The Seaside Republic of Murias is a mammoth, orderly nation, ruled by Bruno Tripodi with an iron fist, and notable for its enslaved workforce, complete lack of public education, and restrictive gun laws. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical, humorless population of 7.609 billion Muriani 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 minute, corrupt, pro-business, well-organized government, or what there is of one, is solely concerned with Industry. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Mongiana. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 1.2%.

The frighteningly efficient Muriano economy, worth a remarkable 1,746 trillion Lire a year, is driven almost entirely by the private sector, which is broadly diversified and led by the Gambling industry, with significant contributions from Soda Sales, Retail, and Automobile Manufacturing. Average income is an amazing 229,467 Lire, but there is a vast disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 2,111,194 per year while the poor average 2,555, a ratio of 826 to 1.

Agriculture is heavily subsidized by the government, traffic cops are puzzled to see that nobody exceeds the speed limits, reports of arson have doubled since the introduction of a privatised fire protection service, and escaped birthday balloons are torpedoed out of the sky. Crime, especially youth-related, is so common that it is unusual to encounter someone following the law, perhaps because of the country's complete lack of prisons. Murias's national animal is the whale, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to heavy metals seepage into national waterways, and its national religion is Catholicism.

Murias is ranked 308,081^st in the world and 1,552^nd in the Plains of Perdition for Most Cultured, scoring -17 on the Snufflebottom-Wiggendum Pentatonic Scale.