A friend was soliciting ideas for foreign dominions, and I came up with four kingdoms plus their attendant problems. Use them as you see fit:
Mercantile Stratocracy. The kingdom bought its independence with blood, selling its mercenaries to the other nearby states. The gold from these campaigns has made the country rich beyond its wildest dreams, and enhanced the lives of its people. But everything has a price: the land's leaders are haunted by the things they have done and seen (sometimes literally!), and the kingdom's neighbors now look upon its natural resources and newfound wealth with hungry eyes. The merchant-generals are skilled enough warriors to earn their wealth, but are they skilled enough to keep it?
The Warren. Beneath the forests and glades, the tunnel-folk carry out their endless digging. What they cannot grow in the forest or in the mushroom farms, they trade using gems mined from the long night below. No enemy can penetrate their labyrinthine tunnels, and no natural disaster has yet threatened their kingdom. But all the tunnel-folk know is to dig, dig, dig. Do they dig towards their doom? Will they awaken something that slumbers below, or might they move so much earth that the forest above collapses into the pits below?
Utopian Mortocracy. It's a real nice place to raise your kids up: crime is low, manual labor is carried out by the Honored Ancestors (read: your grandpa's zombie), and people are finally free to fulfill themselves in arts and philosophy. But the undying wizards who run the place are focused on arcane studies and don't like surprises; upward mobility is practically non-existent, and the secret police ensure that nobody upsets the status quo. There's a lot of pressure to solve your disputes out of sight, away from the vigilance of the state's panopticon, and resentment simmers among the intelligentsia. Beneath the veneer of utopia lies the seeds of revolution, awaiting fertilizer.
Steam-Powered Theocracy. The wonders of a new age! Praise be the Intersection of Fire and Water! Their capital city is built around their god and the source of their technological wonders: a steam vent fed by underground aquifers and uranium deposits to form a natural nuclear fission reactor. If the underground rivers ever run dry (or if sappers from hostile nations dam them up), the uranium deposits could grow hot and reach criticality, destroying the city and spraying toxic effluvia across the land.
