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In the real world, many cities, such as London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, and Vienna, were built along rivers, which provided a reliable source of drinking water. Even on Golarion, cities like Magnimar, Korvosa, and Kenabres were established along rivers for the same reason.
However, Absalom—one of the largest cities in the world—has no river at all. Since seawater is undrinkable, where does the city's drinking water come from? At first, I suspected that numerous aqueducts might supply fountains, public basins, baths, and private villas, but I am unsure whether Absalom actually has such infrastructure.
So I must ask: where does Absalom get the water needed to sustain such a large city? Similar questions can be asked about Xin-Shalast from Spires of Xin-Shalast, Xin from The Dead Heart of Xin, and Xin-Edasseril from The City Outside of Time.
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From the Abasalom book:
Water supplies are handled simply by a combination of cisterns, underground reservoirs, and a large number of water towers and rain barrels.
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The Thassilonian cities are often near mountains; there's a lot of mountain streams from glaciers that I imagine they can use for water. They're also, you know, cities run by immensely powerful super-wizards approaching demi-god status in some cases. I'm sure they can pop open a little gate to the plane of water to flush a few toilets if they need to.
Creative Director
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The Absalom answer is in the Absalom book, as Vyshan mentions above. (That said, when we first created the city map we probably SHOULD have located it on or adjacent to a river, but we did not, so the cisterns and water towers and reservoirs are the solution.)
Xin-Shalast and Xin-Edasseril got their water from a combination of mountain streams, rivers, rainwater, and magic—of all the historical and modern cities on the planet, these ones are among the most higher-magic ones with a lot of high level stuff going on. Portals to the plane of water could also have been involved.
In modern day, Xin-Edasseril gets it mostly from rivers/streams and cisterns and rain water (note that the map of this city we published previously only depicted the central portion of the city, not the whole thing), while Xin-Shalast (which is in the process of being renamed Xin-Eurythnia) gets it mostly from glacial melt/snow melt that gathers in underground cisterns plus magic used to create water, melt water from snow or ice, or portal it in from the plane of water.
In addition to the sources cited above, it probably wouldn't be completely surprising if at least some minotaurs on the island had helped build an aqueduct or two from the mountains. Possibly for the "underground reservoirs."
I would also suspect a few extraplanar or magical solutions for the rich and powerful.
"Seawater is undrinkable"
To humans.
On Earth.
:-)
Given Absalom is home to some of the most prestigious magical academies in the Inner Sea, if Absalom's aquifers ever run dry they probably have a few Decanters of Endless Water or an equivalent item to keep them from falling below a certain level. In fact, that might make for a fun bit of mundane city intrigue and a plot hook for a low-level adventure - someone has been siphoning off Absalom's fresh water aquifers and hiding the fact by keeping the magic items on all the time, and now that there's been a bit of a drought and the items aren't replenishing it as much as they should a few adventurers have to go in and see what's stopping the Petal District from getting freshwater.
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The reliance on magic portals to the Plane of Water leads to a pretty hilarious potential environmental crisis as Golarion urbanizes more and more. There's going to be a breaking point where the artificial openings to the Plane of Water outpace any natural ones that act as drains and slowly sea levels will rise as the total amount of liquid water on the planet begins to increase.
The corollary being an even greater future crisis where the planet's gravity begins to increase as ever more mass is added to it.
I assume that whenever someone on a planet opens a plane to the elemental plane of water to take some water out, later on an adjudicator from the elemental plane of water removes an equivalent amount of water from somewhere on the same planet, just to keep the books balanced.
This means "take 10,000 gallons in order for people in a city to drink" is a workable solution since later on the ocean is going to lose 10,000 gallons.
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I've never heard of the elemental planes being described as particularly bureaucratic.
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I've never heard of the elemental planes being described as particularly bureaucratic.
Nor efficient.
Though I have heard them want to control access to their element, that's seems mostly a narrative conceit so the GM can close the "infinite resources" gates if necessary. And being unlimited, that 10,000 gallons would hardly be noticed anyway, though it could easily be a spark for some water-themed shenanigans in Absalom. Trouble at the waterworks, as it were.
Edit: fix quote block.
The analogy I would draw is that the positive integers are infinite, but in some sort of hypothetical "elemental plane of numbers" if someone started taking huge quantities of prime numbers then some math-elemental would get annoyed at that and want to fix the situation.
Like just because there's no shortage of water in the elemental plane of water doesn't mean that somebody liked the water you took and would like to replace it.
The analogy I would draw is that the positive integers are infinite, but in some sort of hypothetical "elemental plane of numbers" if someone started taking huge quantities of prime numbers then some math-elemental would get annoyed at that and want to fix the situation.
Like just because there's no shortage of water in the elemental plane of water doesn't mean that somebody liked the water you took and would like to replace it.
But would anyone on the Elemental Plane of Water actually care? I ask because of
I think when something is actually infinite, no one would care, if they even noticed, that some of it was being siphoned off unless it happened to them directly.
I suspect that, because portals generally open in both directions, on a geological timescale the amount of stuff moving between the planes basically comes to equilibrium? Like, there's an enormous portal in the middle of one of the oceans - shows up for six months every decade or so - which flows from the Universe to the Plane of Water, and that thing's offset like 80% of all currently extant mortal-made water portals, or something.
I suspect that, because portals generally open in both directions, on a geological timescale the amount of stuff moving between the planes basically comes to equilibrium? Like, there's an enormous portal in the middle of one of the oceans - shows up for six months every decade or so - which flows from the Universe to the Plane of Water, and that thing's offset like 80% of all currently extant mortal-made water portals, or something.
I mean, our real world climate crisis is all about a natural cycle that should be able to balance itself out on a geological timescale being thrown out of whack by human action.
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I imagine this would be an interesting low to midlevel adventure for the party, they start being alerted that a greater and greater imbalance is occuring as urbanization and abuse of the plane of water occurs. So they must research and find ways to create a self balancing spell (automatically opens a portal flowing back to the plane of water at the bottom of an ocean), and a way to correct the imbalance already extant. Take them from the heart of an urban center, across the world on research, and eventually into the plane of water to negotiate with the Elemental Lords of the plane.
Heck, one could run an Absalom utilities 1-20 AP if starting with water pipes full of rats and ending on the Plane of Water w/ Elemental Warlords. Add in factions, corruption, a watery Algolhithu invasion, climate crisis, and so forth. Like Agents of Edgewatch meets Second Darkness, but w/ utilities & water. Maybe add pirate mercenaries for a dash of Skull & Shackles.