Here's a run-down of my Apocalypse World starting out. Note that I stole some ideas from AP threads here, so thanks.
Welcome to
The Valley, a string of hardholds along a seepage-contaminated river, at least when droughts don't make it a sludge-lined dry riverbed. In the golden age of legend this place was fertile and moist and fresh. Now sometimes it's hot, bright, parched and dusty; sometimes it's fetid, stagnant, stinking, rusty, and swollen. It's too hot for ice run-off, so water only comes from frequent severe thunderstorms and hurricanes. Water is a dubious blessing, as often death as it is life.
Reference Map, (not to scale).
Gazeteer:
The Mountains form the western horizon. No one who's ventured to the mountains has ever returned. Far to the southwest a beacon sometimes glimmers from the top of a ridge, apparently with no pattern. This has formed the basis for cults with various interpretations of the beacon's spiritual significance.
The River flows down from the mountain creating the only arable land for miles. Hardholds are scattered along both sides of the river.
The Old Canal and the river form a natural barrier to
The Ruins of an old city.
The Tip was a pit mine, then a landfill before the apocalypse. Now it alternates between water reservoir and salvage site. Southeastern storms and hurricanes swell the river and fill the tip, which in turn leaches into the ground water and river, causing food grown in the valley to smell like garbage. Shazza runs a crew of salvage "supervisors" to mine the tip for useful refuse using slave labor. She's one of Jackabacka's biggest customers.
Longview is a high tower perched atop the highest nearby ridge, creating a vantage point for spotting anyone crossing the desolate craggy valley. Jackabacka dispatches crews of raiders for the purpose of kidnapping the unwary, "elevating" them to the status of "undercrew" and selling them in slave auctions. Slaves are sometimes ransomed back to their hardholder, sometimes handed over to Shazza or even a rival hardholder. Slaves no one will pay for are offered to the cannibals of the glass desert. Longview can't grow food and slave labor is its only export.
The Toll Bridge is Dustwich's holding, unique because it controls the only bridge into the ruined city. His crews patrol the city for salvage and competitors, and trade both in a bustling market near the bridge. Rare or valuable things usually present themselves only at the toll bridge, and only for absurd prices. Would-be salvagers can pay a huge fee for access to the city, but will probably end up ambushed anyway. Dustwhich's crew also patrols the eastern river and canal to make sure the bridge is the only way into the city.
Places no one goes include
North, where venturers inevitably fall ill and die, the
Swampy Delta, guarded by insular and brutal swamp people, and
The Glass Desert, where somehow roving bands of cannibals survive to menace the valley.