About water and wires

This morning I was pouring water from the tap into a cup, and at exactly the same moment I had an idea for a new post. Now many of us have normal water supply systems, and therefore very convenient and easy access to water. What were people doing, say... in the fourth century?

Wells and walking with buckets on a rocker to the river immediately come to mind; a little later, perhaps Romanesque aqueducts and lead water supply, which did not make things any better - were there other options?

As it turns out, there is. One of the most sophisticated (in the good sense of the word) options was among the elves of Sordava - the same one that is the capital of the Glinnar Dimonarchy. It would seem that a wide and deep river flows through the city (Edevis), take as much water from there as you like, right? It would have been possible, of course, but Sordav was already a very vertical city. The local evalgars calmly reached a height of eighty meters and were completely covered with assorted dwellings, bridges, passages and anything else. It’s as if climbing up the stairs thirty (or even more) meters with buckets in your hands appeals to few people.

As far as we can know, at first the option of buying a number of pumps from the Kharassukhumi doors and making a full-fledged water supply system was seriously considered. He was rejected: almost the entire city is one continuous forest, and servicing underground pumps would be very difficult, if not impossible, due to the abundance of intertwined roots. And in the end they did the following.

Since the city is in a lowland, three aqueducts were built to it: one taking water from the upper sections of Edevais; two more are from lakes in the south. They made something like water tanks, and then it was simply brilliant. The pipes were made from the wood of dead evalgars, which, immersed underground, were magically implanted into the root system of already living ones. Thus, we achieved two things at once:
— there is no need to maintain anything, because the wood is very durable, moisture-resistant, and most importantly, alive and capable of regeneration;
— the roots will not accidentally destroy the pipes, because these pipes are part of the roots.

Of course, this way the Alvas could only use cold water, but that’s still very cool, right?