The Austral Confederacy of Thycinia is a huge, safe nation, notable for its rum-swilling pirates, museums and concert halls, and barren, inhospitable landscape. The hard-nosed, hard-working, devout population of 724 million Thyceni are free to succeed or fail in life on their own merits; the successful tend to enjoy an opulent (but moralistic) lifestyle, while the failures can be seen crowding out most jails.

The relatively small government juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Defense, and Administration. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Wælmingsby. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 19.7%.

The powerhouse Thycene economy, worth 70.6 trillion Tremisses a year, is broadly diversified and led by the Retail industry, with major contributions from Arms Manufacturing, Gambling, and Basket Weaving. Average income is 97,457 Tremisses, but there is a significant disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 362,887 per year while the poor average 18,370, a ratio of 19.8 to 1.

Flatulent people are left to die of cancer at the end of hospital waiting lists, out-of-work actors say they can't complain, foreign nations often blame poverty and terrorism on Thycene selfishness, and environmental protestors are being rounded up and taken away in sinister black vans as a massive land development campaign gets underway. Crime, especially youth-related, is well under control, thanks to a capable police force. Thycinia's national animal is the Grey Goshawk, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to toxic air pollution.

Thycinia is ranked 154,216^th in the world and 15^th in The Charter for Most Eco-Friendly Governments, scoring 389.91 on the Dolphin Recycling Awareness Index.