Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 41: Nightmare Wilderness

Beginning

<- Gold Volcano

We’re done with the Grangold towns and villages for now, so it’s time to head out to the Tartarus pit located in the dangerous western desert.  It looks like a straight walk on the world map, but in actuality we’ll have to go through a dungeon-type location to enter the desert – the Nightmare Wilderness.

This is not a straight walk on the world map

Thankfully, it doesn’t live up to the name and is relatively short to traverse (unlike the many many screens of the Marching Hills).

We even get three brand new monster girls.

The welcoming party

These are Gelatinous Cube Girl, Tiger Girl and Youki.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing Gelatinous Cube Girl ever since she was spoiled on Toro Toro Resistance’s blog.  I was surprised she didn’t show up in Undine’s Fountain.  I must not have been the only one looking forward to her, because – if you’re running the (pre 2.20) Dargoth patch – her H-scenes have already been translated.  I’m guessing this was by one of the volunteers as the translation has a few little quirks (“little swimmers”).

Gelatinous Cube Girl has a temptation move where she drags Luka into her cube.  Her Bad End also involves pulling Luka into her jelly cube.

Could be worse...

Once she has Luka trapped, she forms a jelly cone around his dick and pulsates him to repeated orgasms.  Afterwards, she pulls him all the way in, but it’s fine as she’ll let him breathe, somehow.

Hmm, are we sure this translation is accurate?

Gelatinous Cube Girl is much less fearsome than her namesake.  From the spoiler screenshots I thought there might be some paralyzing electricity involved, or Luka getting diffused within her cube, but it’s mostly just pleasant stuff.

Her temptation scene can’t be requested in the castle, instead she has a new scene unlocked at 100 affection.  She pulls us on top of her bouncy cube and proceeds to bang the shit out of us.

Slime girls can be passionate lovers

Which also looks rather pleasant.

Gelatinous girl seems to fall on the Lime side of the slime family tree rather than the nastier Blob Girl or Slime Beth side.  Not a bad thing, unless you like your slime girls nasty and melty.  Don’t worry, I’m sure the upcoming Tartarus region will give us nasty a plenty.

Youki is big-sis Oni.  I’m guessing that should be pronounced “Yoki”, as those are the name of the big red ogre things currently kicking my ass in Nioh.

She’s certainly muscly.  If she does manage to knock Luka flat with her club, she’ll climb on top and use her muscular pussy to squeeze out all of Luka’s “seed juice”.

Muscles in places you wouldn't even believe

This is another Luka loses the will to carry on Bad Ends, as once she’s done she just buggers off and leaves Luka where he is.

If you recruit her, she has a muscular paizuri scene where she squeezes her big boobs around our cock.  It looks like a lot of force is involved given the geyser of semen she gets out of Luka.

Tiger Girl was another one spoiled before MQ:P [part 2] came out.  She’s got a bit of a samurai theme and some fairly vicious sword attacks.  I’m not really a big fan of the quadruped beast girls like centaurs and some of the kitsune, and Tiger Girl is no exception.  I like them conventionally succubus-like, or very weird.  So, I think we’ll pass on the tiger pussy.

There’s a little hut halfway through the nightmare wilderness that contains a friendly little oni and big oni.  It functions as an inn, but you shouldn’t really need it as this section is mercifully short.

On the other side is the western desert.  Gelatinous Cube Girl is taken out of random encounter rotation and replaced with the Vampire Girl from the original series.  She was one of the first encounters on Helgondo, if I remember right.  MQ:P appears to have moved her to an earlier slot.  She’s also the first vampire you can recruit outside of Vanilla of the loli bandits.  Vampires appear to be very high level monsters in this universe.

There are a couple of locations of interest in the desert.

To the north is the Bird God Shrine.

Be grateful it's a warp point

Ah, I remember this from the original series.  This was how Luka got to Helgondo, and what those mysterious orbs are for.  We need six of them to summon the bird god to carry us over the mountains ringing Helgondo.

The game doesn’t actually mention this.  For now it’s a suspicious location that will clearly do something later.

It does fulfil one important function – it’s the warp point for this region.  Which makes sense, as running through the nightmare wilderness from Lady Village every time you want to visit here would get very tedious.

There’s another location to the southeast.

Yeah, don't go here unless your party is max-levelled

Entering this location scares Alice.  For good reason.  The wandering monsters patrolling the grounds around the abandoned research facility are all chimeras and experimental organisms from chapter 3 of the original series.  They even have the one that was glimpsed in the original series, but never had a fight or scene.

