A wonderland of endless beaches, swaying palm trees and a warm turquoise sea, this is how the tourist agent would have you see the collection of islands known as the Caribbean. Spreading from the southern tip of Florida to the northern tip of South America, the Caribbean islands range in size from the largest, Cuba (4,124 sq. mi.), to the smallest, Saba (slightly under 3 sq. mi.). Mountains soar to heights over 2 miles in the Dominican Republic, and flat beaches and sand pits kiss the ocean at sea level throughout the Caribbean.

Lush rain forests fill islands such as Puerto Rico and Dominica, while some areas, such as Haiti, are barren, cactus-filled wastelands. The landscape on even a single island can change drastically as lush beaches give way to mangrove swamp, which abut pasture lands that give way to fertile farmlands. Tall pine forests can paradoxically border lush jungle and rain forests. Beaches vary widely both in color and composition. Sands range from pristine white through common browns to coarse, black sand. In some areas the sands even take on pink or green tints. Coastlines may be sandy beaches, rocky outcroppings or extensive coral reefs. In a word, the Caribbean means diversity.
The Caribbean climate is moderate. Most envision the Caribbean as being a hot, humid jungle area. However, generally speaking, temperatures average from 78 to 85 degrees. Low flatlands tend to be warmer, and high mountainous areas are cooler. The beaches and coastal areas are usually more moderate, tempered by the effects of the warm tropical waters. Inland, daytime highs and night time lows can reach extremes on the same day at the same location. Along the coast, the air masses rising off the water tend to regulate and moderate these extremes. Freezing weather and snows are almost unheard of in most parts of the Caribbean. The islands are regularly wracked with violent tropical storms. The entire Caribbean is plagued by tropical low pressure areas that regularly develop into viscous storms and hurricanes. The landscape of Morada amid all this diversity, we place the island of Morada. While the island is of the Caribbean, it is only nominally in the Caribbean. Located well east of the main run of Caribbean islands, Morada occupies a position over the central Atlantic ridge. This range of underwater mountains traces a rough, midpoint line through the Atlantic Ocean, separating the Americas from Europe and Africa. This places Morada as the eastern most of the Caribbean islands.

Morada is formed of a volcano that rises from the central Atlantic ridge line. It is a single, medium sized island, surrounded by a scattering of tiny islets, reefs and rocks. The volcano that forms the bulk of the island is active, and issues a slow, constant flow of lava from a vent low down on the southern face of the volcano. The flow of lava is causing the island of Morada to grow at a very slow pace. The official 1980 survey records that Morada consists of the main island of 426 square miles plus 50 or more square miles of offshore island with about 95 kilometers of coastline.

The Moradian climate is moderate. The average temperature is a pleasant 82 degrees. However, daytime highs can easily reach into the mid and high 90s, while night time lows plunge into the low 50s and even 40s. The warmest months are August through October, and the coldest months are February and March. Low temperatures rarely drop below 40 degrees, even in the coldest months. High temperatures rarely rise above 100, even in the warmest months. Morada is wet year round, but the wettest months are September through November. It is during this time of year that tropical depressions moving westward from the coast of Africa strike the island with high winds and torrential rains. Hurricane strength storms are rare. The low pressure systems that pass across the island have not usually picked up sufficient energy and momentum to be hurricanes when they strike Morada as their first landfall. The tropical storms that do sweep the island regularly are powerful nonetheless, and the frequency of the storms late in the year makes them of a monsoon quality.

The terrain of Morada is as diverse as it is throughout the rest of the Caribbean. The central southern portion of the island is dominated by the mountain that forms the volcano of La Nariz del Diablo (The Devil's Nose). The mountain is commonly called Nariz, or simply The Nose. The upper slopes of the mountain are dominated by relatively new growths of evergreens. This unexpected appearance of pines common to the southern regions of the United States is the result of an early reforestation effort after much of the high mountain rain forest was lost due to over harvesting of trees. The lower slopes of the mountain and the lowland areas are dominated mostly by rain forest.

