How most Scarterrans get their drinking water

There is a misconception that real world medieval people did not drink water, they only drank ale and other alcoholic beverages. There is a kernel of truth in this, medieval humans consumed more alcoholic beverages on average than modern real world humans and this was largely because fermenting is a convenient way to make imperfect water safe to drink, but mediaeval people did drink water and so do Scarterrans.
Scarterra is of course based on ancient and medieval real world humans. Scarterra has some factors that affect the procurement of fresh water, but most of the time Scarterrans rely on mundane means of securing drinking water.

Water Sources

Birds Eye View of Well with Water by Sushil Shrestha

Water sources are pretty straight forward. Rivers, streams, and lakes are obvious sources of freshwater. Scarterrans commonly dig wells and they are slightly better at this than real world pre-industrial humans because they have limited access to real magic to find water including divination spells and occasional helpful spirits, especially Mera affiliated spirits.

A few natural springs exist. Some of these were implemented by Mera or her spirit minions as an act of kindness to mortalkind. Others are relics of the major events of water elementals during the First Unmaking and others are the result of random elemental energies coalescing. These springs are highly prized as they usually naturally clean filtered, able to be drunk as is, without any treatment.

The single largest source of fresh water in Scarterra is named Mera's Lake though technically it is a sea. Mera's Lake used to be a land locked body of fresh water in the center of Scarterra but is now surrounded by the ocean and due to Mera's divine intervention, it remains free of salt, at least on the surface. It's location makes it inconvenient for regular use but a lot of sailors take detours to cross Mera's Lake to restock their water stores or to collect water to sell. Superstitious people will pay good money for water for Mera's Lake, which is believed to have healing properties. Others value it for it's taste and purity. The Tenders sometimes use water from Mera's Lake for ceremonial purposes.

Beautiful evening sunset by Sebastien Gabriel

Crude icon for Tenders of the Hearth by Me

"Droplets raining" (Wikie by Santosh Kumar

Then of course there is a free source of water from the Nine in the form of rain. In most places, Scarterran farmers rely on steady rainfall for their crops.. Individual families often put out rain barrels for drinking waters but this normally a relatively small source of drinking water. Rain barrels are more useful near the equator where standing bodies of fresh water are less common and rainfall is heavy. The Elven Empire and Dwarf Kingdom of Stahlheim have been experimenting with setting up more sophisticated systems for catching rain water with some mixed success.

Boiling Water

In the real world, many cultures discovered that boiling water could make it safer to drink but different cultures discovered it at different times and sometimes they didn't fully understand why and how it worked until germ theory became widely known in the 19th century.

In Scarterra the utility of boiling water is widely known. Mera is the goddess of medicine, water, and hearth fires. It is unclear on whether Mera invented the laws of nature that makes boiling water so useful or sterilization or if it was a universal law created by Turoch that she suppored. Either way, Mera instructed her mortal and spirit followers to spread the knowledge that boiling water makes it safer to drink far and wide.
Mera's followers are credited with encouraging the popularity and spread of tea drinking] as a means of encouraging people to boil their drinking water.

boiling pot of water by me using Nightcafe

Tea leaves with water droplets on them

While Mera and her Tenders got the ball rolling on the use of boiling as a means of water treatment, the process is no longer considered a religious act. Scarterrans who are arreligious or even hostile to Mera regularly boil their water as a means of santitation.

"boiling water will eliminate most disease causing germs or spores, but it will not help sterilize water that happens to be carrying very potent supernatural curses.
That said, powerful curses don't linger in waiting forever and fade away if they cannot find a mortal house. Water cannot generally hold lingering supernatural curses more than a week, two at the most, before it dissipates harmlessly. Even then, if you spiked a resevoir of drinking water with ghoul fever or something similar it would probably only afflict one-in-ten people who drank the water at most, though this might be an advantage because it makes it harder to tell that the drinking water is the source of their woes."
-Enfys the Rainbow of Death, Bearer of the Ill Wind

Fermentation

"'Beer holds strength, wine holds companionship and water holds Maylar spores' That is a common saying among Rovers and we are very grateful for Nami's gift of fermentation, almost as valuable as Nami's Gift of free will in my opinion.

by Me using Nightcafe

Turning water into ale or wine will make it safer to drink. Boiling water is faster true, even if you have to boil it and then let it cool, but I'd rather drink ale or wine, personally. I am not the only who has this attitude.
It's not just drunkards that think this way. Boiling unpleasant water may prevent it from making you sick but that doesn't mean you remove all the things that make the water taste unpleasant. Ale or wine covers up these flavors...of course the best ales and wines use clean water as a base but one cannot always be choosy.
Ale is essentially liquid bread and other fermented beverages have some food value as well. A working man or woman can get a lot of nourishment from what they drink, nobles too I suppose.

