The Cloud Kingdom of Lacard I is a colossal, environmentally stunning nation, ruled by First Pioneer Thompson with an even hand, and remarkable for its frequent executions, sprawling nuclear power plants, and public floggings. The hard-nosed, humorless, devout population of 2.816 billion LacardIans are fiercely patriotic and enjoy great social equality; they tend to view other, more capitalist countries as somewhat immoral and corrupt.

The government — a sprawling, bureaucracy-choked, corrupt, socially-minded morass — juggles the competing demands of Defense, Administration, and Law & Order. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Lacard I City. The average income tax rate is 73.4%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The large but inefficient Lacard Iian economy, worth 125 trillion courons 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 an enormous, deeply entrenched, highly specialized black market in Arms Manufacturing, Uranium Mining, and Tourism. 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 44,640 courons, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

The government's new 'Crime Can Fight Itself' policy appears to be backfiring rather badly, the countryside is shrouded by wind farms, birth rates have hit an all-time low, and the nation's new foreign policy of 'very disproportionate retribution' has its neighbors on edge. Crime, especially youth-related, is moderate, perhaps because of the country's complete lack of prisons. Lacard I's national animal is the cow, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is Ascendism.

Lacard I is ranked 246,647^th in the world and 9,208^th in Osiris for Largest Gambling Industry, scoring -4.74 on the Kelly Criterion Productivity Index.