Looking to Commission a Cover Artist for the Sandwiched by Series

Ah, the Sandwiched by series.  Originally it was supposed to be a series of 5-10K word novellas, wholly self-published by me, released monthly over the period of a year.  While the stories are only connected thematically (monster girl threesomes), I intended it to be a trial for later serials that did tell an ongoing story over the period of a year (Okasare Kenny).  Provided I could prove I had the discipline to keep to a monthly schedule (because I didn't want to launch into a proper continuous story and have it go AWOL after a couple of months).

That didn't go so well...

So much so, I think it's time for a relaunch and a Sandwiched by series that does adhere to the original vision.  I'm even making it easier for myself as the first 5 are already written (as well as chunks of 6 and 7).  So let's try and keep to a schedule this time so 2019 can be about the gorgeous, freaky, sexy weirdness of Okasare Kenny.

(I haven't forgotten about Succubus Summoning 301, don't worry.)

In keeping with the concept of relaunch, I think it's time I did a little more with the cover art.  I think the basic design is fine.  The monster girl silhouettes... less so.  Here are the originals for reference:

Was I trying to draw a spider or an ant here?

Originally, to contrast with the other silhouettes, I wanted the slimes to be blue and transparent.  I had nowhere near the art chops to make that a reality.

This one didn't turn out too bad.

Panic, panic, deadline approaching.  Stock art assets to the rescue...  To be fair, I didn't really give my brother (who's done most of my other covers and helped out with this one) much time to pull this one out of the bag. 

Deadline panic again.  Less said the better.  As with the slime girls, I wanted to contrast these with the other silhouettes by making them flesh coloured.

At this point I'm looking for someone with decent art skills to redo the monster girl silhouettes/covers.  I'm looking for sexy stylised rather than anime for the monster girls.  Think old-fashioned chic.  Or something like Persona 5.  Stylish, basically.  I already have template files available and just need the monster girls positioned around them.

I'm willing to offer $40 per cover and there will likely be 12-13 pieces in total, meaning the overall commission will be worth around $500 if I like what I see.

Yes, I know this figure is more in the range of commissioning fan art than commercial artwork.  It's pretty much what I can afford and justify with current sales at this present point in time.  If I really like someone's work I might be pushed higher and of course, if sales increase I will have more money available for future projects.

There is a little bit of time pressure as I want to re-release Spiders around the 13th of January and would ideally need the artwork for that by the 10th.  Yup, it's short notice, but I'm hoping that as they're silhouettes, the pieces should be fairly quick and relatively easy to create.

If you're interested, please contact me at manyeyedhydraATgooglemail.com for more details.

Also, if anyone has suggestions for other places I can post this request without feeling like a human spambot (DeviantArt maybe?), please let me know.

Cheers.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 33: Orichalcum Mines

Beginning

<- Previous: Gold Port

It’s time for another gear upgrade.

Just west of Gold Port are the Orichalcum mines, where we can find the next upgrade material.

The cave entrance you're looking for

I might have got the name wrong, as the game calls these the Lava Cave Mines.  Hmm, I don’t see any lava around...

The 1st floor is mazy.  There are a few treasure chests dotted around, but it’s a bit of pain trying to map out the full extent of the floor.  I’d recommend putting Encounter Half on someone, or even wearing one of the no-encounter accessories while running through here.

Now about those encounters.

Snek! And [whatever the meme-y name for an octopus is]!

New girls.  New girls!

Fair play to Monster Girl Quest, the game has packed so many different types of monster girl into it, we’ve now gone beyond normal lamias and scyllas.  It has to be demon versions.

They’re not that demonic to be fair.  Lamias are vulnerable to cold and scyllas are vulnerable to lightning.  Both are also very blobbable if you want to use the instant KO tricks to cut combat down to one or two turns at most.

But priorities priorities.  What we all want to know is what filthy smexy stuff they like to get up to.

Don't try this at home with your pet snek!

Ow lamia.  You’re strangling my precious dangly bits.  Take it easy.  Don’t squeeze so hard.

Hey wait.  No.  Don’t put the tip of your tail in there.

Oooooh.

This is not how it works.  Luka is a freak.

Cue party leaving in disgust and inevitable Bad End.

You're getting so squeezed, boy

Squeeze.  Lots of squeeze.  I mean she is a lamia, despite those demon bat wings.  Coils around chest – squeeze.  Vagina around cock – squeeze!

She also shoves the tip of her tail in our mouth for... what... equality?  I dunno either.

Squeeze.

Pop.  Ahhhhh.

On the MGQ sliding scale of demons Lamia is at the nicer end.  After wringing Luka out, she announces she’s going to take him back to her nest and do the same thing to him every day.  At least she doesn’t eat him.

