In The Cans District of Mythburg, City Mage Engineer Third Tier Alex has been constructing a magical water desalination project. As everyone knows, desalination is the process of removing salt and minerals from seawater or brackish water to make it suitable for humanoid consumption and agriculture. In this fantasy setting, Alex has been creating a type of magical semipermeable membranes that can filter seawater of impurities. The membranes work by sending all impurities through what is easiest to describe as, but not most accurately described as, a type of portal to elsewhere. This leaves only the safely filtered drinking water behind.

The process generates a highly concentrated, toxic saltwater byproduct called “brine”, which is what goes through the “portal”. Discharging brine back into the ocean would by contrast lower oxygen levels in the waters near Mythburg and harm the local marine ecosystems, possibly even inciting entities such as the Kuo-Toa who live on part of the local island chain to attack the city.

• Mythburg is a huge city and fresh water to support its masses is difficult to acquire from the already established wells and external land locked sources.
• In the Havenspass Region just to the South of Mythburg there is an abundance of farms which also create a great strain on water supplies.
• Therefor the need for additional water sources is valid, and that is why Alex proposed this project which is being tested in The Cans.
• Of concern to some, but apparently not to Alex, is where the brine is being sent to.
• There is also an irrational group of locals who believe this will wreck the sea by draining it, which is absurd.
• If this project is successful it may lead to a revolution in a new concept called “plumbing” that would have to be installed all over Mythburg, and likely more instances of a desalination installation in other districts.