The People's Republic of Philastan is a huge, genial nation, renowned for its state-planned economy, compulsory military service, and punitive income tax rates. The compassionate, cynical population of 646 million Philastanians are ruled with an iron fist by the dictatorship government, which ensures that no-one outside the party gets too rich. In their personal lives, however, citizens are relatively unoppressed; it remains to be seen whether this is because the government genuinely cares about its people, or if it hasn't gotten around to stamping out civil rights yet.

The enormous, corrupt, socially-minded, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Welfare, Education, and Healthcare. The average income tax rate is 73.3%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The sizeable but sluggish Philastanian economy, worth 17.8 trillion marks 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 mostly made up of the Trout Farming industry, with significant contributions from Information Technology and Book Publishing. Average income is 27,610 marks, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Citizens cannot change their light bulbs without approval from an international committee, laser-wielding robots are taking aim at human hearts, an endless multinational bureaucracy connects the Red Bloc, and lifeguards are more concerned with watching for sharks than struggling swimmers. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Philastan's national animal is the rat , which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Philastan is ranked 35,888^th in the world and 11^th in Democratic Unity for Most Beautiful Environments, with 778.35 pounds of wildlife per square mile.