What about her octopus friend.  I’m not sure what that orifice is below her waist.  It looks a little too toothy.  I don’t think I want my dangly bits anywhere in its vicinity.

Knock scylla down to low enough health and you don’t get much choice.

Don't try this at home with your pet... eldritch abomination.  Fhtagn.  Fhtagn fhtagn!

That’s a lot of tentacles.  You might want to start struggling, Luka, before she inserts you in...

Goddamn it, Luka.

I don’t care if she has tentacles in there and it feels amazing and not toothy at all, we’re supposed to be saving the world(s).

Bad End time.  And it’s...

You're gonna get sucker welts...

...suckers for suckers?

It’s a tentacle job of sorts, with lots of little sucker kisses.  And thankfully enough lube.  Sucker welts on your dick hurt like a bitch the morning after.

As with lamia, scylla is a nice(ish) demon girl.  After milking Luka of his white stuff, she also decides to drag him off to a life of orgasmic bliss.

But we can’t let that happen.  Worlds (universes?) to save, and for that we need a chunk of whatever weird metal is at the bottom of these mines.

There is a rope leading down to the next level.  If you go left after entering the mines you should wander across it.

At least the rope is easy to spot this time...

And here’s the lava.  A lot of the floor is covered in it.  Given we’re in a fantasy universe with slightly loose physical laws, the lava doesn’t constitute a barrier.  Luka and party can walk across it, but it will cause damage in a similar way to purple poison marsh tiles.

Another monster type shows up here.

They just want to give you a nice relaxing warm bath

It’s the lava girl from Salamander’s Volcano in the original series.  She’s part of the slime girl family and will give you a nice relaxing lava bath if you let her (seriously, she can reduce the temperature to pleasant rather than having Luka burst into flames).  Like mud golem, if you’re running a hungry blob girl party, you’re not going to like lava girl.  She’s immune to the digestion status (as far as I can tell) and will need to be fought normally rather than having one of the slime girls gobble her up.

On this floor you can find a suspicious chest sticking out of the lava.  Unsurprisingly, it does turn out to be another mimic-like boxed girl.  Rather amusingly, she doesn’t realise she’s in lava, and once she does, begs the player to help her instead.  You can do this and she’ll reward you with 3 small medals and tell you about a mimic paradise island to the east of Happiness Village.  As far as I know, the only way to get to that sea is through the big stone gate next to the Naval HQ, and I don’t think that’s opening until part 3.  I’m guessing an island full of mimics is going to be a prime Job XP grinding location in a similar way to the bottom floor of the Administrator Tower in part 1.

When an ambush turns into a rescue plea

The orichalcum can be found down in the south-east corner of this floor.  As with most of the ore “quests”, it’s completely unguarded.  It’s a bit of a shame.  It would be nice to see these ore quests tied in with some kind of boss fight, similar to the dragon bandits in part 1.  There’s only so much content that can be packed in, I guess.

Even MGQ can run out of spare monsters to boss-guard the sparkly stuff

Once you have orichalcum, both the vampire blacksmith in Grangold and the dragon blacksmith in Gold Port can make orichalcum weapons.  The dragon blacksmith will also offer to teach Papi how to make orichalcum gear if you bring her the legendary Dragon Mallet of Blacksmithing that is rumoured to be lost within the North Ocean Floor Temple.

“What, this mallet,” Papi says, pulling out the random bit of treasure we looted from a chest a few blog posts back.

Um, yeah.  About doing things in their correct sequence...

Never mind.  Papi is now a fully-qualified orichalcum blacksmith.

The dragon blacksmith also drops hints of the next upgrade material – Rainbow(?) – which can be found on the elf isle.

As I have no idea where that is despite scouting out the next few locations, I suspect Papi won’t battering rainbows into swords for some time yet.  Maybe not until part 3?

In the meantime it’s time to go talk to a ghost perfectly-not-suspicious-in-the-slightest human about a haunted ship.

-> Next: Ghost Ship

Merry Xmas!

This is not, as you've already gathered, my usual part XXX of Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] walkthrough.  C'mon, it is Christmas Day.  Some of you have families and such.

Just like to wish you all a very merry Christmas.

May you all get a sexy l'il succubus to play with for Christmas.

Ideally, one that hasn't sucked your soul out by the new year.

(This is about the Christmassy picture I could find.  If I was more organised I'd have commissioned someone to do a nice succubus piece.  I'm not organised.  So imagine it's a sexy succubus wrapped up in pretty pink ribbons and bows instead.)

