The Egalitarian Republic of Araine is a massive, efficient nation, ruled by Ashton Thorne with a fair hand, and remarkable for its free-roaming dinosaurs, complete lack of prisons, and devotion to social welfare. The compassionate, democratic population of 1.882 billion Araineans love a good election, and the government gives them plenty of them. Universities tend to be full of students debating the merits of various civil and political rights, while businesses are tightly regulated and the wealthy viewed with suspicion.

The enormous, outspoken government juggles the competing demands of Education, Healthcare, and Environment. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Vraisten. The average income tax rate is 81.2%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The frighteningly efficient Arainean economy, worth 169 trillion Credits a year, is quite specialized and dominated by the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Tourism, Book Publishing, and Basket Weaving. State-owned companies are common. Average income is 90,267 Credits, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Every week is blindness awareness week, political scientists despair as the national mascot election eclipses all others in voter enthusiasm, exorbitant spending on icebreakers breaks the ice at every budget meeting, and Little League matches are often attended by riot police with water cannon... just in case. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Araine's national animal is the dewdrop fox, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is Agnosticism.

Araine is ranked 224,498^th in the world and 178^th in Refugia for Most Primitive, scoring -225.39 on the Scary Big Number Scale.