Wellington, 1881. A series of recent, violent earthquakes have cracked open graves in the Bolton Street Cemetery, causing effluence (or ‘body rot’) to leak into and contaminate the city’s major municipal waterways.
While local body politicians argue over the causes of resulting 'zymotic' diseases and how best to deal with them, an Irish immigrant and notorious ‘moonshiner’, John Valentine, unbeknownst (even to himself) has concocted a most deadly brew from the sullied water, which has chemically reacted to the fusel oils and tannins he uses in his illegal whiskey making.
The result is a night of utter chaos, the like of which has not been seen in the short colonial history of this great pioneering city…