mephitans are free to do what they want with their own bodies, and vote for whomever they like in elections; if they go into business, however, they are regulated to within an inch of their lives.

The large, liberal, socially-minded government juggles the competing demands of Education, Administration, and Welfare. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Muskingham. The average income tax rate is 69.3%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The strong Mephitan economy, worth 23.2 trillion credits 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 Trout Farming industry, with major contributions from Tourism, Information Technology, and Beef-Based Agriculture. Average income is 72,507 credits, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

The nation's atlases tend to go out of date every few weeks, the nation is in perpetual campaign mode, talking during class is a gateway to lifelong drug addiction, and it is not politically correct to suspect that a serially convicted burglar might steal again. Crime is totally unknown. Mephita's national animal is the sturgeon, which is also the nation's favorite main course.

Mephita is ranked 46,443^rd in the world and 877^th in the Pacific for Safest, scoring 103.82 on the Bubble-Rapp Safety Rating.