A bit old-fashioned, the Kingdom of Szerelo (Zair-uh-low) is nevertheless an industrial powerhouse.   Plentiful water power drove an early industrial revolution, and hydroelectric and coal-fed generation plants continue it.   Szerelo would show up nicely from orbit at night - its people are obsessively fond of electric lights.

With electrically-produced hydrogen, the Kingdom was once the preeminent producer and flier of dirigibles on Aurora.   Several catastrophic flaming failures of Royal Szereloi Airways and Southwind Zep Lines flights, though, have made hydrogen an unacceptable lift gas, and domestic reserves of helium are small.   Five manufacturers still sell zeps worldwide, but the number of passengers carried on KoS airlines has dropped by half in the past twenty years.   Only now that fixed-wing heavier-than-air craft are becoming more common are KoS internal and external air travel starting to rebuild.

Szerelo's factories use even more raw materials than the Kingdom's many mines, sawmills, and chemical plants provide, so more are imported, particularly from the northern neighbors.   Foodstuffs too come from abroad, augmenting the Kingdom's own production.

One export the Kingdom prides itself on is education.   Szerelo universities have welcomed students from abroad, some for hundreds of years.   The conservative nature of society there limited that somewhat.   Women, for instance have only routinely been able to compete for professional degrees for about thirty years, and only a decade ago did they start entering technical fields in any significant numbers.

Szerelo has an excellent network of railroads.   With coal more plentiful than oil, the majority of trains run behind modern steam locomotives.   Only downtown city lines and cross-country ones with the heaviest traffic use electric engines - slightly odd for so electricity-enthused a people.   New-fangled diesel and oil-turbine rail locomotives atre not much used, since domestic supplies of oil are not large.   Several manufacturers export these innovative machines though, to nations who can better feed their oily appetites.   High priority is given to coast-to-coast traffic for international shippers - in a southern country to southern country trip, Szerelo is quicker than a long ocean journey through the straits thousands of miles to the north.

Szerelo then is a net importer of literature and legumes, and an exporter of engines and engineers.   And they like it that way.

Szerelo's people are closely related to those to the north in Foldmuves, with similar linguistic and ethnic backgrounds.   The languages are distinct, but mutually understandable - barely more than dialects of a single tongue.