The Bulwark of Etrea is a massive, cultured nation, ruled by Grand Sovereign Drallis Ehr with an even hand, and renowned for its teetotalling pirates, frequent executions, and irreverence towards religion. The hard-nosed, hard-working population of 4.078 billion Etreans are highly moralistic and fiercely conservative, in the sense that they tend to believe most things should be outlawed. People who have good jobs and work quietly at them are lauded; others are viewed with suspicion.

The enormous, corrupt government juggles the competing demands of Administration, Education, and Law & Order. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Etris. The average income tax rate is 82.7%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The frighteningly efficient Etrean economy, worth 430 trillion notes a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. However, for those in the know, there is a large, well-organized, quite specialized black market in Information Technology, Arms Manufacturing, and Book Publishing. The private sector mostly consists of enterprising ten-year-olds selling lemonade on the sidewalk, but the government is looking at stamping this out. Average income is an impressive 105,672 notes, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

People stand their fridges back-to-front to benefit from the free heating, biological warfare is used to solve small disagreements, teenagers haven't been seen outdoors since the nation reconnected to the Internet, and the government's fruit business reeks of rotting produce and corruption. Crime is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Etrea's national animal is the Lionfish, which frolics freely in the nation's sparkling oceans, and its national religion is the Moonlit Faith.

Etrea is ranked 291,037^th in the world and 5,960^th in the Rejected Realms for Most Primitive, scoring -234.34 on the Scary Big Number Scale.