The District of Red Torch is a gargantuan, safe nation, ruled by Liard with an iron fist, and remarkable for its complete lack of prisons, compulsory military service, and punitive income tax rates. The cynical population of 37.556 billion Red Torchians are ruled with an iron fist by the dictatorship government, which ensures that no-one outside the party gets too rich. In their personal lives, however, citizens are relatively unoppressed; it remains to be seen whether this is because the government genuinely cares about its people, or if it hasn't gotten around to stamping out civil rights yet.

The government — a sprawling, bureaucracy-choked, socially-minded, well-organized morass — juggles the competing demands of Spirituality, Defense, and Welfare. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of District City. The average income tax rate is 77.7%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The large but stagnant Red Torchian economy, worth 648 trillion betales 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 a slick, highly efficient, quite specialized black market in Book Publishing, Door-to-door Insurance Sales, Uranium Mining, and Arms Manufacturing. 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 17,276 betales, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Elections have been outlawed, the mining industry is making inroads into environmentally sensitive areas, Red Torch has designated District City as its capital city, and Liard has just been declared ruler of Red Torch in an international press conference. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Red Torch's national animal is the deer, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Red Torch is ranked 55,185^th in the world and 1^st in The British Commonwealth of Nations for Largest Black Market, with 12.2 trillion Standard Monetary Units.