The United Civic Commonwealth of Scugen is a huge, safe nation, remarkable for its punitive income tax rates, devotion to social welfare, and stringent health and safety legislation. The compassionate, devout population of 522 million Scugenians are fiercely patriotic and enjoy great social equality; they tend to view other, more capitalist countries as somewhat immoral and corrupt.

The large, socially-minded government juggles the competing demands of Education, Welfare, and Administration. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Wawai. The average income tax rate is 62.9%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The sizeable but sluggish Scugenian economy, worth 13.4 trillion perls a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is quite specialized, is dominated by the Trout Farming industry, with significant contributions from Tourism, Retail, and Information Technology. Average income is 25,647 perls, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Airplanes have giant grilles on their noses to knock drones out of their path, prisons in Scugen are the summer homes of murderers, it takes months to get the proper permits for a child's first tricycle, and most ambassadors from Scugen retire only a few years after being appointed. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a capable police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Scugen's national animal is the slugcat, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Scugen is ranked 92,442^nd in the world and 111^th in Karma for Most Cultured, scoring 67 on the Snufflebottom-Wiggendum Pentatonic Scale.