You don’t want to be here right now.  Not unless you want to get slapped around a lot.  I thought my party was over-levelled and still got flattened.  There’s also nothing to do here as the door is locked by a card reader.  I’ll go over it in more detail when the plot calls us for us to actually be here.

What we’re really here for is the Tartarus pit, which can be reached by going south around the mountains and then back north.

And that seems an appropriate point to leave things.  Come back next week when we finally descend into the first Tartarus region of Monmusu Quest: Paradox.

-> Next: Tartarus IV

More Patreon Thoughts

Many thanks for the feedback and comments on my first post about this.  From them I gleaned a few things.

One, people are happy to ship a $1/month to support my writing.  That is reassuring.

The other is that this would be for my fiction writing.  The game reviews, walkthroughs, etc I post on the blog here are nice distractions, but not what people want to be funding via a Patreon.  This is also good to know.

If I hadn't checked first I suspect my Patreon page might have ended up an unholy kludge of talking about blogs, monster girl bestiaries, Japanese hentai games, half-baked game ideas, oh and did you know I sometimes write succubus porn.

Now I know it should be:

"Give me money to write erotic horror fiction featuring sexy succubi and monster girls.  I'm really good at it.  Here's my Literotica page so you can see."

The next point concerns when to go live.

I was originally planning to have the Patreon page up and running by now.  I had a rethink after seeing the excitement in some posts and also some justifiable concern in others (as I've not exactly been the most prolific on the new story front of late).  I don't want to hype things up, get people subbing, and then have that turn bad if the fifth or sixth story in a row I'm working on falls apart before I finish it and I have nothing to show for it by the middle of March.

I want to do this right.

So this is the plan.  I have two short stories on the go at the moment.  When I've finished both of them, I'll open up the Patreon.  I'm aiming to post one to Literotica's usual annual Valentine's Day contest.  The other will be a Patreon-exclusive.  This is so that when I launch, I will be launching with something.  It's also an incentive for me to stop dicking around and finish the stories I'm working on.

That's the plan for launch.  Next, for going forward.

I want to get back on Literotica (and similar sites) this year.  Last year I went for the big novel plans, failed and knocked my confidence a little, so I think a spot of rebuilding on Lit might do me some good.  And who knows, might even result in that long-awaited "Succubus Summoning 301" chapter finally getting posted.

This means taking a look at the other things I have running.

The H-space monster girl bestiary has drifted a little from its original purpose.  Initially it was supposed to be somewhere for me to park monster girl/sex scene ideas until I had a full story to put them in.  With the last few I found the opposite to be happening.  The idea started to expand into a full story in the process of writing it.  Rather than fighting this, as I was stupidly doing for most of last year, I'm going to write these out as full-length H-space stories like the ones I used to write in the past (like this, or this).

The playthrough series of Monmusu Quest: Paradox I'm currently in the middle of has proven to be more contentious than I realised.  I know some people like it from the comments, but I also know some people don't like it because they think it's taken over my fiction writing.  To be honest, me not posting any new stories for ages because there's seven or eight of them rotting half-finished in various notebooks has not helped dissuade this perception.  So my fault there.  I don't want to abandon the series halfway through because I don't think that's fair to the people currently enjoying it.  However, as part of these Patreon discussions, this would be a good point to consider what to move on to next.

One thing the series has been good for is getting me in the habit of keeping to a regular schedule.  (Yes, I broke it today for this, I know.  Writing this post was way more of an ass than I realised - I was supposed to post it yesterday for starters.)  The series even kept going unscathed during a 100-hour playthough of Persona 5, which is impressive considering my bad habit of occasionally going completely AWOL for a couple of weeks at a time on computer RPGs.  Now, if I can transfer this good habit of posting 750-1K words every Mon, Wed and Fri over to posting an original fiction series, we might be onto something.

Yes, I did try this last time with Okasare Kenny, and it didn't work out too well.  The difference there was I was trying to keep to a much more gruelling daily schedule with an idea I knew I should have kept to its original form of a series of novellas.

I think I should be able to keep to 1k word chunks every Mon, Wed and Fri without it swallowing up all my writing time and this would be something that would fit very well to the Patreon model.

So here's the feedback part.  I have a couple of ideas and - as part of a post where I'm looking to grab some Patreon bux - I thought it might be a good idea to toss them out there to see what people think.