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 32: Gold Port

<- Previous: North Ocean Floor Temple

Last up it was tentacles, tentacles, tentacles...

Now I think we’re back to plot, plot, plot.

(That's a hint to say we're in walkthrough mode rather than snu-snu mode today.)

Amira.  Your snake tits are fired.  It’s time to head back to Grangold to work out what the fuck we’re supposed to be doing.

Castle Grangold is rubble.  Bobble-head king and Queen Ant have relocated to a warehouse below and to the right of the castle entrance.

The new palace HQ

Grangold's ruling pair

You can’t recruit Queen Ant yet.  I’m guessing you have to carry out King Grangold’s quests first.

The king has two requests.  The first is to investigate some shenanigans at the succubus village.  And not to worry, that’s just the village name.  The inhabitants aren’t really succubi.

(Alice: “Um, about that.”)

A demon has shown up and caused some kind of power struggle.  Hmm, interesting.  In the original series that was Eva, but it can’t be her this time as we’ve already run into and recruited her.  A new character?

The second problem concerns the village of ladies.  Their leader, Cassandra has locked herself away in her mansion and refuses to speak to anyone.  Alice, knowing who (or rather what) Cassandra is, is concerned about this and insists we check it out.

Veterans of the original Monster Girl Quest series will also know who (or most definitely what) Cassandra is.  My recommendation would be to lock all the exits and burn her mansion down, ideally with her still in it.

Other quest goals include finding Orichalcum for the next upgrade and contracting with the last remaining elemental spirit – Salamander.  So, off we toddle.

To get into West Grangold we need to pass through a gate to the south-west of the capital.

The gate blocking the way to succubus heav... ahem... the west of Grangold

If, like me, you like to explore a bit to see the... ahem... sights before going to where you need to go, this would have been the roadblock preventing you from getting to the west of the country (if for some reason you had a burning desire to visit the succubus village... for no particular reason). Talking to the restored (at least in mind) King Grangold is the key event to unlock this gate.

Out of the road.  A man has a succubus to see.

Once the soldier steps aside to let you through, the world opens up considerably.  The wandering monster girls are the same, but there are a lot of new locations to visit.

Salamander’s Volcano is the first place you’ll encounter, and is also one of the later places to visit.  At least according to Amira (hey, didn’t we fire your snaky ass).

Travelling north from there gets us to Gold Port.  Just west of Gold Port are the Orichalcum mines.  Travelling further we get back to green plains and forests and both the succubus and ladies’ village.  One of these is accurately named...

The game even allows us to continue west through another hill passage and to the desert region out to the west.  The tartarus region is here, but is blocked by a pillar of fire that presumably requires contracting with Salamander to get past.  There are also some suspicious ruins in the south-east of the desert.  Anon’s tour guide comment from the start of the week is indeed accurate.  Don’t go here unless you want Luka’s party to get curb-stomped by various powerful chimera.

For now I’ll stick to what I vaguely hope is the correct sequence and drop into Gold Port.

Not the succubus village, unfortunately

As soon as we enter Gold Port a mysterious woman comes up to us with stories about a ghost ship and treasures.

Alice's ghost detecting senses triggered.  Whoops, was that a spoiler?

Anyone familiar with the original series will know what this is about.  For now I’ll push this back a couple of posts as Amira recommends doing the Orichalcum upgrade first (which will be the next place we visit).

The battle fucker for Gold Port is Magda.

I would not recommend beating her up to get your money back.  Wrong game.  Definitely... ow... wrong game.

What the fuck are you doing with the gigantic axe, Magda?  Once again I wonder if some of the battle-fuck gals are really suited to this line of work.  One thing you can say for sure, no-one is going to go all Grand Theft Auto on the prostitutes of MGQ-world, not if they want to keep attached to their precious dangly bits.

The battle-fuck segments seem to have reverted back to static artwork and close-ups of static artwork.  Part 1 had this problem as well, although I think a later patch fixed some of this by adding more artwork later.

The NPC gossip hints at the presence of the top tier professions.  I think they might be a part 3 unlock, although some of the more powerful monster girl characters (such as Alma Elma) already have levels in the tier 3 jobs and races.

Background gossip mentions that the fish are coming out of the north sea with various unpleasant mutations.  Thar be Chaos oop North.

You can also find Lazarus and Merlin lurking in the pub and recruit them.

I have heard rumours that there are some bugs here, that recruiting Lazarus before carrying out a later monster queen’s quest ends up breaking something.  I don’t know if this is true or was true and has been patched.  If anyone can enlighten me in the comments (ideally without spoilers), I’d be appreciative.  For now I’ve left them in the pub.  Who wants more dudes getting in the way of the waifu harem anyway?

