The Commonwealth of Magellum is a huge, cultured nation, ruled by Caretaker Ferdinand Magellan with a fair hand, and notable for its museums and concert halls, multi-spousal wedding ceremonies, and rampant corporate plagiarism. The compassionate, democratic population of 989 million Magellans are free to do what they want with their own bodies, and vote for whomever they like in elections; if they go into business, however, they are regulated to within an inch of their lives.

The enormous, liberal, outspoken government juggles the competing demands of Education, Welfare, and Administration. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Trinidad. The average income tax rate is 79.2%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The strong Magellan economy, worth 64.9 trillion pounds a year, is highly specialized and mostly made up of the Tourism industry, with significant contributions from Book Publishing, Furniture Restoration, and Information Technology. State-owned companies are reasonably common. Average income is 65,633 pounds, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Skateparks can be found in every city, it takes months to get the proper permits for a child's first tricycle, dynamite sales and concert audiences are booming, and ghost regiments exist only on paper. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Magellum's national animal is the egret, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Magellum is ranked 40,960^th in the world and 1,421^st in The North Pacific for Most Politically Free, scoring 77.81 on the Diebold Election Inking Scale.