In which we vomit forth apocalyptica

Architecture made of telephone poles and mud.

Armor made from street signs.

Lanterns made from stop lights.

The treasure map: a list of survivalists in the area but due to the total lack of street signs and address markers, it is more like a cryptic pirate map with X marking the spot.

Bone Highway: tens of thousands of automobiles with people's bones inside

The librarian: two kinds of books - good books and kindling

The slender black strands woven between buildings by the spiders who inhabit the decrepit skycrapers

The faceless rag men who wander the concrete canyons, erasing the identities of those they capture

An antique guitar, conjuring faces, visions, and music from a strange place called "the past"

A rusting aircraft carrier where twisted parodies of naval discipline still rule moored to the remnant of the Brooklyn Bridge

Architecture made from those storage containers that used to go from ship to truck.

A gang known for dropping barbell weights on their enemies from their hold at the top of a skyscraper.

The raider bus that uses living people chained to the outside for armor. You recognize Tak and Wonder among them, screaming.

The ruined building toppled on its side -- walls for floors, floors for walls. Meaningless stairs.

A perfectly green and manicured lawn.

The Stopyard: A graveyard where each tombstone is a stop sign, the names of those who've passed scratched in an arch over the foreboding word of those who no longer ride the highways.

Twice: The strange old man with dark skin who stands on the tracks at the edge of the hardhold and plays his bassoon.  Mumbles about the Before a lot.  Says everything twice.  If you listen long enough you might catch some know, jack.

Rum:  Biker gang leader.  Looks like that Captain Morgan fella on the hooch bottles.  His gang must have raided an athletic store a ways back.  They've all got golf clubs and their armor's made a pieces of them balls with the black and white pentagons.  All wearin' them choice "Serengetti" shades too.  When they start talking about "tee-time" you better fuckin' run.

The Promise: That freaky cult that actually drinks the water from the lake.  No wonder they've all gone fuckin' crazytown.  Check this out from their "hymnal":

Show me the way to go home. / I'm tired and I wanna go to bed.
I had a little drink about an hour ago / And it's gone straight to my head.
Wherever I may roam / On land or sea or foam
You will always hear me singing this song. / Show me the way to go home.

They sing it all slow and spooky.  Creeps me right out I tell ya.  Here they come now.

Batball:  A sport, reputedly once the Great Hardhold's National Pastime.  A Batter stands at one corner of a square.  A Pitcher stands in the middle, with a bucket of balls.  The Runners run laps around the length of the square.  The Pitcher throws balls at the Batter, who tries to hit them with a bat so they strike the Runners.

War Memorials:  When the Ancients went to War, they would "kick ass and take names."  Ancient Soldiers wore their names around their necks on ceremonial collars.  Victorious Soldiers would inscribe the names of all the conquered on giant memorials, a testament to their victory.

Crossbow bolts made of rebar. They have the precision of a drunk child throwing a jagged bottle but when you manage to embed one of these suckers in someone's chest, it makes it all worth it.

9-2-5: Shack town made of office cubicle walls. 

Feral dogs and feral cats forming a symbiotic relationship, much like wolves and ravens.

A subway station full of survivors, burning fires in empty barrels and cooking rats and pigeons. They hear a subway car coming and they scatter, screaming, as the doors open and raiders armed with chains and clubs and pistols pour out, their bodies tattooed and their faces masked.

A baby bassinet made of a length of truck tire, suspended by chains.

Ravens that spew forth old world pop culture bullshit...there must be an old radio or TV running where they get this shit, right?

"WHERE's the BEEF! CAW! CAW!"

"BORN IN KENYA!  KAWNYA!"

Ghost wheat: it looks like good, tastes good, but has no nutritional value whatsoever.  You can starve to death eating it.

Pipers: a gang that attacks only in the pitch of night with lux night vision goggles and different size pipes as clubs.  No one knows that they only have 3 pairs of goggles.

Mademas and Scroungemas: 2 different holidays, one on the spring solstice and one on the winter solstice in which you give your family members something you made and the other where you give them something you found.

Jones and Dremmer, playing rocket tag in the burned-out skyscrapers of the old business district with bazookas.  What it looks like, if you're not a camoflauged ninja headcase: sudden fireballs blossoming forty stories over your head in Technicolor orange and red, the roar hits a second later and the garbage rains down two seconds after that. 

Why do they do it?  Why doesn't one of them get killed, or run out of ammo, or just go away?  Schmitt says they're ghosts of the old days.  Dusk says they're in love, but he says that about everyone.  I think they do it to piss me off.

Ratdog packs are dogs (they kind of look ratty, not actually part rat) that hunt through the ruins. They all share their brains in the psychic maelstrom, so they act as one - what one sees, they all see. When they attack, they'll tear you to pieces. Still, they're good eating.

Prime Time: just after the evening meal (or the evening nap if you didn't have a meal) folks gather and tell stories that their parents and grand-parents told them about TV shows.  It is half remembered sitcoms as a window into the golden age of the past.

There have been knife fights over disputes concerning if the Golden Girls was a comedy or a drama and if Fantasy Island had some sex or lots and lots of sex in it.