Lexicon:Modern/Fraeska

Fraeska
Stage	Modern CLT
Pronunciation	/ˈfɾaɪs.ka/
Part of speech	Noun
Etymology	from Middle fraskā
Related words	Kravoen, Eledh, Naevmastra, Krevra

Fraeska — the living colony kept aboard ship to take the salt out of seawater.

Notes

A reef animal in appearance, kept in a circulated tank in the hold. It consumes the salt and builds it into its own structure, and the water sweetens over some days until a tender judges a batch fit to draw off.

It works at a rate rather than on demand and cannot usefully be made larger, so it extends a voyage rather than ending the need for stored water. It grows continuously out of what it removes, which means cutting it back is most of the work, and it must be fed, since nothing drifts past it in a tank.

Colonies are split from parent stock rather than raised from nothing. Every Fraeska aboard every ship in the world came off another one, and a good line has a history behind it that a captain will tell you unprompted.

Engineered pre-Fall, when the pumping stations were failing and the sea was the only water left that nobody could drink. Of a piece with the Kravoen and the Eledh — an essential function moved into something alive, because a thing that is alive does not stop when the power does.