The United Peoples Land of Marcistani is a massive, efficient nation, ruled by Mercury with a fair hand, and renowned for its multi-spousal wedding ceremonies, irreverence towards religion, and punitive income tax rates. The compassionate, democratic, cheerful population of 3.429 billion Marcistanians are free to do what they want with their own bodies, and vote for whomever they like in elections; if they go into business, however, they are regulated to within an inch of their lives.

The enormous, liberal, socially-minded, outspoken government juggles the competing demands of Education, Administration, and Healthcare. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Ilos. The average income tax rate is 93.5%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The frighteningly efficient Marcistanian economy, worth 405 trillion Mercury kroner 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 Information Technology industry, with major contributions from Tourism and Book Publishing. Average income is an impressive 118,392 Mercury kroner, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

The latest Harry Potter book is a bestseller, would-be emigrants are told "abandon all hope all ye who would exit here", physics lessons mostly involve talking about emotional management techniques, and immigrants who carry knives on them are presumed to be chefs. Crime is totally unknown. Marcistani's national animal is the Snow fox, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is Nature.

Marcistani is ranked 7,163^rd in the world and 11^th in The Maritimes for Most Beautiful Environments, with 1,924.65 pounds of wildlife per square mile.