The Imperial Commonwealth of Silvery Lane is a massive, orderly nation, ruled by William III with an iron fist, and remarkable for its rum-swilling pirates, punitive income tax rates, and stringent health and safety legislation. The hard-nosed, cynical population of 1.371 billion Silverians are ruled by a mostly-benevolent dictator, who grants the populace the freedom to live their own lives but watches carefully for anyone to slip up.

The large, corrupt, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Education, and Industry. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Retta. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 69.7%.

The frighteningly efficient Silvery Lanean economy, worth 168 trillion Imperial Silvings a year, is quite specialized and led by the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Arms Manufacturing, Tourism, and Trout Farming. Black market activity is rampant. State-owned companies are common. Average income is an impressive 122,791 Imperial Silvings, but there is a significant disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 351,056 per year while the poor average 34,210, a ratio of 10.3 to 1.

Cooking with water and baking soda is considered patent infringement, Silvery Lanean novella fans become unusually flustered when thinking about William III, new safety regulations require all cars manufactured in Silvery Lane to be bombproof, and foreign policy is mostly just to smile and hope for the best. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a capable police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Silvery Lane's national animal is the Wisent, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is Williamism.

Silvery Lane is ranked 28,974^th in the world and 8^th in Federation of Bread for Most Subsidized Industry, scoring 5,802.16 on the Gilded Widget Scale.