The Empire of Ascent is a massive, efficient nation, renowned for its museums and concert halls, compulsory military service, and enforced nudity. The compassionate, hard-working, cynical population of 3.522 billion Ascentians 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 relatively small, corrupt, pro-business government is primarily concerned with Industry, although Defense, Healthcare, and Welfare are also considered important, while Spirituality is ignored. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 41.7%.

The frighteningly efficient Ascentian economy, worth 868 trillion Deneroes a year, is broadly diversified and led by the Retail industry, with significant contributions from Gambling, Soda Sales, and Arms Manufacturing. Black market activity is rampant. Average income is an amazing 246,597 Deneroes, but there is a vast disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 2,212,055 per year while the poor average 3,508, a ratio of 630 to 1.

Customer satisfaction with online delivery services is at an all time high, saying that someone looks a bit pale can be construed as hate speech, hospitals have poor data security but send lots of bodies to be encrypted, and seven-year-olds debate for weeks on the merits of the Oxford comma. Crime, especially youth-related, is all-pervasive, with the police force struggling against a lack of funding and a high mortality rate. Ascent's national animal is the Rattlesnake, which is also the nation's favorite main course.

Ascent is ranked 283,877^th in the world and 189^th in Poetry for Safest, scoring 4.28 on the Bubble-Rapp Safety Rating.