Dark streets no matter what time of day. The smell and sight of garbage and debris. Shadowy prowlers that at best seek only your wallet or purse. These are the charms of the Slums, and in its coarse environs can often be found the greatest of adventures.

No matter what the genre, the slums of a city exist. There is always a place where the poorer elements of society are forced to huddle together, where life is an everyday struggle for survival.

Stich a depressing area is fraught with danger not only for its inhabitants but also for strangers venturing on its streets. In fantasy games, the beggars prowl about like giant rats that lurk in the sewers. A modern-day horror game has that stumbling figure more menacing than any man could be. And even when man has reached the stars, the dim corridors of the space station are host to alien thugs, and con men.

So why is it that players, who realize they take a risk walking the Slums, often find themselves exploring its twisted streets? The answer is simple: nowhere else in a city or town can such a wide variety of goods, peoples and encounters be found.

Sure, the marketplace may sell the choicest delicacies or star rubies from Antares. But the prices are high, and the pickings slim. Head down to the slums and find the black market; anything and everything is for sale, including items that the players have never imagined. Here you will find strange cursed amulets, the map to a lost gold mine, or word on who lives in the old abbey on the hill. Tongues wag at the show of a coin, and men may be bought for their strong arm and weak soul.

A character who seeks forbidden knowledge has no other place to turn but the slums. A novice mercenary may want the best arms money can buy, but with a light purse he knows that a secondhand store in the slums will give him a better price, albeit a poorer quality blade/blaster.

In the short expanse of the slums is a wider array of folk than can be found anywhere else. Both the gifted and the failed will wander the streets. Beggars who may actually be disguised princes or monsters. A craftsman whose work is too horrible to appreciate. The members of a simple church that helps the needy. All shades of human (and other!) existence can be found here, from the just to the despicable, from the rich who prowl in search of sordid pleasures in obscurity to the poor condemned to live here by lack of coin.

A thief is forced to haunt the slums to learn more tricks of the trade. That crazy old man living in squalor may just hold the final words to a desperately sought incantation. And what happens when the naive pilot falls for the pretty wench at the bar?

Where else but the slums would the characters discover the plot by the city's underworld to loot the wealthy districts? Would they search for the orphaned son of a king out in the wilderness? No, he is to be found, ironically living amid filth in a seedy back alley.

Has the neutrino capacitor been taken off the station, or is it still in the hands of the gang that prowls the slums, bragging about their catch? There is plenty of adventure to be found in the slums.

A dull day in the city? Why not offer the town council your hand in weeding out the bad lot of the slums? Your boss acting mysterious and taking late night trips to a ramshackle building in the worst part of the city? Why not follow him?

What follows is a brief description, by no means complete, of some of the unusual things, denizens, and sites that can be discovered in the lower city. All the entries are somewhat vague so as to be tailored to any campaign. Each is listed by genre and intended to help gamemasters in their invention of adventure.

Fantasy

Things: Stolen goods from all over the city, ranging from jewelry and finery to a few torn pages of a mage's spellbook. Black market wares, substandard merchandise and unnatural products (cursed items, stolen holy relics, and necromantic/sorcerous paraphernalia).

Denizens: An assortment of beggars, ranging from the truly pathetic to the sickly crafty. Prostitutes and panderers catering in the flesh. Starving artists desperate to prove their worth. Petty thieves seeking to waylay a person for money. Small creatures seeking to waylay a person for food. The sick and the dying in beds. Unscrupulous merchants peddling and selling to suckers and fools.

Sites: Polluted wells and grimy sewer grates. Bars and dens of iniquity offering all sorts of vice. Abandoned guild halls that closed due to poor times. Hidden alleys that may lead to strange kept gardens. The secret meeting sites of beggar lords and thieves' dens.

Horror

Things: Corpses, not necessarily human or animal, lying on the street in various states of decay. Strange markings on the wall, perhaps graffiti or something more. A scrap of a letter or book revealing some hint of the danger to come.

Denizens: Crazed bums drinking household cleaner and cheap wine. Grungy street poets who whisper weird verses. Gangs Of toughs who protect their turf from anything. Serial killers desperate to encrimson their blades. Vampires prowling the streets for easy prey. And of Course, alligators in the sewers.

Sites: Hole in the wall bars and crack houses. Warrens of giant rats. Voodoo shops that offer gris-gris and magic candles. Sinister-looking old buildings tucked away from sight. Restaurants where the food on the table is too fresh and familiar (where did that waiter go?).

Sci-Fi

Things: Weird alien technology that may have been stolen, abandoned or left to be purposely discovered. Black market hardware. The remains of outdated robots and machinery that can yield parts for experiments. A getaway grav car still idling as the criminals are inside pulling a heist.

Denizens: Shady sellers of the latest computer virus. The spies and underworld contacts of a hundred worlds. Time travellers dumped off in the bad part of towns. Crazed inventors bent on world conquest.

Sites: Small dirty cubicles filled with glassy' eyed hackers. Alien slaveblocks promising the living cargo of the galaxy. Stores that sell hazardous waste to the highest bidder. An underground comnumications center from the city's previous inhabitants.

So there is the beauty of the slums. On any evening, a person,can find some reason to draw him deeper into the web of adventure lurking about the dark streets of a city. After all, what's the life of a player character without a little lowbrow danger?