Sel, pop. 19 million

Sel was a tiny kingdom located east of Vetiver, across the Sea of Voices. It shared most of its southern border with Tux. When Tuxedo demand for moon poppy nectar exploded, the Selenite monarchy imposed import duties and borrowed against future yields, which made the nation–or at least the royal family–suddenly extremely wealthy. The crown projected its sovereign power not through prudent policies; effective diplomacy; or air, land, and sea dominance; but through the conspicuous accumulation of Indigo Empire paintings and decorative arts, and the breeding of dogs that, with each subsequent generation, were larger and more precarious of health and balance.

Whereas Sel considered itself a sovereign nation, Vetiver regarded Sel as a kind of autonomous region of Vetiver. The latter conception was probably the more accurate of the two, given that Vetiver made substantial–and clandestine–monthly "donations" to the Selenite crown in exchange for the right to maintain basic infrastructure on, and rapidly deploy troops and other assets to Sel's border with Tux. One could say that it was Vetiver, not "moon poppy mania," that was the reason for the continued existence of Sel.

Sel may have been poor at statecraft, but it excelled at the fabrication of illusions. It supported a thriving film industry through which the country exerted a modest level of cultural soft power. A requirement that all films produced in Sel be entirely in Selenite ended up playing a not insignificant role in preserving the tiny kingdom's language through subsequent waves of colonization.