1) Ongoing series - [4 (or more) Guys in MGQ-world]

Not MGQ world exactly (I don't write fan fiction), but a similar fantasy setting filled with sexy monster girls that are more interested in fucking the characters than fighting them.  The characters would likely be from our world (similar to the Jackson in HRPG-world stories I wrote a few years ago).  I imagine the mood will be pretty swingy on this one - goofy to start, but very dark in places, especially with the more vore-themed monster girls, but not as grimdark as say H-space.  I've been itching to go full horror-head on an MGQ-style setting for a while, and this might give me an excuse.

The advantages: I'm following on from the game playthrough series with an original fiction series in a similar setting (likely written in a similar style to what I use in the playthrough).  This should hopefully appeal to both the people that like the MGQ playthrough and people wanting original fiction with graphic sex scenes.  I also won't give a shit about quality.  This shouldn't sound like an advantage, but with me - who is way too nitpicky with his own writing - it might free me up to splurge thousands of words of fun adventure and sex on the page without obsessing over how "good" it is and locking up in the process.  Also, gamers in a fantasy world requires zilch in the way of research, removing another barrier to just having fun writing.

This is my preferred option, mainly because while thinking it up I came up with a few "meta" ideas for audience participation that would work very well with Patreon.

On the other hand, it is more MGQ-type stuff, which people might be sick of at this point.

2) Succubus Summoning

This is the option I think most people would want - me continuing Phil's adventures in bite-size chunks here on the blog.

The advantage here is obvious.  Those bite-sized chunks quickly become full chapters and then, before you know it, a full novel.  Plus, people have really really been wanting me to write this for a long time.

I think it also has the biggest danger of failing or falling behind schedule, because I do give a damn about this story and want it to be the best it can.

That said, one of my biggest problems is being nitpicky and obsessing over making a story the best it can.  Trying to hit 3 1K-word deadlines a week, every week might bust me out of that, or wreck me.  Not sure.  The thought of trying to make the series work under those conditions does scare the hell out of me, but maybe that's what I need right now.

High risk, but potentially very high reward.

3) Barry Lyle Goes Out In Fucking Style

You probably don't have a clue what this is.  It's the book I was trying to write in the first half of 2017.  An overwhelming army of succubi invade a city on earth.  Barry Lyle is a student at university when the sky turns black with demons.  After hiding for a while, he realises he has no chance of surviving and throws himself at a group of seven succubi in the knowledge that at least he'll die having his brains fucked out.  The problem: all 7 succubi saw him at the same time and succubi don't fight over food.  Barry is going to have to make a choice and the 7 succubi couldn't possibly let him make that choice without letting Barry have a taste of what they have to offer first...

This is an easy option for me.  The first quarter is mostly written, so I probably have about 3 or 4 weeks worth of updates without even having to do anything.

I don't know how strong the overall idea is.  The mood is all over the place on this one.  The setup is clearly comical, but in order to make Barry's decision to take the suicide-by-succubus option plausible, I had to show him what the other non-succubus demons were doing to the students they caught.  Those scenes... are not comical.

4) Various Mini-Series

Another easy option.  No big series, just various little ones.  I've done this before with the Jackson stories.  The reason you haven't seen the bee girl H-space story was because as I was writing it I thought this might make an interesting little mini-series about a team of soldiers trying to burn down a bee girl hive and eventually being overwhelmed sexily by various bee girl types.

This would make a decent filler option for those times when I need to take a breather on a longer ongoing series.

Those are some thoughts.  I estimate I'm about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through the MQ:P series (which will return Friday as normal).  I think it will be another month or so before that winds up.  This gives me some time to get a follow-up series prepped and ready.  (If I decide to go with Succubus Summoning, having the whole first chapter done would be a must before I'd even consider running it.)

Whew, this post was a real ass to write.  Let me know what you think in the comments.

Now, time to get back to that succubus Valentine's Day story.  (You are not fucking stalling out on me this time!)

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 40: Gold Volcano

Beginning

<- Previous: Magical Girl Ceremony

We’re almost done with Grangold.  One of the tasks we do have to do before proceeding (the tartarus region to the west is blocked off until we do) is contract with the last remaining Elemental spirit – Salamander.  She can be found in the volcano back by the gate we passed through to get into west Grangold.

This section is going to be short, because there isn’t much to it.

It's here, in case you haven't already guessed

Like the bottom floor of the Orichalcum mines, most of the volcano floor is covered in lava.  As we’re in a fantasy world, walking on it is not immediately lethal.  It hurts, but won’t burn us to a crisp.  It’s still irritating, but thankfully the map is pretty small and easy to explore.