And that’s sort of it for Gold Port.  We’ve been a little light on the smexy stuff this post.  I’m sure the Succubus Village will correct that.  That’s still a little way off.  For now it’s time to head off to the Orichalcum mines and get our gear upgraded.

-> Next: Orichalcum Mines

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 31: North Ocean Floor Temple

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 30: Gold Coast Beach

<- Previous: Gold Coast Beach

Bear with me for this one, as I think we might have wandered off the correct “path”.  But hey, all the cool (not!) games are open-world nowadays, so we might as well play Monmusu Open-world Quest.

With the power behind the throne removed in Grangold, the country has returned to some semblance of normality.  This means we can go back to Goddard and grab more background info now that inhabitants are no longer drooling zombies.

Most of the background info here is about magical girls and some kind of ceremony in the great poison swamp.  The magical girl theme is continued by what I thought was the battle-fucker for the town.

Are you sure you're in the right game?

Magical Mari-Chan is the girl in the house that was locked up the last time we came through here.  Her sprite implies she’s a battle-fucker, but that option isn’t there.  Maybe there is some kind of quest to be carried out first.  She does ask us if we’d like to be magical girls.  A job unlock?  Whatever it is, is a mystery for now as selecting yes just has her tell us it’s not time for the ceremony just yet.

Hmm.  Either I’ve missed a trigger, or this is something to come back to later.  There’s nothing going on in the swamp, so I think this is something to put aside and revisit at a later date.

The other useful bit of info is talk of the North Ocean Floor Temple.  One of the patrons of the pub talks about this.

Talk to this guy to open up the way to the North Ocean Floor Temple

The location is here, at the northeast tip of the area Goddard is on, just beyond the Great Swamp:

Time for a beach trip

This is where things might be slightly buggy.  From the beach you can use the Ball of Guidance to enter the North Ocean Floor Temple, but only after you’ve spoken to the NPC in Goddard pub.  If you visit the beach before talking to him, it’s just a random location with a new monster girl and some treasure chests.  After talking to the NPC and entry point will appear just to the left and above where you enter the beach.

Entry point for North Ocean Floor Temple (you need to speak to Goddard NPC first to make this appear)

Where it’s weird, is that you can get the entrance point to appear by talking to the NPC while everyone is still under the influence of the magical lust field, before you even go through the Marching Hills.  Maybe this is some kind of anti-frustration feature in that it would be easy to miss.  Most JRPG players will endure talking to every NPC once, and might miss if they had to find the right NPC a second time once the lust field had gone.

All it means is that you can enter the temple a little earlier than expected (which I did, to see if there are any new monster girls, which there are, and they’ll get some love in the next post).

The beach itself has one new monster girl to fuck fight alongside the Medusa and Scylla that are found everywhere else in Grangold.  The new one is Fake Jelly Girl.

Jelly or Jellyfish?

I’m curious if there’s some translation weirdness going on.  Despite her appearance, Fake Jelly, is not a slime girl.  She’s in the sea-dweller group of races and doesn’t even dual-race.  This makes me think ‘fake jelly’ is a reference to Comb Jelly (a group of invertebrates that look a bit like jellyfish, but aren’t related) and that she is Comb Jelly Girl according to the monster girl convention of splicing a pretty face and tits onto random member of the animal (or plant) kingdom.

On the plus side it means she’s unlikely to absorb us like an amoeba.  On the bad side...

It's her mouth.  Still feels damn good.

Actually, there’s very little bad side.  She sits on our cock and lets her pussy do all the undulating and squeezing.

She’s very keen to let us know her vagina is actually her jellyfish mouth, but we won’t mind because it will make us feel amazing.  Cue more undulating and squeezing until we climax and fill her belly with torrents and torrents of cum.

Then, highly uncharacteristically for one of MGQ’s jellyfish girls, she lets Luka go after completely draining his testicles rather than eating him.  Bad Ends are Bad Ends though.  Luka is so broken by the experience his adventure ends here (and presumably lots of fake jelly girls end up being well-fed in the brief period before the world ends).

That’s that for our little beach excursion.  Next up it’s time to delve deep into squishy tentacles in the North Ocean Floor Temple.

(Yes, I know we shouldn’t be going here yet.  Stupid unhelpful Amira).

-> Next: North Ocean Floor Temple

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 29: Grangold Uncorrupted

<- Previous: Grangold Throne Room

After all the epic story shenanigans of our last outing, it’s time to shift pace down a little and catch our breath a little.  The game seems to think so as well as this section is a lot of story stuff

(Which I hope to get as much right as possible with my limited translation skills.  Thankfully, plenty of you have been chipping in on the comments with corrections and additional info I managed to miss.  Please keep doing this.  I’m sure other readers appreciate it as well.)

