The Celestial Aura of Astral Tome is a massive, socially progressive nation, remarkable for its absence of drug laws and spontaneously combusting cars. The hard-working, cynical population of 4.782 billion Astral Tomeans enjoy great individual freedoms in everything except elections, which, where they exist at all, are populist shams for a dictatorship government that has no intention of ever giving up power.

The tiny, liberal, pro-business government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Law & Order, and Healthcare. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 6.6%.

The strong Astral Tomean economy, worth 218 trillion golden threads a year, is driven almost entirely by the private sector, which is fairly diversified and led by the Retail industry, with major contributions from Pizza Delivery, Trout Farming, and Door-to-door Insurance Sales. Average income is 45,647 golden threads, but there is a vast disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 294,202 per year while the poor average 2,861, a ratio of 102 to 1.

Crime is a major problem, with the police force struggling against a lack of funding and a high mortality rate. Astral Tome's national animal is the black griffin, which can occasionally be seen dodging aircraft in the nation's cities.

Astral Tome is ranked 270,954^th in the world and 3^rd in Shizei for Most Subsidized Industry, scoring -4.47 on the Gilded Widget Scale.