Also irritating are the wandering monsters.  The demon lamia, demon scylla and lava girl from the Orichalcum mines can also be found here.  They are joined by basilisk girl and dragon girl, who both appeared in the same location in the original series.

I have no H-scenes

You don't want to see my H-scene

A hungry blob party is not so useful here as lava girl is immune to digestion.  You’ll also want to bring a lot of gold needles as the basilisks will be turning a lot of your party members to stone during your trip through the volcano.

The dragon girl design is very odd as the girl part is the dragon’s tongue.  She’s a vore monster, so her Bad End scene is her tongue body fucking Luka’s brains out until he’s docile enough to be swallowed.  As a biological strategy it... sort of makes sense.

Dragon girl likes giving lots of tongue

It’s not a long run to Salamander.  By this point, with the world and multiple universes in the balance, you’d think we could skip the whole “prove to me your power” nonsense.

Unfortunately, Salamander and Undine don’t like each other.  And I mean, they really don’t like each other.  Their animosity is beyond the playful dunking on Slyph the other spirits used to engage in with the original series.  It triggers a fight where it didn’t look like there was going to be one.

Goddammit Undine, can't you take your grudges elsewhere

Thankfully, Salamander is nowhere near as hard as Undine.  I’d switched to the imp party to get around lava girl’s resistances and Salamander, as part dragonkin, is vulnerable to pleasure attacks.  A lucky hit early on had her horny and in a trance, and the imps pretty much obliterated her with various pleasure attacks before she recovered.

I suspect that “fight” would not have looked like a fight to outsiders.

Uh oh.  We’ve barely cleaned up Salamander when Granberia puts in an appearance.  A double-header boss fight, again?

Thankfully not.

Granberia seems really conflicted.  Alice points out that the other knights have already deserted.  Even Granberia knows Alice’s mother is not acting like Alice’s mother.  She’s not going to join us just yet, but it looks like she’s hanging up her sword for now.

This scene is a little weird coming after the events of the magical girl ceremony.  Enough that I wonder if I might have done things out of sequence again.  Salamander’s position in the monster library with respect to Cassandra and the Succubus Witch also makes me think recruiting Salamander, then going to the great poison swamp for the magical girl ceremony is the “correct” order.

Granberia popping up and then effectively doing nothing also makes me wonder if this encounter plays out differently on the Ilias route.  I’ve heard people say the two paths start to diverge a lot more at this point and I wouldn't be surprised if the angel-lovers get an additional fight here. 

And that’s that for the Gold Volcano.  I did warn you it was going to be short.  I guess that’s the danger of repeating content from the original series – some segments are going to seem underwhelming.

There is one more thing that can be done here (and at Undine’s Fountain).  The catfish mermaid Gigi has a quest line where she visits various sites of great elemental power.  Take her to the spots where both Undine and Salamander were standing and she’ll learn some new skills.

Here...

...and here.  Does anyone even use the old catfish?

We’re now pretty much done with Grangold.  It’s time to head out west to that Tartarus location.

-> Next: Nightmare Wilderness

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 39: Magical Girl Ceremony

Beginning

<- Previous: Scenic Mountain

Magical Mari-chan has been quite the quest tease.  Back when Goddard was suffering under the effects of the magical lust cloud, she locked herself in her house.  When that was lifted, she made us think she was the town battlefucker and then randomly started twittering on about magical girls instead.

“Do you want to be a Magical Girl?”

“Um…”

“Well, fuck you.  The stars aren’t right.”

At least they weren’t.  Carrying out Cassandra’s quest in Lady Village makes the stars right… for reasons.

After Cassandra and Emily’s powers are (partially) restored they talk about going to the Great Poison Swamp for a magical girl ceremony.  Magical Mari-chan is the expert on all things magical girl, so it’s time to go to Goddard to find out what’s happening.

 Talking to her, she reveals the ceremony is about to start.  From her description it sounds like the “ceremony” is really just a big battle royale, with the last girl standing bestowed the powers of a magical girl.

So let me get this straight.  Young impressionable girls are encouraged to go to a great poison swamp filled with man-eating ghouls and toxic blob girls, and battle each other in brutal hand-to-hand combat until only one is left standing.

Oh, and the powers come with some kind of curse or grudge, according to Alice.

*squints at Magical Mari-chan*

Is that you in there, Kyubey?

