Choose your empire. Alternately, choose the empire your adversary will rule over when you depose and exile them. Two of Terra's most lovely vacation destinations.

In this corner, the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica. Average temperature -19.8ºC/-4ºF, winds up to 320 kmph/199 mph. One of the driest places on Earth:










In this corner, the Rub' al Khali, the Arabian Peninsula's Empty Quarter. Average temperature 47ºC/116.6º F, winds up to 93/57.8 kmph. Also one of the driest places on Earth:






Here's a 1500kg iron meteorite. Time to forge yourself a sword:

The Antarctican location is way more fucked up. I propose that all activities be relocated to there, be they my own or my arch nemesis'. After all, enough shit has gone down in the Middle East.

You have a point there.

Aside from the ridiculous winds that take all the moisture out of the air, there's something outside human experience of the sheer timescale of what goes on in those valleys. Anywhere where it hasn't rained for two million years is just a tiny bit... Extreme.

Yeah, the Empty Quarter is an unihabitable expanse of nothing worth mentioning as far as the eye can see, but there's human habitation nearby-ish and it's not a particularly difficult place to get to, comparatively, by land, air or sea. Assuming you'd want to, for whatever reason. But it's not that far removed from hugemanatee.

The Dry Valleys, no matter which way you go, you're still in fucking Antarctica. Good luck with that.

hands down send thine enemy to Dry Valleys. Fuck that place. That is some serious extreme shit there.

I just have grown to dislike being cold so very much, that i would have to go for the now-cliche desert wasteland empire angle. Even though ice pyramids would probably look pretty damn sweet. It would just be too fucking cold.

No, i will send my defeated foes there instead.

And i, will focus on creating my machine, to make the very sands themselves, do my bidding.

I would rule the frozen wastes. It is the perfect local to set up a Castle and be well hidden from the eyes of enemies.