The Directorate of Valkalan is a gargantuan, orderly nation, ruled by Director Vikko with an iron fist, and remarkable for its barren, inhospitable landscape, deadly medical pandemics, and ubiquitous missile silos. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical, humorless population of 35.458 billion Valks are rabid consumers, partly through choice and partly because the government tells them to and dissenters tend to vanish from their homes at night.

The tiny, corrupt, pro-business government juggles the competing demands of Education, Defense, and Industry. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Ravingard. Income tax is unheard of.

The frighteningly efficient Valk economy, worth an astonishing 28,250 trillion Syns a year, is driven almost entirely by the private sector, which is broadly diversified and led by the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Retail, Arms Manufacturing, and Uranium Mining. Average income is a breathtaking 796,728 Syns, but there is an enormous disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 4,419,663 per year while the poor average 72,141, a ratio of 61.3 to 1.

Royalist is the most offensive slur in the Valk language, all government communication requires the imprimatur of the Truth Police, colonial citizens are forced to sing the praise of the "Great Valk Liberator", and rundown towns are frequently sold to billionaires for their pet projects. Crime is totally unknown. Valkalan's national animal is the Orca, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to heavy metals seepage into national waterways.

Valkalan is ranked 316,759^th in the world and 1^st in Zarathustra for Longest Average Lifespans, with 20.62 years.