Was doing some exploring and found that the aqueduct leads to a wall/closed door at or near the Priest Kings Retreat. On the opposite side of the tower that the aqueduct leads to is… nothing that suggests an outflow. Nothing that shows any sign of leading to the rest of the aqueduct.
Now it just may be my special brand of derp, but this leaves me with many questions. We’re portals involved? If yes, why didn’t they just portal water straight from the dam to where it was needed? Was there a range limit? I can’t think of any other way to explain it lore wise. Development wise, was this an oversight that just sort of stuck?
Any info on this topic would be greatly appreciated. Good hunting!
In the Priest Kings Retreat place, aqueduct from the Highlands ends at a circular, closed passage. It is closed because (spoiler) the gods stopped supporting humans and began to prepare for war with them. Apparently the circular passage is a pipe that leads to the river below. A similar size of pipe is (spoiler) in The Dregs dungeon.
On the other side, from Unnamed City, at the height there is a square place where the water tank may have been. Such a water tower could draw water from the river, providing constant pressure for the rest of the water supply system and the river collected excess water.
The aqueduct leading to Unnamed City looks more like a bridge, water could not flow over it. Water could flow in pipes hooked under the bridge, or pipes buried underground.
In the Highlands, the aqueduct was doing well without pipes, the sun was melting the ice flowing with the water, but hielding the water from sand and sandstorms in the desert required other measures.
Questions remain: How did the water tower disappear? Where are the missing parts of the aqueduct and water supply/pipes?
Probably we all know the answer: The metal has been melted down to new swords , axes and arrowheads , and aqueduct stones were used to build New Asagarth.
I have to only quibble with a little of this here. If you go to the stele at Chaosmouth, you’ll hear a tale about the sumptuous farmlands below, and if you’re there to work them, prepare for a great time in the annals of slavery! It’s in the present tense, which tells me something sudden and cataclysmic happened. Either that or the Giant Kings changed their minds, and omitted the hotfix on that particular tablet.
At the south terminus of the Northern sluice, at the Rim of Priestking, is a circular cover. It looks to be a valve, minus the hardware.
Back north along the pipe, considering the water height at the Great Dam, and that its dike could possibly have been raised or lowered to accommodate the flow, I can envision a situation where water could be valved into that hole, flow up into the structure and through a piping system. Secondarily, by keeping the valve cover on, and raising the outflow from the dam, it would be possible to create cascading waterfalls all along the length of the northern spar.
One final consideration about the missing links is scavenging, but it’s more likely due to decay. The infrastructure for high-volume water carrying is still clay to this day, supported by wooden pillars, columns or even wheels. And, speaking of wheels, using valves would have opened up a level of hydro-electric power.
Well dam! (Pun intended) Well done guys! Those are reasonable explanations my only quibble is that the water is alreasy higher that the Southern Aqueduct platforms so wouldn’t it have been easier to pipe across Priest kings Retreat instead of having the water fall and have to pump it back up?
My thought process was they made ornate clay pipes, suspended on beautiful pedestrian rope bridges, all of which have decayed. The difference in elevation between northern terminus and the southern section of the aqueduct is enough to create substantial water pressure. Yes, @Halk , I said rope bridges.
, axes 
and arrowheads 
, and aqueduct stones 
were used to build New Asagarth.
- I was improvising while writing the explanation of the aqueduct’s construction 
.
near Shattered Bridge.