My machine translation didn’t do such a good job with Alice’s comments.  She mentions curse and grudge.  I wonder if this is a nod to the Madoka Magica anime series.  If you haven’t already seen it, I’d recommend checking it out.  The story-telling is some of the best I’ve seen in, well, anything.

So it’s back to the Great Poison Swamp (it’s the great big purple lake just north of Goddard, in case you’ve forgotten).  I’ve already recruited and picked up everything I need from the denizens of the poison swamp, so this trip is about the story and boss fights.

Ilias’s crew can be found here.  They’ve already been knocked out.  Normally, I’d taunt Ilias for being pathetic, but I have a nasty hunch she’s going to show up with a squad of leet angel minions at some point and kick my mockery down my throat and out through my ass.

For now, the boss fight in this area is Cassandra and Emily.

I did tell you we shouldn't have helped them out

They want to be the first magical girl mother and daughter team or something.  Emily is a repeat from the original series, so her H-scenes are the same – you’ll get squeezed a lot in bright yellow tentacles.  Emily might also be one of the “oldest” MGQ monster girls in that I think her character design and artwork were one of the first to be teased after the original demos featuring Slime Girl and Alice.

Cassandra has new scenes as befits her partially sealed status.  They’re not the most dignified.

Femdom humiliation: Blob girl style

She plonks Luka headfirst in her pudding body and wanks him off with her sticky, amorphous flesh.  Mud Golem memes ver 2.0?

Surprisingly - for her anyway - she doesn’t dissolve us to mush afterwards.

Beating them here finally allows you to recruit them, should you wish to.

So, is that it – a little on tacked side quest to enable us to recruit Cassandra and Emily?

Hmm, wait.  Wasn’t there one character from the original series that was conspicuously absent in the Succubus Village.  She’s here:

I knew we'd forgotten something from the succubus village

This is the succubus witch from the original series.  She’s seeking to be a magical girl as well.  Alice tells her she’s too old.  The witch counters by saying she’s only as old as her heart.  Catfight!  Catfight!

Once the fight is over we can finally proclaim ourselves king of the hill (or swamp).  So what do we get?  Magical Mari-chan shows up to bestow the powers of a magical girl.

Luka is the one pushed forward, and is none too enthusiastic about it.

But wait…

Okay, so I’m reluctant to spoil this one, as it’s rather unexpected and did have me laughing at the screen.  I’ll post it at the bottom.  If you’re playing through the game yourself and want to experience it blind, stop reading after the “-> Next: Gold Volcano” link below.

Suffice to say, Luka does not become a magical girl.  Sorry tumblr, you’ll have to use your imagination for this one.

It does, however, unlock the Magical Girl job, which I haven’t really figured out.  I think it’s some sort of hybrid between Black Mage and Hero of Justice.

Once it’s all over, everyone heads back to Magical Mari-chan’s house in Goddard.  This is where you can recruit the succubus witch.  In the original series she had a lot of creative and varied Bad End scenes.  Just how many, well take a look at her request menu in the pocket castle:

Succubus witch knows a lot of techniques...

Some of these are very weird, such as shrinking Luka with magic and using him as a human dildo.

It doesn't stop here...

Or even getting us off with her hat.

It's the new fetish - hatjobs

Completing the quest also unlocks Mari-chan as a battlefucker.  She likes shrinking Luka with magic and bouncing him around in her cleavage.

Brings a whole new meaning to booby fuck

That’s it for the magical girl ceremony.  Is there anything else we need to do in Grangold.  Oh wait, I forgot about Salamander.  It’s time to recruit the 4th and last of the elemental spirits.

-> Next: Gold Volcano

And now, the spoilery stuff.  Stop reading now if you don’t want to see it.

..

..

..

..

Just before Luka is about to be bestowed the powers of a magical girl, the ceremony is crashed by none other than Granberia.  She states that she cannot allow this to happen and barges Luka out of the way just as Mari-chan is about to zap him with her heart wand.

The results are… interesting:

I don't think I could possibly leave a comment that would do this pic justice

Magical x Granberia.

I did let out a chortle.  Unsurprisingly, our tough dragon is a bit put out by this.  She leaves in embarrassment.

Spoilers over.  See you next week when we take a trip to Salamander’s Volcano.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 38: Scenic Mountain

Beginning

<- Previous: Lady Village

We’re off to the Scenic Mountain on a quest to restore the magical power to a monster that is quite happy dissolving Luka – and even her own daughter! – to mush.

No, I don’t understand why we’re doing it either.