It is no wonder that making ale or wine is such a daily staple of Scarterran life. The fact that it helps make water safer to drink is just a fortunate side benefit. Mera owes Nami big for that contribution to mortal welfare.
Norabruck Grumblespine, dwarven Circuit Priestess of Nami

by Me with Hero Forge

by Me with Hero Forge

-Basim, Confederate Satyr

"I like a good beer as much as the next goat, but there is a dark side to using beer for sustenance. The dark elves have a long tradition of giving their slaves a lot of beer as part of their evening ration. This nourishes them for another day of work but it also makes them docile at night, a time that would ordinarily be the best moment for escape attempts or retribution."

Magical Water Treatment

Less than 1% of Scarterrans have the ability to cast divine magic, so divine magic is not ubiquitous. That said, of the thirteen divine sphers of magic, Purification is the most commonly practiced. Divine casters associated with Mera, Khemra, Phidas all treat Purification magic as a favored sphere but many casters outside these groups still learn Purification magic.
Purification magic is best known for the ability to treat or cure poisons and diseases but this magic can also purify water. Purification ●● can desalinate sea water and cleanse fresh water from most questionable sources. Purification ●●● can turn almost any liquid into drinkable water including a bottle of deadly poison or a bucket of troll urine. Even Purification ● is helpful. It won't clean water, but it at least answer is "Is this safe to drink, yes or no." If the caster rolls well, they can learn what is contaminating the water (or other beverage) and whether boiling or filtration can fix the problem.
Most theurgists who practice this sphere of magic initially learn it because they want to cure diseases, either out of altruism or as a means of profit and control. But many find themselves purifying water as a side hustle.

20 d10s from Wikimedia Commons

One success on a casting roll purify about two gallons of water per day. That means a caster with a five-dice casting pool (a typical casting pool for a relative newbie caster) is going to purify about 2.5 gallons of water on average, 3 gallons if Purification is a favored sphere.
If the caster is recovering about 15 points of mana power day, and spending 2 points of mana per casting, that means a newbie caster is going to be able to purify about 20 gallons water a day on average. Enough water to keep 20 people alive. But if you need water for cooking, cleaning, or anything beyond mere survival, 20 gallons of water doesn't go as far as you'd think.

Unless water supplies are very scarce, most Purifiers stay on hand to help people with infections, illness, or poisons and at the end of the day, if they mana left over, then they purify some water. This is often the case on sailing ships. The last thing a captain wants is for the crew to fall ill (or too drunk to work), but if the crew is not ill, increasing a ship's stock of fresh water is a nice side benefit to having a Purifier crewman on the payroll.
That is assuming that a divine caster has zero or very few divine spheres apart from Purification. Most very powerful casters with many spheres at their fingertips, keep Purification in their back pocket for emergency healing but rely on their other magics most of the time. Most theurgists and favored souls of this power level generally have better things to do than purify water.

"

There is a saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In a large city, sanitation is a major concern and there is usually more than enough work to keep the purifiers busy. It is usually more efficient to have Purifiers cleanse the waste products the gong farmers collect so that it doesn't fester and contaminate water in the first place.

-Beslyfle the gnome, matron of Fumaya's Tenders

Most Purifiers in big cities go after the waste products rather than try to indiviudally treat every single container of water, though some wealthy people will pay good money to make sure all their drinking water is treated thusly."

"

by Eron12 with Hero Forge

-Daana, Defender of the Hearth, Paladin

Purification magic doesn't destroy contaminants in water, it removes them. Usually the distinction doesn't matter, but if you magically purify a large quantity of relatvely clean sea water, you'll end up with a small pile of sea salt. If you are situation where you have to pinch every copper piece to make the ends meet for those under your care, this extra bit of salt is helpful, either to use or to sell."

