The Shadow Realm of Cuatela is a gargantuan, efficient nation, ruled by Joseph Ramirez with a fair hand, and remarkable for its museums and concert halls, daily referendums, and punitive income tax rates. The hard-nosed, democratic, devout population of 46.409 billion Cuatelans enjoy a sensible mix of personal and economic freedoms, while the political process is open and the people's right to vote held sacrosanct.

The government — a sprawling, bureaucracy-choked morass — juggles the competing demands of Healthcare, Education, and Environment. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Velocia. The average income tax rate is 73.4%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The all-consuming Cuatelan economy, worth a remarkable 2,785 trillion credits a year, is extremely specialized and mostly made up of the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Tourism. State-owned companies are reasonably common. Average income is 60,027 credits, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Posters on 'Cuatelan Values' advise against being proud of Cuatela, the government is continually probing the galaxy in search of alien life, toy versions of heroin paraphernalia let kids pretend to be their favourite TV characters, and EpiPen sales have skyrocketed. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Cuatela's national animal is the panther, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Cuatela is ranked 19,554^th in the world and 410^th in the Pacific for Highest Food Quality, scoring 118.55 on the Meeshlin-Starr Index.