The Dominion of Bardo is a titanic, orderly nation, ruled by The Shepherd with an iron fist, and remarkable for its disturbing lack of elderly people, compulsory military service, and vat-grown people. The hard-nosed, cynical, humorless population of 13.142 billion Bardoans are ruled by a mostly-benevolent dictator, who grants the populace the freedom to live their own lives but watches carefully for anyone to slip up.

The medium-sized, corrupt, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Industry, and Administration. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Sanctum. The average income tax rate is 95.7%.

The frighteningly efficient Bardoan economy, worth a remarkable 5,204 trillion utopis a year, is broadly diversified and mostly comprised of black market activity, especially in Information Technology, Retail, Uranium Mining, and Woodchip Exports. State-owned companies are reasonably common. Average income is an amazing 396,056 utopis, but there is a significant disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 1,387,235 per year while the poor average 82,101, a ratio of 16.9 to 1.

Ice-filled coffins are ominously positioned in the corner of every hospital ward, Bardoans have been enjoying a recent boost in civil rights as the government continues to clamp down on emigration, children in school playgrounds can be heard chanting the hymns of the Order of Violet, and wind farms are erected on shuttered oil platforms. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Bardo's national animal is the crystal giant, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation, and its national religion is Second Dawn.

Bardo is ranked 1,130^th in the world and 1^st in Alvarez for Largest Insurance Industry, scoring 9,844.38 on the Risk Expulsion Effectiveness Rating.