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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wicht" data-source="post: 6525915" data-attributes="member: 221">Some ideas... (partially echoing Nellisir)The planet has to have water, but what you want is a way to encapsulate the water away from rivers and lakes and oceans so that it is hard to access, but still available in some fashion to support life.I think you might consider Dune as something of an inspiration here, with a biological factor stealing the water which would otherwise be plentiful in the ecosystem (ie. the sandworms were responsible for trapping water underground.)Going with your rock idea, perhaps the rocks steal a certain amount of water from the air, but release it slowly over time when saturated, so that a waterstone sitting on the sand would support small amounts of plant life as it slowly leaked the water out. Larger stones would be the source of various oasis and mined stones would be used to provide water for homes. The stones suck enough water out of the air to prevent rain, which prevents water movement and bodies of water, but provide enough to their immediate vicinity via "sweat" that life is sustained.The rocks still remain the most valuable resource on the planet, but by allowing them to continually sweat you create a plausible scenario by which life is sustained.  Besides plants which have adapted to grow right near or on the rocks, small animals have learned to drink the sweat. Larger animals, all carnivores, derive their fluids from the bodies of small animals. Certain plants (like cacti) also develop to store water inside them. Intelligent races, of course, learn to use the rocks, increase the sweat of the rocks by applying heat (which drains the rocks, but does not destroy them), or take water from plants. Farming should be minimal throughout the setting, except by magic. Population would necessarily be scarce in almost every region, for nearly every species.As in dune, technology can also be developed which, like the rocks, takes water from the atmosphere, allowing it to be condensed and collected.</blockquote>

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