There are no, natural open plains on Morada. There are isolated pockets of agricultural land where plantations have been established and the rain forest has been cleared back, but farmers and plantation owners are in a constant battle over the land with the wild island growth. The soil is extremely fertile, but is generally rocky and uneven. Efforts to establish widespread agriculture across the island have met with failure, and what agriculture does exist on the island is mainly subsistence farming. The establishment of orchards for tropical fruits and exotic woods has met with much greater success than the efforts to establish ground crops. The most successful imported crop has been, surprisingly, rice. Brought to the island by Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees, the rice crops were adapted to the low swampy areas of the island. The refugees were quick to fill this niche, and in the past 20 years rice has become an important subsistence crop on the island.

Tropical fruit abounds on the island. Bananas are a chief crop and banana export is an important source of the island's income. Pig and poultry farming are also major sources of island subsistence, and the Moradian diet includes a significant amount of pork and poultry. Fishing provides the bulk of the Moradian diet, and exotic tropical seafood and marine products are important exports.

In its isolated position in the Atlantic, Morada is the home to many species and varieties of plants and animals that are unique to the island. This diverse speciation makes Morada a mid-Atlantic version of the Galapagos. Plants and animals that cannot be found anywhere else in the world thrive on Morada. This has made Morada an important center of research and development for many industries. Many of the plants found on Morada have medical applications that have strongly affected the treatment of many diseases. Medical, zoological and marine research provide a major portion of the island's income, second only to tourism. The Moradian government has encouraged this by establishing extremely relaxed laws and regulations on such research, often inviting international criticism of its policies. Industries and organizations are able to conduct research on Morada that they are unable to conduct elsewhere. The Moradian government imposes heavy tariffs and taxes in licensing this research, and research labs employ a significant portion of the islanders.

It is easy to envision Morada as a typical third world nation where the citizens maintain a low standard of living, wear rags, live in hovels and survive in day to day drudgery. This image could not be farther from the truth.

The Moradian people are, for the most part, happy. They enjoy a relatively high standard of living. While one is unlikely to see computers and video games in every Moradian home, the Moradians do not suffer from the lack of basic needs. Life on Morada is not like life in the United States, but the Moradian people are content with the lifestyle that they have evolved.

The first difference that visitors to the island of Morada usually note is the lack of privately owned automobiles. Most tourists, particularly Americans and Europeans, see the lack of automobiles as a condition of poverty. For Americans in particular, cars are a basic necessity of life, and doing without one is a major deprivation. Moradians do not view automobiles in this way. To begin with, the island of Morada is small, tiny compared to the continent of North America. One could easily walk the entire breadth of Cape Marassas and even hike to Bartstown in the course of a single day. Moradians are sensitive to the fragile nature of their island paradise, and see the automobile and resulting pollution as a serious threat to the ecology of the island. The Moradians have passed strict legislation that restricts and regulates the private ownership of automobiles. Public transportation has been encouraged, and where possible that transportation is as advanced and ecologically sound as possible. Cape Marassas is crisscrossed by electric streetcars. The King has established a program to construct a high speed monorail that will circle the island. Plans have also been established to cross the interior of Morada with an electric train system. In the mean time, rural residents rely on public busses and animal drawn carts, wagons and carriages. It is not at all unusual to see donkey-drawn carts on the streets of Cape Marassas.

Moradians education is not deficient. Children are required to attend school for 8 years of primary education, from the age of six to fourteen. Most Moradian children continue for an additional 4 years of secondary education. Moradian schools may appear to be simplistic and rustic to most tourists, but the school buildings that visitors tour are usually little more than historic landmarks, maintained specifically for their value to the tourism industry. Moradian schools are actually well funded and well equipped. The King is a "tech nut" who delights in any new technological toy. His predecessor understood the importance of good education and established a superior educational system, and the current King simply enjoys introducing new equipment and technology to the schools. Moradian education is paid for by heavy taxes on the many research projects that take place on the island. Industries and educational establishments around the world know that they can conduct practically any kind of research and experimentation they desire on the island of Morada. They can do this without a lot of interference from intrusive government inspectors and regulators, as long as they are willing to pay for the privilege. Some of the research and experiments conducted on the island may be questionable and that research may raise some international condemnation, but the Moradians are well educated.

