I'll describe both my nation and the land that they inhabit in one go.

The Ashmarch is hell on earth, a black scar that cuts through the land. To so much as attempt traversing that vast wasteland is death, a grim actuality that nature herself seems to understand. A deep, incessant, and rhythmic rumbling permeates the air, staving off what would otherwise be deathly silence. This sound comes from the some half dozen active volcanos to the north, each ceaselessly spewing smoke, ash, and the fiery blood of the earth. Hundreds of miles of land lay trapped in the shadows of those burning mountains, the black soot rising to shroud the lands below in shadow. 

Fire, brimstone, and layer upon layer of ash fall down upon the bleak and dead landscape. Clean water is all but nonexistent; what little rain comes is made toxic by volcanic ash and gases before it can so much as touch the ground. Once it does fall, it has been known to moisten loose ash fields, creating something similar to quicksand, although more like liquid cement. What water runs off leeches even more poisons from the heavier ash on the ground, forming stagnant, putrid cesspools of acid. Where there are not gray plains or rolling hills of ash, there are rivers of lava, rocky crags of basalt and obsidian, and the occasional cooled lavaflow with dagger-like protrusions coming out of the ground, easily sharp and lengthy enough to perforate a careless foot.

One might be inclined to think that nothing would call this wasteland home. In a way, that is right. No beasts that you will have heard of would dare venture there; even the flies and carrion birds avoid the Ashmarch. There are other, viler monsters that make the entire Ashmarch their lair. Warlocks. They came from across the sea in centuries past, banished from their faraway homeland for their disgusting practices of necromancy, blood sacrifices, and other forms of blood magic. They were spurned by the people here just as they were in their homeland, and so with none willing to so much as tolerate their presence, they ran off into the Ashmarch and claimed that waste for their own. There they and those followers that went with them began to carve out a civilization, swearing vengeance on the rest of the world that had denied them everything and forced them to endure living in such a ghastly land. Whether from the soot that stains everything in their land or from the gods that they defile, the warlocks and their serfs have skin as black as coal.

Entire settlements near the edge of the Ashmarch have been known to vanish. The warlocks send their soldiers to have the buildings burned, valuables looted, and denizens taken back to the warlock masters for some nefarious ends. For this reason, most keep a wide berth from the Ashlands in their travels, but a few have entered those wastes and returned to tell the tale. They spoke of the descendants of those that followed the warlocks into the wastes being reduced to serfs, brutally oppressed by their masters. The occasional outpost exists hugging onto a rocky bluff or some other sort of high ground, often no more than a few squat stone buildings coated in ash and soot, blending in to the stark surroundings almost perfectly. These settlements vary in size based mainly on their function, though they usually have a few hundred of serfs with perhaps a dozen warlocks serving as overseers and administrators.

Deep into the wastes and away from prying eyes, the majority of the warlocks make their home. Their towers come up from the land like plague boils, in the form of massive, black spires of rock. They are like estates, with the most powerful warlocks having palatial towers that claw at the sky, with hundreds of other warlock subordinates cohabiting the tower and entire cities of serfs clustered nearby. When their towers can no longer reach up, the warlocks go down; some have sprawling subterranean slave pits, grand chambers to cultivate fungi for food and other purposes, and elaborate underground tunnels to allow safe travel across the wastes.

Gah, I have more to say than I at first realized. I'll finish this up later since I really need a break now. But in the meantime, any thoughts?