The People's Republic of Zaeli is a huge, efficient nation, renowned for its state-planned economy, irreverence towards religion, and punitive income tax rates. The compassionate, democratic population of 606 million Zaelians are fiercely patriotic and enjoy great social equality; they tend to view other, more capitalist countries as somewhat immoral and corrupt.

The enormous, socially-minded government juggles the competing demands of Education, Defense, and Administration. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Xerum. The average income tax rate is 75.7%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The powerhouse Zaelian economy, worth 55.1 trillion Zaelian Credits a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is highly specialized, is led by the Trout Farming industry, with major contributions from Information Technology, Arms Manufacturing, and Book Publishing. Average income is 90,938 Zaelian Credits, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

The parliament building has installed a revolving door, children in school playgrounds can be heard chanting the hymns of the Order of Violet, surrogate mothers are encouraged to refer to their wombs as 'rental space', and there is a growing belief that consciousness is a simulated illusion within a computer-generated reality. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Zaeli's national animal is the Great Zaelian Lion, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Zaeli is ranked 177,025^th in the world and 7,700^th in The North Pacific for Most Primitive, scoring -161.47 on the Scary Big Number Scale.