Billboards depicting smart, well-dressed Indians enjoying soft drinks or cigarettes, or wearing the latest fashion creations, sheltered masses of naked homeless who lay wrapped in rags beneath their cheerful slogans. Roving throngs of orphaned children ran after the buses and wagons and rickshaws, chanting for coins or food or castoff objects. The stench of all this–the cooking, rotting, festering, putrefying–hung over the city like a malodorous cloud, reeking in the hot sun. To Spence it smelled like death. “The City of Dreadful Night,” said Adjani. “Look around you, my friend. You will never forget it.”
—Dream Thief by Stephen Lawhead

Your wretched D&D slum isn’t complete without a conspicuous-consumption foil to set it off. It might be a foppish noble and his retinue, scented handkerchiefs held to their nose, as they pick their way over the starving beggars; immense gates festooned with bronze cornucopias and grain sheafs; or cheerful torchlight and the sounds of music and laughter from the palace over the river as the poor townspeople die of plague or frostbite.

Also “The City of Dreadful Night” is not a bad name for your horrific D&D city. It’s the title of a pretty depressing poem about London as well as a pretty depressing Kipling story about an Indian city.

The symbolic passing of the old god would be enacted, and every fire would be extinguished except for a single firepot guarded by the queen and her family at the temple. (Stalking Darkness, Lynn Flewelling)

This isn’t really explored in the novel, but if every fire is relit from the Queen’s fire, in some sort of cascading olympic torch relay, everyone ends up with a royal fire: a descendant of the fire lit by the Queen herself.

There might be some magic power in it too. Perhaps fires lit by certain kings and priests – and all their children fires – have magical powers. Fire has a lineage. In that case, an ordinary torch might become a magic treasure.

The Lineage of Fire actually strikes me as a decent idea for an entire campaign. There are many families of fire in the world, passed from generation to generation through candles and torches. The different fires may have different powers (the blue necrotic fire of the deeps, the golden radiant fire lit aeons ago by the Sun God, etc). The different lineages of fire war for dominance. The PCs may work for a fire instead of a noble house; and PCs’ torches might be among their most valuable weapons.

All of the fires of the world are united against some evils. This world is a circle of firelight, and hungry things prowl, outside, in the Dark, waiting for the flames to fail.

Luck in the Shadows

“What’s all this?” Seregil whispered as the bowyer went to adjust the wands.
“I’ve heard it said that he won’t sell a Black to anyone who can’t hit all three targets,” Alec whispered back, strapping a leather guard to his left forearm.
-Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewellin

This is not a bad idea for marrying two seemingly incompatible goals: making magic items feel special while providing a convenient way for the players to buy them.

Let’s say Bann the Bowyer makes the best bows. He sells +1 (Bann’s Blacks), +2 (Bann’s Special Blacks), and +3 (Bann’s Special Reserve) bows. To earn the right to buy one of the bows, you need to hit a difficult AC on 3 out of 4 shots with your basic attack. The AC for buying each class of bow is 20, 25, and 30 respectively. (When you’re making your shots, you get to use the bow you’re interested in.)

Bann works in a small village, so he doesn’t have much protection against robbers beyond the archery skill of him and his apprentices; but he can inflict Bann’s Curse on thieves: “Every time you draw arrow it will hunger for your friend’s heart.” (A natural 1 with any bow attack auto-hits an ally. The curse ends when you return Bann his stolen property.) “My bows have been stolen before,” says Bann, “but they have a way of coming back to me.”

Luck in the Shadows

Distinguished by her plain robe and the bronze serpent lemniscate pendant she wore on a leather thong around her neck, she was already surrounded by a small crowd of people seeking healing. They stood quietly, watching with a mixture of hope and awe as she examined an infant lying on her lap.
-Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewellin

Whenever PC clerics enter a village with no temple, they should be mobbed by people looking for healing (mostly from disease, which is too bad for the villagers, because you get Cure Light Wounds way before you get Cure Disease).

Before any other business in a small town, a cleric would probably have to do some doctoring – making Heal checks, at the very least. Sometimes this will lead to exposure to dangers like filth fever, or even the occasional demonic possession.

This doesn’t apply to all Leader-type classes. People don’t go to warlords so much because their healing is, as far as I can tell, entirely psychosomatic. No one takes their sick baby to the gym teacher to obtain his exhortation to “walk it off”.