Temperance (or, Apparently Our Narrator has a Lower Opinion of Teetotalers than of Reasoners)

In one of the old lands where those underground got people, they had a problem with drinking.  Or with people drinking.  The land was big and wide and planted full of apples, and they made cider with those apples.  All kinds of cider.  There was also grain, amber waves, if you believe the song, and those got turned into beer or burben or byjou or what have you.  This was, apparently, a problem, and one that grew in the days following the Great War there, which, again, we know very, very little about.  This is more a legend than anything like reliable history.  This turned people in that land against the drink itself; we have reason to believe it was the Christians who take the blame for this one, since, to this day, there are teetotal sects, and no one else, whoever their ancestors might have been, ever abstains when the drink is available and the time is appropriate.

Anyway, someone with a bug about alcohol got ahold of something that those underground used to mess with flesh and life and decided, for reasons I cannot fathom, but this was important to our wizard (calling himself Professor Madison), that something needed to be done about alcohol and those who drank it (which, lets face it, were almost all of us.  Those underground used to encourage us to drink in the evenings in lieu of plotting rebellion and used to make sure that at least something we needed nutritionally wasn't available anywhere but our various local brews).  So the professor made a form of life, one of those tiny germ-sized ones, as a means to cause, what must have been ironic mishap to those of us who imbibed.  He then made another that spit out paper when you fed it sugar, so he could print fliers warning us of our doom.  Credit where credit is due, the paper cultures are pretty great.  Temperance, not so much.

I'm happy to report that temperance is all but eradicated in the cantons (also, we've gotten rid of that damned bug), but its worth looking out for in the Big Charry, as if the notion that sampling 80 year old barrels of beer might not be the best plan you've ever had was not sufficient.  Temperance is a tiny germ that forms colonies in fermented liquids, primarily ones with some malt content (though it's always wise to be wary of your kimchi, too, if Temperance has come to town).  Temperance is mostly dormant in cool temperatures, though, containers storing the Temperance infected liquids are allowed to heat up, they do start to activate.  As long as they are kept cool, it's hard to tell that Temperance is in a beverage until it's trying to choke you to death.

Temperance activates the moment it is in the presence of temperatures that are give-or-take human body normal.  The germ wants to be somewhere warm and uses... I am really not sure how it does it, but let me just describe what happens.  You tilt a glass or a bottle to your lips and the contents practically leap out of the container to get in your body.  In doing so, the beverage is not so picky about how it gets there, so it enters through your mouth and your nose, filling your throat.  Once it gets inside, it reacts to saliva by becoming jelly-like in consistency.  You drown in your drink, essentially, presumably thinking that your mother was right all along.

Large amounts of Temperance infected beverage, in high enough temperature areas, have, on occasion, become almost predatory globs, chasing down the closest source of the proper temperature to inhabit.  These conditions are avoided by brewers and anyone who has reasons to keep large quantities of drink, as these conditions ruin perfectly good alcohol not infected by Temperance.