The Gold Shroud of Taun is a mammoth, efficient nation, ruled by Kaykaus with a fair hand, and notable for its complete lack of prisons, national health service, and pith helmet sales. The compassionate, hard-working, democratic, humorless population of 8.617 billion Tau are effectively ruled by a group of massive corporations, who run for political office and provide their well-off citizens with world-class goods and services. Their poorer citizens, however, are mostly starving to death while being urged to go out and get real jobs. The populace has reasonably extensive civil rights, although these are mostly aimed at allowing them to buy whatever they like.

The medium-sized, corrupt government juggles the competing demands of Industry, Education, and Healthcare. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Kaykhshahr. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 66.6%.

The frighteningly efficient Tau economy, worth a remarkable 1,509 trillion Taunis a year, is broadly diversified and dominated by the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Book Publishing, Automobile Manufacturing, and Basket Weaving. Black market activity is frequent. Average income is an impressive 175,210 Taunis, but there is a significant disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 584,131 per year while the poor average 39,129, a ratio of 14.9 to 1.

A traveller who once stubbed a toe on an Air Brancaland flight has been offered asylum, drug distribution is tightly controlled by the government, school teachers check the staff room for hidden webcams before complaining about rebellious students, and blackface performers claim they are being deliberately ironic. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown. Taun's national animal is the Pallid Bat, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to toxic air pollution, and its national religion is Lion of a Moon.

Taun is ranked 3,204^th in the world and 10^th in the Outback for Most Scientifically Advanced, scoring 682.84 on the Kurzweil Singularity Index.