The Scenic Mountain is right next to Lady Village.  This is where we get to fight the “lady” encounters from the original series.  That would be Madame Insect and Madame Umbrella.

Not quite so lady-like...

There is also a brand new monster girl, Aradia.  She was teased on Toro Toro Resistance’s blog before part 2 came out.  If you like big beautiful tits, well:

The Ur Titty Monster

Is that too much?  Can you have too much boob?

Best I can work out, she’s an ambulatory pile of giant boobs.  I’m not sure how it all works either.  Further research must be done in the name of science.

Her temptation move is to bury Luka in tits.

I think Luka is under there somewhere...

Hmm, I can see the appeal.

Lose and she draws us into a world of tits.  Nestled between her giant boobies, she sucks us off with a mouth nipple.

Can boob heaven really be considered a Bad End?

It’s one of UN_DO’s monster girls, so there is more Aradia waiting for us back at the pocket castle after we recruit her.  She has 3 request scenes, but technically it’s 4 as her 100-Affection scene gives us a choice to fight the boobies or drown in their softness.  “Fighting” plays out like an extended version of her temptation scene (spoiler: we don’t resist for very long).  Drowning has us suckling on her giant teat and getting a milk bath.  The other scenes are variations on her nipple-fuck Bad End.

So, a little… milkier… than we started, we arrive at the top of the mountain.  This is where we will confront the nefarious… Candy?

I'm starting to think this mountain is really just a bad acid trip

Ambulatory pile of boobs.  Now what looks like a giant ambulatory blancmange.

Whatever.  It’s Japan.  Just roll with it.

No Candy.  We’re not a roll.

You can’t eat us…

Someone forgot to screenshot her boss fight Bad End.

FML.

Like Poseidoness, Candy is also a bit of a dim bulb.  Filling her belly appears to be her prime motivation.

Either my notes went missing on this section, I bungled a translation, or the game straight-up doesn’t cover it, but I never really worked out how Candy fitted into the plot.  When I first saw her artwork, I assumed Black Alice was behind her somehow.  That would make sense, except the defining feature of Alice’s gals so far is that they aren’t recruitable, even after you beat them.  And this isn’t true for Candy.  You can recruit her afterwards.  She needs a number of specific food items.  I think they are all item drops from other monster girls.  The two-mouth girl that can be found outside Yamatai Village drops one of them.  I think one of the harem succubi in Succubus Village drops another.  I’ve been doing a “collect-em-all” on the monsterpedia throughout the game, so I already had all the food items Candy wanted.

Her request H-scenes are vore-related and fatal if you select the low-affection one.  In one she slathers Luka in strawberries and cream and then licks it off with first her hair tongues, and then the big tongue from her lower mouth.

Candy likes to cover you in strawberries and cream and lick it all off

The other has her feeding us sweet cake while jerking us off with her big tongue.  She shoves a breast in our face, wanks us off into a teacup and then drinks it.

You drink my milk, I'll drink your milk.

If you selected the 10-affection option… well, see above.  Candy swallows more than cum.  Say Hi to Death in Hades for me…

Defeating her will get back the cake that holds all of Cassandra and Emily’s power.

So we give it to Alice to eat and then walk off into the sunset laughing our asses off.

No…?

Sigh.

It’s not like Cassandra and Emily join the party after you give them their cake back.  They’re still mean girl jerks.  In Cassandra’s case, literally.  Candy had already scarfed down a fair bit of the cake.  There’s enough left to fully restore Emily, but it only partially restores Cassandra.  She now looks the same age as Emily and isn’t too bothered about it as it means they can both be snarky teen girls (of a legal age) together.

Cassandra, MQ:P version

But not as recruits in Luka’s harem army.  This surprised me, but then made sense with the text that followed.

Returning (some of) Cassandra’s power completes King Grangold’s quest (assuming you’ve already resolved the Succubus Village conflict).  He’ll give you a reward next time you see him and you can also recruit Queen Ant providing you’ve completed the Yamatai Village side quest and have the fairy nectar.

Returning Cassandra’s powers also opens up another side quest.  Remember Magical Mari-chan and her mysterious magical girl ceremony?  Cassandra and Emily talk about that as they leave the mansion.

I think it might be worth going back to Goddard and having a little chat with Magical Mari-chan…

-> Next: Magical Girl Ceremony

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 37: Lady Village

Beginning

<- Previous: Succubus Village 2

Time to go to the Lady Village, which is full of ladies of refined breeding and elegance.  They absolutely don’t eat any men unfortunate enough to be drawn to their pretty little village...

