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Purify food and drink?
also these maps usualy don't show small streams, only rivers.
Absalom has a lot of high-powered magic available. I'd expect them to either have an infrastructure of wells (possibly with create water or purify water as backups), or else Aroden just arranged it so the city had its own small river to draw water from.
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Assuming that they aren't relying on magic for everything it also seems that engineering in Golarion is advanced enough that it doesn't seem unreasonable for them to have an aqueduct system in place. This seems like one of the fine details that may have slipped through the cracks of design and is left to the imagination of the players.
Assuming that they aren't relying on magic for everything it also seems that engineering in Golarion is advanced enough that it doesn't seem unreasonable for them to have an aqueduct system in place. This seems like one of the fine details that may have slipped through the cracks of design and is left to the imagination of the players.
Not everywhere in Golarion but in the case of Absalom I think that they do.
Well yes, Leo, I suppose I could have worded that better. Absalom as well as a number of other large cities are likely capable of building aqueducts while there may be some large urban populations that can't or don't.
Decanters of Endless Water + aqueducts
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The tendency for major cities to lay on rivers has more to do with transportation than drinking water.
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The tendency for major cities to lay on rivers has more to do with transportation than drinking water.True, but that doesn't mean that rivers weren't used for drinking water with some crude filtration. We're spoiled by modern standards... If you got a drink of water in the middle ages, chances are it would frequently not be the crystal clear we're used to today.
That's why most families served wine at dinner... even to the children... it was a lot safer to drink.
Actually... it was far more economical to mix said wine into water, which would result in the alcohol sterilizing the water and making it more or less safe to drink, while diluting its effects to much safer levels.
Research is all well and good, but never let it get in the way of your actual session prep. It's a game, not a novel -- as long as you know enough for your players to suspend disbelief, you should be fine.
(Also, many will hasten to point out that Golarion is not exactly "medieval", and that a world with magic might have very different solutions to basic problems.)
On the other hand, it is really fun stuff to know about. The more you know about how things used to work, the more you appreciate the way things are now!
Find a nice medium between study and freehanding your info. Some of the ancient stuff can make for some good inspiration.
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Thanks folks. I didn't realise the placement of a city near a river was more about transportation. That makes sense. And because Absalom is a port city on an island it doesn't need a river - all its trade comes from the sea.
I probably need to study up on medieval life to truly appreciate how people got water from wells and the like.
Maybe Absalom does have an aqueduct system but it would have to be below ground as it doesn't seem to be on the maps. And this is kept apart from the sewer system. Maybe if Absalom is so high-magic sewer waste isn't really a problem either. Maybe they deal with it with strategically placed spheres of annihilation or planar gates.
It actually does not need to be that hard to provide fresh drinking water to a large city through mundane means without heavy reliance on magic. Neither wells nor aqueducts are not actually necessary (though they can and do help). There have been numerous ancient and medieval cities that grew to large size without being close to large bodies of fresh water through the use of cisterns.
For example, Constantinople had many gargantuan cisterns that were used to catch and store rainwater in large, sealed underground reservoirs. This was an effective measure for providing fresh water to a large population in a relatively arid climate. And keep in mind, Constantinople was a city with an estimated population of 500,000 to 750,000 people at its height.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cistern
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_Cistern
I imagine that Absalom can have several huge, carefully sealed and waterproofed cisterns in and around the city that are used to store rainwater. Heck, if Absalom had cistern reservoirs built, the only magic that would really ever be needed (and it might not be entirely necessary) is having clerics or druids occasionally cast rain spells to ensure that they stayed full year round.
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Actually... it was far more economical to mix said wine into water, which would result in the alcohol sterilizing the water and making it more or less safe to drink, while diluting its effects to much safer levels.The tendency for major cities to lay on rivers has more to do with transportation than drinking water.True, but that doesn't mean that rivers weren't used for drinking water with some crude filtration. We're spoiled by modern standards... If you got a drink of water in the middle ages, chances are it would frequently not be the crystal clear we're used to today.
That's why most families served wine at dinner... even to the children... it was a lot safer to drink.
Correct, the trend was so deep in ancient Greece that drinking wine without adding water was a sign of barbarism, hence why when Odysseus and his men are trapped with the cyclops, they lull him into a slumber with undiluted wine. The cyclops quaffs it without adding water himself.
That and the cyclops ate people, that shows he's a barbarian too.
Linkservice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cistern
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_Cistern
*bzzzzz-clunk*
BOTTOM LINK FIXED. SERVICE PERFORMED.
Fistbump.