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I argue that it has to be Utopian — regardless of Design intention, and despite that it may well ruin Hermea as an adventuring location (unless you’re Evil PCs). All this is based on one interpretation of Mengkare:
He’s LAWFUL GOOD
I know in real life LG may not mean what I think it means, but in gaming it is Inconceivable that LG means anything other than, you know, ‘good.’
And if the Gold Dragon is as well Wise, then Hermea is a ‘good’ place. Utopian.
. . . .
(Incidentally, I feel strongly that Hermea HAS to be the BEST country in Golarion in which to live and can’t imagine it being considered as one of the worst.). YMMV
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The developers were split on whether or not Mengkare was indeed LG, with the best of intentions (but perhaps on a slippery slope to going horribly awry, as it was overly dependent on the wisdom of a mortal creature, however long-lived he might be, and going the way of Alexander the Great's empire after his death, and predicated upon the faulty notion that a superior breed of humanity will have a superior set of ethics or morals, when the only example of such in canon were the Azlanti in Thassilon, who were hardly exemplars of kindness...), or whether or not the pirate rumors about scorched dissidents were true and the references to eugenics and similarity of his name to Mengele were hints that he wasn't as 'LG' as he claimed to be.
Logically, it makes no sense that a superhumanly intelligent and wise and charismatic creature *of any alignment* would burninate and eat troublemakers in such a way that random strangers across the inner sea would be gossipping about it (and far more likely that such rumors would be spread by troublemakers for various reasons), but such it is.
The pro-utopia dev is long-gone, so it's probably just another pesthole, of no real gaming use.
Hermea as the seed which later becomes the Azlanti Star Empire (or whatever it's called) in the Starfinder setting would perhaps be a step too far. :)
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It's a dystopia.
I see Hermea as a version of Plato's Republic, with Mengkare as its allegedly benevolent philosopher-king. He knows what's best for all of his subjects: Lesser beings like his subjects can't be expected to grasp the grandeur of his long-term goals. So the people of Hermea must obey the dragon's will. If they don't comply, at first they must be re-educated to get their noncompliant thoughts properly ordered to appreciate Mengkare's vision of a perfect society. If that fails, they must be excised from society, or else their cancer will grow. Nothing too harsh: exile to the outside world. But they may never return.
In my interpretation, Mengkare is lawful neutral, teetering on the edge of lawful evil. His hubris has gotten the better of his benevolence, and he's forgotten that his subjects are real people with their own minds who might have legitimate reasons to disagree with his grand plans. His subjects are prized pets that he is grooming and training for his own mysterious purooses. But he doesn't realize this and thinks he's doing good.
In my headcanon, Mengkare is also a powerful psychic, and can read the minds of anyone in his realm. Which makes him even more frightening.
Imagine living there. Your life is planned out: Your schooling preps you for the career Mengkare chose for you. You marry the spouse chosen for you. You live our the life chosen for you. You do not get a say, nor can you appeal the dragon's decisions. For if you object, you will be ripped from the only home you have ever known, forever separated from everyone you know and love. That's very heavy pressure to confirm...even if it's killing you on the inside.
I see Hermea as a place of beautiful, tranquil horror.
Creative Director
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Mengkare is not lawful good. We've gone to great lengths to avoid putting his actual alignment in print, and that's somewhat of a disservice to the whole trope of gold dragons being lawful good in making one of our most important and famous gold dragons NOT lawful good but not saying so directly in print. (The fact that his actions are not good aren't enough on their own to carry this fact, obviously, since without having an actual alignment in print, alignment arguments gain even more power than normal.)
In any event, there'll be some more information about him and Hermea at some point in the future. I've got a LOT to say about the topic, but now's not quite the time to go into those details. So... please have a few more months of patience on the topic.
More info IS coming soon.
The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is a big hit there, I assume.
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It would probably depend on who you ask.
To a citizen who toes the line, doesn't look below the surface, and is completely on board with the regime's way of running the country, Hermea is probably a paradise. Orderly neighborhoods, smiling faces, long life, education, good health, enough food for everyone, people having beautiful healthy babies, no religious conflicts, the benevolent leader's assistants constantly checking in with the common folk to ensure that even the lowliest citizen is happy, and anyone who tries to "mess up our perfect system" is humanely exiled for their own protection and happiness. People who are would find a society like that idyllically comforting.
To someone who doesn't like being constantly monitored, has unorthodox opinions, wants to do things differently, or perhaps is simply openly indifferent to a government program, would find Hermea to be worse than a prison. A Chaotic or even Neutral person would find it stifling and invasive. They monitor what you read, what you eat, who you associate with, and if you want to marry someone you need government approval. If your freedom matters to you, living in Hermea would be a smiling, white washed version of Hell.
Personally, you couldn't pay me enough to live in or even visit Hermea.
I'm not sure we know enough about how Hermea actually works to be sure. I mean, Haladir's adding in head canon of Mengkare reading everyone's minds just to make it worse.
The reason for detailing areas in an RPG campaign setting is that they are interesting places to set adventures.
A psychic gold dragon who's lost his perspective and has set up a "perfect" society as a personal plaything seems like a GREAT place to set an adventure!
I prefer thinking of Hermea as a place trying the be a utopia, but no one's perfect, and a lot of people on golarian are actively evil, so it ended up with quite a lot of dystopian elements.
It's trying to be a utopia, but it's not there. It's also ruled by an immortal who claims to be infallible, so it might not be getting better either.
I liken Hermea to a mortal version of Heaven. However, given that it is a mortal interpretation it has flaws that are not observed in the real deal. The thought that there is something amiss just below the surface is intriguing.
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So let's say everyone who initially populated Hermea did its of their own will. That isn't good thing automatically because that can be used as manipulation tactic to force them not leave "You agreed to this experiment so you have to stick this through". I mean, they are literally agreeing to cede away their free will to Mengkare, that means they aren't allowed to follow it through when they start regretting it.
Also, they have extensive propaganda machine going on how those rebels in the woods don't exist :P Thats another really alarming sign