The Mega-Lyceum of Kharostia is a colossal, genial nation, ruled by Professor-General Istvan Batory with an iron fist, and notable for its pith helmet sales, punitive income tax rates, and devotion to social welfare. The compassionate, cynical, humorless, devout population of 5.248 billion Kharostie 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 enormous, corrupt government juggles the competing demands of Education, Law & Order, and Industry. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of New Budapest Central Lyceum. The average income tax rate is 90.7%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The frighteningly efficient Kharostian economy, worth 606 trillion Textbooks a year, is quite specialized and led by the Information Technology industry, with major contributions from Book Publishing, Tourism, and Furniture Restoration. Average income is an impressive 115,523 Textbooks, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Young people pass around flash drives filled with illegal music, the optimally efficient parking strategy for business commuters is referred to as the "traveling salesman problem", crossbow bolts fill the skies if so much as a sparrow flies overhead, and the military is slashing spending on conventional arms and diverting it to spending on prosthetic arms. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Kharostia's national animal is the Kharostin Writable Penguin, which frolics freely in the nation's sparkling oceans, and its national religion is Church of Textbooks.

Kharostia is ranked 13,249^th in the world and 811^th in Osiris for Safest, scoring 117.82 on the Bubble-Rapp Safety Rating.