Evil Cities.

[Sidran]

Theocracy might be interesting- a figure claims to be divine, and their church controls the city. The laws would be straight from the holy text- and punishment would involve a literal banishment to hell. There would be many orders of the religion that would run the city- and perhaps a demons that scour the city during church sessions.. to immediately punish any who decide to skip church that day.


Reminds me a little of Robin & the Kestrel by Mercedes Lackey...

Its a Theocratic city where an Archbishop has begun claiming to be a savior of the masses, showing this by performing miracles, healing the sick, and the such.

Behind the scenes he is splitting the take of the Tithes with a roving band of Gypsies who have settled in for the easy life of presdigation, and trickery using gypsy tactics to fool the naive into believe these simple tricks are divine miracles

Also he pays lesser Clerics to hit the streets professing one or more points of his manifesto, denouncing non humans as having no soul and being thus of the Nether, annoucing that music is the way of the devil, and tha bards are capable of suggesting lewd, and vile acts in the minds of those that here their music.

All the while this evil man has control of this city in fear of his religion...at the end of the book he is consumed by the spirit of an ancient victim of which he used as an executor

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

If you want to have powerful, evil spellcasters on top of it all, use my article on Nexus Towers and set the energy drain to "Severe".

Basically, this means that the rulers can suck the life energy out of a city's inhabitants and use it to power epic spells (even if they are not epic spellcasters!) or create magic items.

Sucking life force out of one human at a time is so inefficient, don't you know...