It’s a lovely place.

I'll give you a hug, she said...

Nothing bad happens here at all.

.....

The Lady Village is north of Succubus Village and has a mountain location to the east of it where I imagine we’ll be doing some quest-type stuff later.

Lady Village, should you be foolish enough to want to go here...

Sonya: “Hey, this village looks nice.”

Alice: “It’s where posh women live.  They are also demons and bad guys that eat any men passing through.”

Asking around reveals there have been some changes.  There’s been some fallout between the “ladies” and the more aggressive ones have buggered off to the nearby mountain.  The rest are still quite happy to suck men, but not to death.  The first house I saw I took to be the battlefucker’s residence given all the collapsed dudes outside it.  Turns out it’s the home of an insect madam and umbrella madam.  They suck men right to the brink and then toss them outside after feeding.

It’s... better... I suppose.

Can we go back to the inn in Succubus Village?

The battlefucker can be found in a house at the top and on the right.  She seems normal.

You seem... normal... for these parts

I wonder what her special technique is...

Geddit off me!  Geddit off!

!!!!!

She uses some kind of... squirmy thing... as a fleshlight.

WTF!  Get that thing away from me, Ophylia.

I told you about this place.  I.  Told.  You.

Next to her house is a fun bit of chaos.  Every village/town has their own priest (you talk to them to set the point you return to should you... ahem... “fall” to a monster girl’s temptations).  This one is currently running around and being chased by two “ladies”.  Kamuro is here, but rather than her usual partner, Kitsu, we have Promestein trying to give her a lesson on the physics of flying.  Kamuro is very unnerved by the whole thing.

The reason we’re here is to find out why the village head, Cassandra, has locked herself away and refuses to accept visitors.

(Yes, that is the same Cassandra we can see melting Luka to mush in the pictures above.  King Grangold, you really should be more aware of who’s running your provincial towns and villages.)

From asking around it sounds like Cassandra got her ass kicked by Neris and has hid herself away in her mansion out of shame.

(We can burn it down.  We’d be doing the world a favour.)

The front door to the mansion is guarded by her maid.

Don't ask to look under her dress...

And that isn’t a joke.  Her maid is a fairly intimidating scylla.

Maid + Bouncer

She likes stuffing Luka in her pussy, if I remember her right from the original series.  And by “Luka”, I mean all of him, not just his penis.  We’re using man-eater in the literal sense here.

So let’s not lose.  Which we don’t.

After overpowering her maid, Cassandra will let you into her mansion.

So where is she...

Cassandra is slightly less intimidating in this universe

Ah.  That would be why they’re reluctant to show their face in public.  (snort)

Neris (Alice 17) did beat them up, but it was another demon, Candy, that stole their powers.  Candy stole their magical power, transmuted it into cakes and sweets, and is busily scoffing them over on the nearby mountain.  Cassandra asks us to go and get them back so her and Emily can be restored to their original forms.

And we’re going to do this, because... why?

At least we get the scylla maid, Ran, as part of the bargain.  I suppose you can’t have too many maids.

Right, so it’s time to head off to the Scenic Mountain to...

Remind me why we’re doing this again?

We’re talking about the woman who did this in the original series:

Are you sure you want her to restore her to this?

She even ate her own child.  Ate.  Her.  Own.  Child!

Sigh.  Shakes head.  Off we go then.

-> Next: Scenic Mountain.

Patreon Thoughts

Last year wasn't the best for me writing-wise, so I've been looking and thinking of ways to change things up this year.

Starting up a Patreon is something I've ummed and ahhed over for some time.

On the one hand, it's been around for a couple of years now and is pretty much proven as a good funding tool for creators.

On the other hand there's always that faint whiff of e-begging to it, of people seeking handouts rather than trying to produce work people want to buy.

I think the latter probably says more about my own stupid pride and upbringing, rather than being an accurate reflection on reality.  A lot of authors (and other creator-types) use Patreon nowadays and there isn't anything wrong with that.

(Although I do get a spot of the side-eye when I see an award-winning author announce their work is being made into a TV series one minute, while begging for rent money on Patreon the next.  But, to be fair, I don't know other people's circumstances, and if their fans are happy to hand over money, maximum power to all concerned.)

Anyway, this is what would I'd be looking to use Patreon funding for.

1) Smooth out my income.

