The Seaside Kingdom of Murias is a massive, orderly nation, ruled by Bruno Tripodi with an iron fist, and notable for its rum-swilling pirates, vat-grown people, and complete absence of social welfare. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical, humorless population of 2.446 billion Murians are rabid consumers, partly through choice and partly because the government tells them to and dissenters tend to vanish from their homes at night.

The minute, corrupt, pro-business, well-organized government, or what there is of one, is effectively ruled by the Department of Industry, with Education and Law & Order not funded at all. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Mongiana. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 2.4%.

The frighteningly efficient Murian economy, worth 428 trillion Peices a year, is driven almost entirely by the private sector, which is broadly diversified and led by the Gambling industry, with significant contributions from Soda Sales, Retail, and Uranium Mining. Average income is an impressive 175,073 Peices, but there is an enormous disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 916,466 per year while the poor average 17,942, a ratio of 51.1 to 1.

The military maintains a fierce arsenal of 'Cure Missiles', Murian police have to pay out of their own pockets for bulletproof vests, aggressive promotion of global warming puts polar bears on thin ice, and the song 'They Got an Awful Lot of Coffee in Murias' is a smash hit. Crime, especially youth-related, is all-pervasive, perhaps because of the country's complete lack of prisons. Murias's national animal is the whale, which is also the nation's favorite main course, and its national religion is The Cult of Saint Florus and Laurus.

Murias is ranked 293,913^th in the world and 6,454^th in The North Pacific for Most Cultured, scoring 9 on the Snufflebottom-Wiggendum Pentatonic Scale.