The Corporate Federation of Maritzal is a gargantuan, cultured nation, ruled by President Cornelius Crewes with an even hand, and remarkable for its deadly medical pandemics, complete lack of prisons, and frequent executions. The hard-nosed, cynical population of 16.467 billion Maritzalians are highly moralistic and fiercely conservative, in the sense that they tend to believe most things should be outlawed. People who have good jobs and work quietly at them are lauded; others are viewed with suspicion.

The relatively small, corrupt, moralistic government juggles the competing demands of Administration, Law & Order, and Industry. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Meridian. The average income tax rate is 96.2%.

The frighteningly efficient Maritzalian economy, worth a remarkable 9,314 trillion Pistas a year, is quite specialized and mostly comprised of black market activity, especially in Information Technology, Retail, Arms Manufacturing, and Book Publishing. State-owned companies are reasonably common. Average income is a breathtaking 565,661 Pistas, and evenly distributed, with the richest citizens earning only 2.3 times as much as the poorest.

Commuters often break into synchronised para-para dancing for no reason at all, cogitators and mass debaters are skiving off work to hang around the National Symposium Park, air purifiers fight smoke machines on Maritzalian stage setups, and the government is funding experimental battery technology while the power grid continues to crumble. Crime is totally unknown, thanks to a capable police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Maritzal's national animal is the Cat, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Maritzal is ranked 286,560^th in the world and 1,387^th in Europe for Safest, scoring 2.06 on the Bubble-Rapp Safety Rating.