An arcane conjurer with the spell Create Element can literally create water out of nothing. If the caster decides to create water, it'll puddle on the floor if there isn't an empty bucket or similar container on hand. The spell only creates about a gallon of water per success rolled meaning that this might help keep a small band of adventures alive in a water-less dungeon, it's not efficient on keeping a large group of civilians alive long term.
On average, arcane Conjurers are more selfish and aloof than divine Purifiers so one is not likely to provide the masses free water out of altruism. Also, there aren't as many arcane Conjurers in Scarterra as their are divine Purifiers. Many Conjurers forgo learning the Create Element spell as a waste of time or else they focus on the spell's ability to create fire or wind. Many Conjurers treat the ability to create water out of thin air as little more than an emergency fire extinguisher.
The gist of all the above is that while magic can create drinkable water, it is usually not the most efficient means to do though spell casters of various stripes may step up to create can step up to create water in emergency situations.

History

Fresh water was a major resource in the First Age. dragons need water to live like most other mortal races. Relatively to their size and power, dragons don't need as much water as one would guess. An elephant sized dragon can generally get by on enough water to satisfy a horse. Dragons can handle a lot of dirty water sources that would make most lesser mortals sick or dead and dragons can even live off drinking sea water (though they don't like the taste).
Dragons didn't have to work very hard to get freshwater for themselves but they did have to obtain fresh water for their thurekal, livestock, crops, and industry so a lot of the interline dragon wars were fought over water.
It is widely believed that the First Unmaking was actually triggered by a dragon queen attempting to magically monopolize the water source now known as Mera's Lake and a miscast ritual spell unleashed elemental chaos.
Clean, fresh water was never scarcer in Scarterra than in the dawn of the Second Age. Mera, aided by her allies among the Nine worked hard to create and/or shore up sources of fresh water sources. The elves and other emerging Second Age races developed traditions and technologies and magic to find, store, and protect fresh water.
Alchoholic beverages certainly existed in the First Age, but their creation exploded in the Second Age as a means of treating water. Mera spirits told the ancient elves and other races about the effects of boiling water and tea leaves became popular both as a means of incentivizing elves to boil their water and to hide the taste of less than ideal water.
All the traditions regarding the safeguarding of water remained as fresh water gradually became more plentiful and they were so ubiquitious that the Second Unmaking did not disrupt things much.
The more foreward thinking Void demons did not hesitate to destroy mortals' food supplies as a weapon of genocide but it was relatively uncommon for them to poison or sabotage water supplies until late in the Unmaking. Even then, by that point the mortal population in Scarterra was so small and there was usually plenty of snow or ice to melt that water was usually the least of the problems faced by the hardy bands of survivors.
As the Third Age dawned, life was hard but obtaining fresh water not a huge issue outside of dry climates. The survivors of the Second Age and the newly emerging humans all understood all the basics of water husbandry, water purification, and the fermenting of alcohol perfectly well. the Red Era saw a lot of war and conflict, but water was rarely the cause of these fights.
The Feudal Era has seen more battles fought over water as the mortal population has expanded greatly and water has become more important for irrigation and industry.

Supernatural Obstacles to Obtaining Water

Tester Icon by me

"Maylar gives mortals the gift of disease to test their strength and mettle. Many of his spirits creations and mortal faithful seek to aid him in this endeavor, either out of devotion or for profit or both.
It is possible to use magic or mundane means to taint communal water supplies and this can be effective, but this is also obvious.
Among the Nonagons, those who spread disease are outnumbered at least five-to-one by those who seek to eradicate diseases. Illness can spread itself so it's an even fight, but our opponents are pretty fastidious about checking major water supplies.
If you want to spread disease surreptiously, be more subtle. Don't poison the well. Poison individuals' flasks and cups when they aren't looking.
While there aren't a lot of people such as us trying to spread disease, a lot of magic beings foment illness as a byproduct of their actions. Many undead carry illness with and they can unintentionally spread illness. Destroyed undead often release disease spores as sort of a final act of violence.
Void demons turn to salt when they die, and enough salt can make water undrinkable. During the Second Unmaking a few more foreward thinking demons sought to contanimate or destroy mortal's drinking water and rumor is some Infernalists continue the practice. Twisted elementals are born of Void energy and the so-called Salt elementals can literally destroy water.
Do not consort with any minions of the Void to spread disease. Maylar desires disease to eliminate the weak and test the strong. This will make life stronger in the long run. The Void demons and their collaberate seek to eradicate life forever.
-Enfys the Rainbow of Death, Bearer of the Ill Wind

Primary Related Location

Scarterra

Related Organizations

• Tenders