The Empire of Trendsetter is a titanic, efficient nation, ruled by The Trendsetting Trendsetter with an iron fist, and remarkable for its pith helmet sales, state-planned economy, and stringent health and safety legislation. The hard-nosed, cynical, humorless population of 23.891 billion Trendsetterians 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 large, corrupt, socially-minded, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Administration, Industry, and Defense. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Trendsetting Place. The average income tax rate is 95.6%.

The frighteningly efficient Trendsetterian economy, worth a remarkable 7,670 trillion Status Quos 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, fairly diversified black market in Uranium Mining, Arms Manufacturing, Woodchip Exports, and Basket Weaving. 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 an amazing 321,052 Status Quos, and evenly distributed, with the richest citizens earning only 2.0 times as much as the poorest.

Incidents involving lethal string attacks have gone way up, the nationalised Arms Manufacturing Industry is not interested in making weapons, the local custom of Biking With The Cars sends tourists home bemused or in body-bags, and crop circles are intently studied by investigators with questionable merits. Crime is moderate, perhaps because of the country's complete lack of prisons. Trendsetter's national animal is the Trend, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation, and its national religion is Trender.

Trendsetter is ranked 76,386^th in the world and 1^st in Trendsetter for Largest Insurance Industry, scoring 2,819.03 on the Risk Expulsion Effectiveness Rating.