The Cruelty of Ampher is a gargantuan, efficient nation, ruled by MrAmpher with an iron fist, and renowned for its museums and concert halls, deadly medical pandemics, and enslaved workforce. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical, humorless population of 30.82 billion Ampherians are kept under strict control by the oppressive government, which measures its success by the nation's GDP and refers to individual citizens as "human resources."

The large, corrupt, moralistic, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Industry, Education, and Law & Order. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of AmpherCity. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 69.7%.

The frighteningly efficient Ampherian economy, worth a remarkable 4,517 trillion daggers a year, is mostly comprised of black market activity, especially in Tourism, Gambling, Information Technology, and Uranium Mining. State-owned companies are reasonably common. Average income is an impressive 146,565 daggers, but there is a large disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 662,513 per year while the poor average 19,930, a ratio of 33.2 to 1.

Chicken farmers must rise before the sun every day to gag their cockerels, the blood, sweat, and tears of poor Ampherians make research institutes rich, nobody likes bad boys any more, and the government has declared its commitment to multilateralism. Crime is a problem, possibly because it is difficult to make it through a day without breaking one of the country's many regulations. Ampher's national animal is the skeleton, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is Atheism.

Ampher is ranked 27,398^th in the world and 39^th in Nederland for Largest Publishing Industry, scoring 7,334.41 on the Bella Potter Productivity e-Index.