The Lovable Larrikin of Istillian is a gargantuan, cultured nation, ruled by Fornost Erain with an iron fist, and renowned for its public floggings, smutty television, and pith helmet sales. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical, humorless population of 12.065 billion Istillian's are rabid consumers, partly through choice and partly because the government tells them to and dissenters tend to vanish from their homes at night.

The relatively small, corrupt, pro-business government is primarily concerned with Industry, with Defense, Administration, and Education also on the agenda, while Welfare and Law & Order are ignored. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Irminsul. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 4.3%.

The frighteningly efficient Istillian economy, worth a remarkable 2,310 trillion dollars a year, is broadly diversified and led by the Tourism industry, with major contributions from Retail, Information Technology, and Book Publishing. Average income is an impressive 191,495 dollars, but there is a vast disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 1,733,829 per year while the poor average 2,505, a ratio of 692 to 1.

Films are funded in accordance with the volume of tears shed when reading the screenplay, the diplomatic corps stinks, the nation is renowned abroad for its love of blood and guts, and laser-wielding robots are taking aim at human hearts. Crime, especially youth-related, is all-pervasive, perhaps because of the country's complete lack of prisons. Istillian's national animal is the Thylacine, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is Thybelieve.

Istillian is ranked 3,977^th in the world and 43^rd in Europeia for Most Efficient Economies, scoring 100.34 on the Krugman-Greenspan Business Outlook Index.