The Militarised Empire of Old Blackwood is a gargantuan, orderly nation, ruled by Commander-in-Chief Miles Faraday with an iron fist, and renowned for its museums and concert halls, parental licensing program, and punitive income tax rates. The hard-nosed, cynical, humorless population of 15.27 billion Old Blackwoodians are ruled by a mostly-benevolent dictator, who grants the populace the freedom to live their own lives but watches carefully for anyone to slip up.

The enormous government juggles the competing demands of Healthcare, Education, and Defense. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Ironwood. The average income tax rate is 82.0%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The frighteningly efficient Old Blackwoodian economy, worth a remarkable 1,441 trillion Foxens a year, is highly specialized and mostly made up of the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Arms Manufacturing, Book Publishing, and Tourism. State-owned companies are common. Average income is 94,389 Foxens, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Home renovation shows are increasingly popular, funeral directors are frequently looking at their watches during funerals, nuclear submarines have been deployed to protect the nation's banana supply, and military chiefs are predicting extra funding in this year's budget. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Old Blackwood's national animal is the Finch, which soars majestically through the nation's famously clear skies.

Old Blackwood is ranked 22,964^th in the world and 544^th in the Rejected Realms for Most Cultured, scoring 88 on the Snufflebottom-Wiggendum Pentatonic Scale.