Most Moradians speak three languages. English has become the primary language on the island. This is due mainly to the large number of English speaking tourists that visit the island, and the English spoken by the Moradian people contains many Spanish and French terms because so much of the local geography is named either in Spanish or French. Most Moradians also speak a second, cultural language. Spanish is predominant, but there are neighborhoods where the second language may be French, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, or German. The language of the Carib Indians is preserved on the Carib Reservation. The third "language" of Morada is not, in strict sense, an actual language. Most Moradians speak a loose Creole of slang that is a mixture of elements from Spanish, French, Carib, Arawak, and African dialects. Moradian Creole has never been formalized as a language, though there is a large research project being conducted about Creole at the university.

Moradians are employed in a wide variety of jobs. Tourism related employment is the most common. Apart from actual employment at the resort hotel or with one of the many cruise lines serving the island, many Moradians work as tour guides or interior guides -- it is unwise to go into the Moradian interior without a registered guide. Most historical sites have a small staff of Moradian workers who dress in period costumes and the Ministry of Tourism sponsors frequent parades and carnivals where Moradians are paid to take part in the gala affairs.

The university and hospital are another major employer for Moradians living in Cape Marassas. While there is no heavy production industry on Morada, international industries of all sorts maintain small research and development facilities on the island and collectively employ a significant number of Moradians. Employment with one of many light industries is also common.

Many Moradians are self employed, involved in subsistence farming and truck farming. Morada has a large fishing and marine industry that is composed mainly of a coalition of small, privately owned fishing vessels. The large influx of tourists to the island also supports a wide variety of small, privately owned businesses that sell a diversity of consumer goods, and restaurants and taverns abound.

Unemployment and poverty are extremely low. Employment opportunities abound, not so much because pay is low or the cost of living is low, but more so because there are high taxes imposed on international business concerns for importing non-native workers. The loose regulations governing many areas of commerce, research and development make Morada an attractive place for major corporations. The potential for profit is high. The Moradian government has not established this relaxed atmosphere for international businesses through ignorance. The government is fully aware of the risks and dangers in many of its policies and requires payment in kind for allowing business concerns to do things that they simply cannot do anywhere else. Regulation, restrictions and government interference are low, but taxes and tariffs are high, including extremely high taxes on all imported workers. The Moradian government invites business concerns to use the island resources, but demands that they support the island population in doing so.

The racial and ethnic mix on Morada is as diverse as the setting. Morada was originally inhabited by a tribe of Carib Indians, and is home to one of the only three remaining Carib Reservations in existence. (Historical note: There are actually only two remaining Carib Reservations, one in Dominica and the other in St. Vincent. These communities are little more than a handful of people living mainly in poverty, subsisting by selling handicrafts to tourists. The Carib Indians of Morada have fared somewhat better and form a thriving sub-community that lives in an isolated jungle village.)

The island was "discovered" and settled by white Europeans of Spanish decent and was later governed by the French, the English and even the Germans for a short period. During the early history of European dominance on the island, a large population of African and Indian workers and slaves were imported -- the Africans from the West Coast of Africa and the Indians from various tribes in North and South America. In more modern times, Morada opened its doors to refugees from Southeast Asia and now supports large communities of Vietnamese and Cambodian origin.

Racial emancipation came early during Moradian history, and a significant majority of the Moradian population is of such mixed ethnic origins that there is little but to call them Moradians. The 1980 Census of Morada cites the following figures for ethnic diversity: 52% mixed racial heritage in various degrees, 23% black, descended mainly from West African workers and slaves brought in by colonial powers, 19% white of European descent, 4% Indian including Carib natives and those descended from North and South American Indian workers and slaves, 1% Asian settled mostly during the Vietnamese conflict as a result of sponsoring refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia, 1% other. The Moradian population was numbered at 127,000 persons during that census. The Carib reservation was not entirely counted as part of the Census and was estimated at a population of 2,000.

Most Moradians describe themselves as being Christians. Citizens were asked to indicate religious affiliation during the 1980 census with the result that 28% indicated Anglican, 23% indicated Catholic, 21% indicated Protestant beliefs with Baptist and Methodist as the predominant Protestant sects, 9% indicated Rastafarian, 7% indicated Voodoo beliefs, 6% indicated other native beliefs, 2% indicated other religious affiliations including Zen Buddhism and Muslim, and 4% either did not respond or indicated no religious affiliation.