The Oppressed Peoples of Gurou is a huge, orderly nation, remarkable for its pith helmet sales, infamous sell-swords, and stringent health and safety legislation. The hard-nosed, cynical, humorless population of 390 million Gurouans are ruled without fear or favor by a psychotic dictator, who outlaws just about everything and refers to the populace as "my little playthings."

The large, corrupt, moralistic, socially-minded, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Law & Order, and Education. The average income tax rate is 71.4%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The sizeable but inefficient Gurouan economy, worth 22.7 trillion Iousies a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. However, for those in the know, there is a large, well-organized black market in Arms Manufacturing, Tourism, Trout Farming, and Retail. The private sector mostly consists of enterprising ten-year-olds selling lemonade on the sidewalk, but the government is looking at stamping this out. Average income is 58,252 Iousies, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Sneezing pedestrians are grabbed by alley-lurking doctors, exorbitant spending on icebreakers breaks the ice at every budget meeting, explosive diarrhoea is not just a colorful phrase, and the police force is rumoured to be made up of evil shadows with no souls. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Gurou's national animal is the Deadly Garden Snake, which is also the nation's favorite main course.

Gurou is ranked 34,342^nd in the world and 1,998^th in The North Pacific for Largest Trout Fishing Sector, scoring 4,271.97 on the Nemo Depletion Efficiency Index.