The New Beginnings Old Endings of Gavriel is a mammoth, efficient nation, notable for its free-roaming dinosaurs, public floggings, and suspicion of poets. The hard-nosed, hard-working population of 8.576 billion Gavrielians are highly moralistic and fiercely conservative, in the sense that they tend to believe most things should be outlawed. People who have good jobs and work quietly at them are lauded; others are viewed with suspicion.

The large, corrupt government juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Administration, and Education. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 69.7%.

The frighteningly efficient Gavrielian economy, worth 955 trillion marks a year, is quite specialized and dominated by the Arms Manufacturing industry, with significant contributions from Beef-Based Agriculture, Information Technology, and Woodchip Exports. Black market activity is rampant. State-owned companies are reasonably common. Average income is an impressive 111,415 marks, but there is a significant disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 325,488 per year while the poor average 30,117, a ratio of 10.8 to 1.

New cases of Asbestosis are cropping up as quickly as hospitals can deal with them, exploding toys that leak battery acid are back in the shops after the government declared child safety 'over-rated', arguments about toilet seats being left up or down get surprisingly heated, and manufacturers of biodegradable plastics have to wait for months to show evidence of organic decomposition. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Gavriel's national animal is the dreamflier, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Gavriel is ranked 30,552^nd in the world and 1^st in Abraxas for Most Developed, scoring 83.04 on the Human Development Index.