Procidos

It was, ultimately, a matter of simple mathematics. There was a finite amount of drinkable water accessible at any one time. The population of needed more than that if all of them were to survive. And so, some of them, inevitably, had to die.
At first, it was a minor problem - the discrepancy was small, and deprivation is hardly an unknown problem in any world. But people stubbornly continued to be born, and so the problem continued.
It was not very long, of course, before a legislative solution was proposed. Regardless of distribution, there wasn’t enough water to go around - but that was no reason to allow the situation to be any worse than it had to be. The Conference of Masoel set down rules as to the division of drinking water, so that none would be wasted, and so that as few people as possible would have to die.
But the rate at which people were being born showed no sign whatsoever of slowing down. And worse, the quantity of usable water seemed to be steadily decreasing - noone knew how. The people of Procidos were facing a slow, but seemingly inevitable end.
And that is when the Conference of Masiel made an important decision. There simply was not enough water to distribute it to all of the population. And so, thy gave up on trying. Instead, large sections of the population were not given any water. Instead, they were painlessly euthanised - it was considered better than allowing them to die slowly of dehydration.
And, with this decision, came one important change - that someone had to decide who the water went to. Someone had to decide who lived and who died.
The Conference was desperate to prevent a mass panic. The world was unstable enough as it was, and this policy was unlikely to be popular, to say the least.
And so, a strict policy was agreed upon, according to which the water would be distributed throughout the world. A test was designed - one which was intended to test who was most likely to be able to contribute in some way to solving the problem of the water shortage - those with an aptitude for science, engineering, or magic.
It was, as has been said, simple logic. The number of people who could be kept alive was finite - but if the water problem could be solved or slowed, deaths would be prevented in the future - which was clearly desirable. It was common sense that no human life could be considered more valuable than another. That was the principle upon which their society was built. And it was precisely because no person was more valuable than any other, that some people had to be valued more than others.
And it worked. Generations later, hough noone has been able to solve the problem, the reduction in the amount of drinkable water has significantly slowed due to magical and technological advances. At four or five years old, children are tested for their aptitude in areas considered important to the water-preservation issue. The tests have evolved - they test the children not only for and aptitude for the 'main three' diciplines, but for all the needed infrastructure, from leadership to manual labour. The best in each category are spared and allowed to grow up, the rest are euthanised to spare them from the slow death of dehydration.
Adults, too, are often weeded out of the population - those who are lazy, or ill, or injured, those who can't or won't do the work they have been assigned, are denied water, and their lives end. The simple mathematics is that the better the population works, the more water can be provide, and the fewer people will have to die in the future. To save lives, people must be killed.
Needless to say, not everyone is particularly happy with an arrangement in which children and the disabled are regularly murdered by the state. Utopia itself, they  claim, is not worth the spilling of innocent blood - let alone the authoritarian regime of the New Council of Masoel, which claims authority over the entire world.
The rebels have organised, into a group called Spera, and their actions have progressed from legal protests, towards terrorism. Attacks on euthanasia centres are becoming commonplace, though they are most often at night, and the casualty rate is generally low.
Except, for the tragic attack at Modios. Instead of an attack on the equipment at midnight, rebels stormed the building in the middle of the day, The storming itself is not something which will be described here, but the workers there were branded as mass murderers, and executed.
In response to that attack, the government has introduced new measures against terrorist activity - increased phone-tapping, armed guards, all of the traditional paraphernalia of a state which feels itself under seige by forces it cannot identify. The sides are preparing for war, and not only iis the cost likely to be astronomical, the damage to infrastructure and the deaths of talented people is likely to lead to the end of uncountable future lives - with few actual soldiers having  been selected, it seems likely that they will soon have to draw upon those who were assigned to a different role. The Council of Masoel is worried about this fact enough that it eager to achieve peace, and is willing to offer concessions to Spera. But they will not budge on the issue of preserving the lives of those most useful to society, because that is, they believe, the only way society will progress.
To their credit, the members of Spera are not lacking their own plans - though many joined Spera because of horror at the mass murder the government carries out on a regular basis, and though there is no official party line on the issue, a number of factions have developed within the Spera, each with their own idea of what should replace the the current system, and between which there are... occasional clashes.
There are two factions which are:
Firstly, the Amaoros who believe that the current system is overly elitist, and that the government should not have ultimate authority on the issue of who lives, and who dies. They suggest the introduction of a lottery system.
And as secondly, the Zalen, who believe that the government should stop water rationing at once, believing that, regardless of the potential benefit, no government should ever participate in the killing of its own citizens, especially on such a massive scale.
The newest recruits to the Spera, tend to have an opinion on the matter, being constantly exposed to the various philosophies of the factions - whether they want to be, or not.