Hello, sir... John Smith. I have been told by my superiors that your knowledge of our country is a bit patchy, and to update your culture so as to make sure your temporary leadership goes smoothly.
Since I've been told to start from the absolute beginning, the stuff we teach elementary school students in history class, let us begin with the founding story. 14 years ago, a group of nobles from various countries gathered to meet up with our currently absent benevolent leader, Joey the First.
They all had been disgusted by the treatment of the lower classes of their folks, and this was the last meeting before the self exile. They renounced their money, their standing, for their people.
Joey had, after heroically completing a grueling quest the like of which are unlikely to befall you, found the Dusk Mantle, an artifact to cover our country from discovery, casting a shadow on it all. And so the trip to find deserted lands could start.
After a long trek, harassed by the countries they passed through, they found a stretch of wilderness that had been claimed by no being. Or so it seemed.
They settled there.
At first, it was hard to have so many beings of so many different cultures together. Eventually, though, a common agreement was met. The government would continue being the original nobility, however they would interfere only with the most important tidbits of governing. As you should know, this we be your task, coordinating these different nobles for the common good.
The rest of the tasks, concerning only town-level stuff, would be discussed at length by everyone willing to throw in a little time and their opinion. This quickly dissolved tension, compromises were met. The first example of this in action was when the guardian angels agreed to heal the skeletons, in exchange for the skeletons not reanimating other species' corpses.
With those tensions resolved, the country had ample potential for new blood. Some of our agents dropped the hint that there was a country for the miserable, the hated.
This generated a much needed influx of new people, which boosted economy. The country rapidly hit sustainability, then overproduction. The union of differing cultures also allowed the elaboration of new technologies, new magicks. One that you really should have used is our knowledge duplication, resulting from collaboration between a mindflayer and a phase salvager. We musn't have had the time to use that one on history yet.
In any case, things were good for a few years. Then we met the dwarves.
They were horribly suspicious at first. We were the first beings they saw in decades, and they thought we were there to steal their riches. But carefully, we toured them through our land, showed them how we had formed a tightly knit community. Eventually, we came to a tense agreement, where the lower caves and the mountains belonged to the dwarves, whereas the surface was to us.
As you have seen, this agreement blossomed in trade. Many fire spirits went to the lower caves to thrive and provide much needed heat for the dwarve's metalworking.
And that is where we stand. The nation, on the whole, is mostly stable, and not much governmental intervention is needed. The next big thing is to continue pushing for more innovation, as you know, to make our country thrive before an accidental discovery by foreign powers puts it in shambles. We do get a lot of information from newcomers, suggesting that so far our agents on the outside are operating correctly.. But we have to prepare for the worse, which is where you (hopefully) come in.
