I have a character that has made some fatal errors and is basically crippled. Is there an area that will reclaim/recycle or otherwise remove it from the server list?

PM me the account name and character name and he is gone.

I have a few characters I would like to delete as well. Is the standard way of doing this posting a PM to the DM (it rhymes, yay)? I searched around a bit, but couldn't seem to find a thread dedicated to this. Might it be a good idea to make such a thread, or would it just spam the DMs with character deletion-work?

Yes, get hold of a DM and they can clear your vault. IRC is best, but PM's on the forums, or an email to escapefromunderdark@gmail.com should work too if you don't have IRC.