The Department of Ardennes is a gargantuan, cultured nation, ruled by Pascal Joly with a fair hand, and remarkable for its barren, inhospitable landscape and compulsory military service. The hard-nosed, hard-working, democratic, devout population of 14.126 billion Ardennaises are known throughout the region for their efficiency and work ethic, as well as their general suspicion of leisure.

The medium-sized government juggles the competing demands of Spirituality, Defense, and Education. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Charleville-Mézières. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 23.4%.

The powerhouse Ardennais economy, worth a remarkable 1,113 trillion francs a year, is broadly diversified and led by the Basket Weaving industry, with major contributions from Information Technology, Arms Manufacturing, and Door-to-door Insurance Sales. Average income is 78,858 francs, but there is a significant disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 265,553 per year while the poor average 17,349, a ratio of 15.3 to 1.

The latest guided missile cruiser "Ship-1642" has received precisely zero column inches in the press, family bonding sessions are considered immoral and are banned, supermarket milk is a shear-thickening fluid that can stop small-caliber bullets, and on graduation day the hats thrown in the air fly high enough to stun passing pigeons. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, despite the fact that it is difficult to make it through a day without breaking one of the country's many laws. Ardennes's national animal is the beaver, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation, and its national religion is Roman Catholicism.

Ardennes is ranked 157,212^th in the world and 37^th in Department Store for Most Extensive Public Healthcare, scoring 1,177.6 on the Theresa-Nightingale Rating.