The Boneyards

East of the empires border mountains, of Velandria’s snow dunes, of Mt Durmohldurn, there lies a vast, unexplored swath of land that lay dormant for nearly 5000 years since humanity first touched the soil of this world. It is a land where the very ground still burns with the cinders and embers of black ash that falls from the sky, where the life that has grown back from some cataclysm aeons past is not the same as the deer and wyverns of the west, no instead the life here is some mockery of the god’s creations, corrupted by the black magic aura of the land, mutated by it. They resemble the beasts found commonplace all over the west, yet are distorted in ways horrible to imagine, and even more so to bare witness to. Some call them demons, beings from the hells created as a joke to insult life itself, so horrible that their very existence is an affront to all things. All who traverse this land return from it with some darkness in their hearts that slowly eats away at them, hollows them out from the inside and drains them of high function. The giants once called this place their home, sentient dragons also once flew freely in the skies, but now all that remains is their fossilized bones, and the dark machines they once seemed to worship, still speaking as if their masters still walked the earth. Like ghosts haunting the land, voices can be heard, shadows stalk groups of trespassers and cause them to go missing one by one. Puddles of black water, citadels of spirits and ghost buildings stand unexplored as sparks fly from every open container. Even while embers burn under foot, the air is biting cold. Only the elves of long ago might know a clue to what happened here really, but not even they understood what any of it all was. They only know for sure it was the result of a war between men and giants that wiped the giants out. Who can say for sure what any of it is even now.
No one dares step foot here, except the maddened few who seek its peace. One is known to explicitly call it home, one shunned and scorned by the rest of the world. Some necromancer who raises the bones of dead kingdoms warriors from long past and sends them in frenzied endless waves to drown the west. His reasons are unknowable to any, because no one has dared venture the land to obtain an answer, but to all, he is dangerous, who or whatever he is.
Other tales say that the southern extent of this land is where the dark elves Hail from. Once normal elves like the fair skinned Eindraeth of the north, they were corrupted and transformed by the very land itself. Their blackened skin reflecting the dark magic of the giants machines that have burned and changed their very souls, and caused their cruelty to those untainted by it in their anger. Thus, in their abhorrent prolonged contact with the land, they have measured capable of weathering it much better than anyone else, yet whenever they leave it they are shunned by everyone, because nobody wants their corruption to spread to the west. And so they stay there, far to the south in these wastes, and by living in the ancient shelters of the giants, they are capable of escaping too much exposure to the toxic magics of it.