D&D General A Question about Waterdeep - Where does the Drinking Water come from?

[Zardnaar]

It's New Zealand. Not much choice other than to build cities in the shadow of volcanoes and seismically active zones.

I'm aware. Seismic understandable volcanos bit more iffy. Mostly it's just to mock Auckland.


Small documentary from the 90's. Before Pukunui got here.

 

[Hussar]

Okay, I like all of that, and am happy to have helped set it off. Keep it coming.


Oh neat!

I wonder how the Emerald Enclave would react? Could kinda go either way.

Might combine the ideas too. Canal and aqueducts.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Digging an up-hill canal would be a massively expensive undertaking, even with magic. It seems unlikely that the economic benefits of cutting a few miles off the journey would make it worthwhile.

It's correct to call out the cost of acquiring the land. Round here several "local" railway stations are a long way from towns because landowners refused to sell.

 

[Hussar]

Digging an up-hill canal would be a massively expensive undertaking, even with magic. It seems unlikely that the economic benefits of cutting a few miles off the journey would make it worthwhile.

It's correct to call out the cost of acquiring the land. Round here several "local" railway stations are a long way from towns because landowners refused to sell.

Why would it be uphill? Most of Waterdeep is not on the mountain. Most of Waterdeep is barely above sea level.

The city really doesn’t work without the port.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Why would it be uphill? Most of Waterdeep is not on the mountain. Most of Waterdeep is barely above sea level.

As already pointed out Waterdeep sits on an elevated bluff, next to a mountain. That's why it is there and not down in the swamp.

The city really doesn’t work without the port.

It has a port, a very good seaport. Which is deep, because the land drops away steeply. Just do an image search for Waterdeep, it's a steep hilly city.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Why would it be uphill? Most of Waterdeep is not on the mountain. Most of Waterdeep is barely above sea level.

The city really doesn’t work without the port.

The northern 2/3 to 3/4 of the city is on a plateau well above sea level. Most maps will show the wall-lined cliffs that run along the eastern edge of the city. The area just to the east of the city is actually called "Undercliff". The only area of the city near sea level is in the vicinity of the harbor itself.

 

[Mad_Jack]

I'm finding this discussion interesting because I'm currently wrestling with some of the same "Why doesn't the Underdark flood?" and "How does X get fresh water?" aspects with my Dungeon23 project, and some of the things that have been touched on in this thread have either already made their way into the idea or soon will now that they've come up...

The "dungeon" used to be a Dwarven settlement and mine carved into a small mountain ridge on the coast, so I had to deal with figuring out how they managed to get fresh water flowing through the "underground" city.
And when the settlement "mysteriously disappeared", it actually literally became an underground city due to an earthquake collapsing an Underdark cavern it was sitting on top of... (Causing the whole damn thing to sink underground and seawater to come flooding in and cover it over with what's since become a freshwater swamp hundreds of years later).
But now a more recent earthquake has caused another geological shift that actually raised it back up just enough to reveal its location. So, parts of it are flooded, parts are dry, and former aqueducts are now traversable tunnels (and vice versa) which means that some of the cellars and wells in the nearby human town lead to underground rivers and/or entrances to the "dungeon". (And conceivably the Underdark.)

I'm normally a big fan of logical consequences and a chain of cause and effect, but at this point I think I've gone far enough down a potentially rather damp rabbit hole that I'm willing to not care if every last t has been dotted and every i crossed...

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Edinburgh was built on a rocky outcrop for defensive purposes, around 3 miles from the Firth of Forth. The docks are at Leith.

 

[Oofta]

Waterdeep is on a bluff, though. I’ve lived on a bluff, in Tacoma, WA, and getting between top and bottom without, you know, just jumping off is not trivial. It took nineteenth century engineering to turn trails along relatively broken stretches into roads, and more for roads that could carry trucks

Though there could much more easily be a canal to the foot of the bluff and then transshipment to hauling of some other kind.


...

I had a city on a bluff in my campaign. They had a chain for pulling specialized carts up the hill. Going downhill carts were also attached, it helped pull carts up.

But the main source of power? Zombies made from the boies of prisoners.

 

[pukunui]

I’m guessing in the Realms, the magic that pervades the Underdark known as faerzress has something to do with keeping the seawater out.

That said, during the Spellplague, the Sea of Fallen Stars did partially drain into the Underdark. It then refilled during the super rainy part of the Second Sundering.