(Also, I really need to do an Ilias run at some point.)

Grangold Castle is rubble.  One of the possible big bads, an alternate reality Tamamo, has revealed herself as the power behind the shikibus sisters (who seem to quite like Luka and are probably going to utterly bang his brains out in part 3).  alt!Tamamo was driven off by this reality’s Tamamo and Nero and Neris (who seem pretty obviously Luka and Alice’s grown-up children from another reality).

The end result of all this is that thanks to Luka and his ever-expanding harem of monster girls, all the major human kingdoms now appear to free(ish) of monster girl influence and can return to some resemblance of normality.

Aside from the poor king of Grangold.  Whatever latent powers that were waken within him appear to have stuck him in his filigree egghead form.  He still seems a jolly nice chap despite this unfortunate transformation.

That appears to be it for the great human war.  Luka and friends are carted off to a swanky ballroom in Grand Noah for the big victory speech.  This is another one of those annoying little JRGP sequences where all you can do is run around and get little snippets of background info from all the various NPCs.

Fancy-shmancy functions are always a drag

The nobles seem very keen to marry Sara off to someone.  If this Sara is like the old Sara, they’re probably going to be disappointed as she doesn’t swing that way.  Unless she’s in succubus form, in which case good luck to the groom.  He’ll need it to survive the wedding night.

Lazarus and Merlin are griping about who was the most wounded.  The rest of Luka’s party are displaying their foibles in the usual manner.  (The imps mostly looking on in horror at Eva’s blatantly grasping nature.)

Both Tamamo and Alma Elma are present.  Can we recruit them…?

Nope.  Tamamo wants to chase down her alternate reality version.  She wants to find out how that version of herself ended up going so bad, so she can avoid travelling down the same path.  Alma Elma is eager to track down Lilith and sisters for a rematch.  (Can we dream of all four on us at the same time?  Even if that probably isn’t remotely survivable.)

Mephisto (cactus-spine vagina aside) interests me as a character.  She’s still following orders to help out Grand Noah, even if it’s clearly now in defiance of the monster queen that gave out those orders.  I still like to think she’s deliberately loopholing this to do what she wants/feels is right, as it makes for an interesting character interpretation.

And speaking of that queen.  At the end of the feast an illusion of Alice 15th appears and declares war on humanity.

Alice 15th declares war

Uh oh.

Interestingly, this is a flip from the original series in that it’s the monster girl side that appears to have gone genocidal rather than Ilias and the angels.

After that proverbial turd in the punch bowl it’s time to put the celebrations on hold and get back to war prep.  Queen Noah suggests going back to Grangold.  Oh yeah, now the magic lust field has gone everyone should be back to their senses, which means we can get back to that enjoyable JRPG pastime of talking to every single NPC in the hope that one of them advances the plot.

In Grangold there’s mostly a lot of clean-up stuff.

The giant golem girl you fought at the end of the Marching Hills can be recruited as a party member here.

Giant Golem Girls!  Get your very own Giant Golem Girl!

Talk to her handler and give her an Elixir, Magical Gear, Yamatai Sake and Chi Pa Pa and you’ll get a brand new golem girl of your own (you like being used as a living dildo, right…?).  You can also pick up an object that unlocks the golem race (an advanced form of Doll).

Alice suggests going back to Goddard now that everyone has returned to their senses.

This is where I managed to get things a bit scrobbled for reasons you’ll probably figure out when you see where I end up going next.  I’ll keep things as I played through them, but I think I went slightly off the “correct” walkthrough sequence for a bit.

(I blame Amira).

One thing I’ll juggle back to where it fits better (because we’re a bit light on the smexy-sexy this post) is the Grangold battle-fucker.  She’s open for business now that everyone is no longer a horny zombie.

I say smexy-sexy, but…

Are you sure you're dressed appropriately for this whole battle-fuck thing...?

Augusta appears to be teensy-weensy bit overdressed for the sexy-smexy stuff.  Her moves are to rub Luka’s dick against her armour.

Does this work?  Armour is cold and hard.  I don’t really visualise it, to be honest.  Then again, Luka also gets his jollies from having his dick splodged in digestive slime, so maybe he’s a cut above us mere mortals.

You can also upgrade Vanilla’s shop here.  Just talk to the merchant in the item shop.

And that’ll do it for today.  Apologies for it being a bit of lore-dump scrobble.  Next up we’re off to the beach.

-> Next: Gold Coast Beach (yes, I know we shouldn’t be going here yet)