The Republic of Jyau is a colossal, safe nation, ruled by Matthias Cerfbeer with a fair hand, and renowned for its museums and concert halls, barren, inhospitable landscape, and avant-garde cinema. The hard-nosed, hard-working, democratic population of 7.423 billion Jyauans are effectively ruled by a group of massive corporations, who run for political office and provide their well-off citizens with world-class goods and services. Their poorer citizens, however, are mostly starving to death while being urged to go out and get real jobs. The populace has reasonably extensive civil rights, although these are mostly aimed at allowing them to buy whatever they like.

The relatively small government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Law & Order, and Welfare. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Gutaai. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 14.2%.

The strong Jyauan economy, worth 476 trillion dollars a year, is fairly diversified and led by the Basket Weaving industry, with major contributions from Uranium Mining, Book Publishing, and Door-to-door Insurance Sales. Average income is 64,213 dollars, with the richest citizens earning 7.9 times as much as the poorest.

Prison libraries are being replaced with interrogation chambers, law schools are hurrying to teach the "prank defense" to their students, councils up and down the country wrangle over legal matters, and summer science camps are regularly raided by narcotics police. Crime, especially youth-related, is almost non-existent, thanks to a capable police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Jyau's national animal is the porpoise, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to heavy metals seepage into national waterways, and its national religion is Orthodox Christianity.

Jyau is ranked 169,568^th in the world and 156^th in Coalition of Crown Albatross for Lowest Crime Rates, with 59.34 law-abiding acts per hour.