Interesting Place Names

We're playing in our own city (greater Boston area, mostly Somerville/Cambridge). So far place names have been based on actual locales, but reinterpreted by post-apocalyptic locals.

Summersville (Somerville Prospect Hill)
The Armory (neutral zone bar in Somerville armory, used as cafe/arts space IRL)
Hillzone (one of the other hills of Somerville)
Reverence (Revere, where Brace Win set up a holding/cult)
The City (downtown Boston, where the maelstrom is strongest)

We're playing in our own city (greater Boston area, mostly Somerville/Cambridge). So far place names have been based on actual locales, but reinterpreted by post-apocalyptic locals.

Jinx! Us too.

Ours is a cold apocalypse where survivors huddled in underground "cores" which formed the center of many of the current-day settlements. There's "the Yard" (Harvard Yard), inhabited by Yardies, run by someone bearing the inherited title of "Conductor" ever since ex-MBTA employees came on top in a power dispute. Nearby, the PC Chopper Lobster has converted a boathouse in to his own holding, the "Lobster Pot." There's "the Beaverhold" centered around MIT (whose school animal is the Beaver). The neo-neo-classical "Romulus" rules out of Government Center (an actual name of a T-stop). "Lady Belmont" rules feudal-style from the ex-suburb of that name (specifically the McLean hospital). South of the frozen Charles river (just "the river"), the Sox tribes live in "the Fens" (actual modern nickname), brutalizing outsiders and each other with wooden clubs.

Jinx! Us too.

Ours is a cold apocalypse where survivors huddled in underground "cores" which formed the center of many of the current-day settlements. There's "the Yard" (Harvard Yard), inhabited by Yardies, run by someone bearing the inherited title of "Conductor" ever since ex-MBTA employees came on top in a power dispute. Nearby, the PC Chopper Lobster has converted a boathouse in to his own holding, the "Lobster Pot." There's "the Beaverhold" centered around MIT (whose school animal is the Beaver). The neo-neo-classical "Romulus" rules out of Government Center (an actual name of a T-stop). "Lady Belmont" rules feudal-style from the ex-suburb of that name (specifically the McLean hospital). South of the frozen Charles river (just "the river"), the Sox tribes live in "the Fens" (actual modern nickname), brutalizing outsiders and each other with wooden clubs.

Everything in this post is excellent. I'd steal it myself if it weren't for the fact that several of the places you describe are overrun by people who spit black stuff and may or may not be possessed by ghosts.

In a recent game we had a trainpocalypse and the players had to stop their train for some minor repairs but pressing on would mean one of the cars would break down. As usual I flip to two random pages in a dictionary to see what comes up. Obviously another train would show up behind them.

Unstoppable Emperor

The Unstoppable Emperor is a 50+ car train headed by a huge black locomotive decorated by a two story tall bronze statue of a naked man holding a whip and a sword. The cars are three stories tall with the topmost floor just being huts and sheds built on top of the cars. It is a city in its own right with half a thousand permanent passengers and a feudal aristocracy that see to the running of the train.

The Unstoppable Emperor is a 50+ car train headed by a huge black locomotive decorated by a two story tall bronze statue of a naked man holding a whip and a sword. The cars are three stories tall with the topmost floor just being huts and sheds built on top of the cars. It is a city in its own right with half a thousand permanent passengers and a feudal aristocracy that see to the running of the train.

Oh. Em. Eff. Gee. YES.

Our mountaintop hold throws their garbage and bodies over the edge of the cliff. Years of this created The Garbage Wastes, who knows what is out scavenging there.

There was a little village based inside a crashed airplane. It was called Flyby.

There's an old amusement park on the outskirts, all the kids live there and call it Neverneverland.

Of course the sewers are standing but not functional. People call it The Dark and swear something lives there.

Was (briefly, sigh, my own fault) in an online game in a town called Gaga. Apparently a weathered, partial billboard outside the town had once been advertising a Lady Gaga concert.

Our apocalypse took place in a mostly flooded, equatorial central Florida. We main holding was in the University of Central Florida (most of the players' former school and workplace) and most of the names were taken from the area:

Versity City (main holding)
Lockheed (military city)
The Strips (airport)
Inktown (home of the psychic tree squids)
Jessup (one of the highest concentration of alligators IRL, spawning ground of mutant gator-ish things in ApoWo)
Magic Kingdom (Disney's creeping fascist empire)
Drownedtown (flooded downtown Orlando)

At the minute we're in post-apoc Vatican City fighting off Godzilla sized leviathans, demons and angels...

Hortus ab Meretrix = Garden of the Whore, or Maria's Place, strictly speaking the nicest place in town.
Angelus Cor = Angel Heart, which is more literal than you'd think.
Excrucio Vallis = Torture Valley, "the town of justice and self reflection".
In Sanctus Loculo = The Holy Coffin, the Pope and his inner circle never survived the Big Whatever, but no one comes back from his pad, either...
Felix Futuis = Lucky Fuck, holding of our brave, kind, good and heroic players.

Myrmidon's rest is a new town built on a flattened hill. It lies in the intersection of three major hardholds and is a big marketplace filled to the brim with dojos, fighting schools and various gangs. Nobody rules the town and major internal conflicts are usually solved by public duels.

Custom - Warrior code

The Arcology is a domed hardhold with see through glass. It has kept on trucking since before the apocalypse but some crucial system is broken forcing contact with the outside world (either a crack in the dome from which vapor escapes or broken down hydroponics). The inhabitants dress in stark color coded uniforms like mooks in a Bond-villains fortress. They look down on outsiders but are naive to the Apocalypse World. Their patrols have excellent weaponry, 4-harm stuff or better and they wear combat vests with the ability to revive the fallen. They are very afraid of death and they will retreat if they suffer more than 1-harm unless on some important mission in which case they are usually lead by their stay at home leader the Mindputer.

Fortress - The Arcology
Collector - The Mindputer

Arcologist combat vest: 1-armor defibrillator refill hi-tech
An NPC taking 2-harm wearing this vest will likely survive long enough to get proper care. A player character wearing this rolls+1 should they have taken 6-harm as if an Angel tried reviving them. The vest has enough juice and medicine for one charge.

When presented before the Mindputer for the first time roll+hot. On a hit you are allowed to breed, on 10+ you can't decline.

Dremmer hung out in Fort Kroger for me, with Ambergrease north up in Soledad. Pass Easterly was a watchpost to the east, Angel Beach was on the river, Utter Perfection was demolished, Access Road was a multi level (megaton like) town, and the prewar underground megaprison of Marta Tarsus lay south, unopened.