I'm fortunate in that I made some good decisions in the past and got into the habit of living very frugally.  I don't make a lot of money from royalties, but between that, the occasional bit of supplementary income, and living damn frugally, I'm just about able to cover most of my living expenses.  That said, the income is not exactly consistent and varies from month to month (well, quarter to quarter).  Having an alternate revenue stream to fill in the gaps for those months when sales are low wouldn't be a bad thing.

2) Get payment for things that are otherwise difficult to monetize.

I'm talking about stories/series posted to Literotica* and other places, the H-space monster girl bestiary shorts, and - to a lesser extent - the humorous walkthroughs of monster girl hentai games** like I'm doing at the moment with Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2].  Having a Patreon for this type of stuff frees me from fretting over whether I should be doing work that pays bills/puts food on the table instead.

I notice a few regular writers on Literotica have their own Patreon accounts.  It doesn't seem a bad idea to be honest.  If I'd started up writing later, I probably would have had less reticence and got on Patreon earlier.

*As some have noticed, I haven't been as active on Literotica recently.  I'd like to fix that this year.

**This is more a sort of hobby, but I'm not going to turn it down if people enjoy the series enough to throw a couple of dollars my way.

3) A psychological trick to make me think I have a boss(es) and get that writing productivity back up again.

Because I know I'm my own boss, I have a bad habit of being a little too flexible on the hours I work.  It happens.  I'm writing.  The current section I'm on is proving tricky, so I think I'll take a breather, go play Playstation or something for an hour, then come back to it afterwards (SPOILER: Did not come back to it after an hour).

It's a little thing, but knowing people are giving me money every month to create new sexy succubus smut might trick my lazy ass into thinking I should stay at my desk and treat this as a proper job rather than a glorified hobby.  A more productive me means more hot succubus smut for people to enjoy.

4) A fund for commissioning art and other things.

Now this is where I'm most likely to use any Patreon money.  I've enjoyed seeing my characters brought to life by VezoniaArtz, RaidouZERO and others, and it's given me ideas to take projects further.  I'd like to push my succubi/monster girls and worlds to get the same kind of attention as KC's Monster Girl Encyclopedia, Okayado's Monster Musume or Toro Toro Resistance's Monster Girl Quest.  The thing is, the internet is primarily a visual medium.  Pictures get far more attention than plain text.

I'd like to commission artwork of the various succubi/monster girls in the H-space bestiary (and my other stories).  The internet always needs more sexy succubus/monster girl artwork as far as I'm concerned.

I'd like to reorganise my website so the H-space stories, H-game walkthroughs, etc are easily navigable rather than being buried in my blog post history.

These things require money (artists are creators and like to be paid too).  A Patreon fund might help out a lot here.  Also, it would make me feel like I was using the money to create something people would want rather than "Can uze pay my rent, plz".

* * *

That's what I'd get out of it, the more important question is what you people out there think about it.  Which is why I'm putting this out here first.

Do you think the stories I write and this blog are entertaining enough that you'd be willing to chuck a spare quid/buck my way every month, so I'd have the financial security to continue doing it?  (Or in this case fund a war chest I can use to flood the internet with more perverted monster girl artwork, hyuk hyuk.)

This would likely be the baseline Patreon reward band - $1/month for me to keep the blog running and post regular stories/chapters to the internet (here, Literotica, etc).

I did think of using the other Patreon option of $1/story or chapter, but it doesn't really fit with one of the central aims of keeping this blog going.  Also, it would require some thought on what constitutes a proper story/chapter, whereas I'd rather have them be the length that feels right for the respective story/chapter.

1$ a month (or more, if you're feeling generous.  I'm not about to say no!) should make it a more predictable outgoing.  It should also keep me honest.  If you feel I'm slacking off, just withdraw your funding.  I'll figure out quick enough. :D

Looking at other Patreons, I notice they also offer other bands/tiers of rewards.  This is where I'd welcome some input from you all out there.  What can I offer that would be of interest?

Some thoughts:

1) Exclusivity.

I don't want to lock any of my work off behind paywalls so only a very narrow audience can access it.  That will impose restrictions on where I can use the stories in the future and will probably end up biting me in the ass.  What I can do, is timed exclusives - maybe make the new stories/chapters available to Patreons a few days before they're due to go live on the rest of the internet.

Also, I usually hold back some stories as exclusives for my ebook collections.  In future I can make some of those available to Patreons.

2) Behind the scenes stuff.

Thoughts on how a story came together.  Ideas in the pipeline.  Early versions.  I'm not sure what might be of interest here, so let me know in the comments.

3) Polls.

I'm normally so scattershot this might help me.  These would be of the type - "Here are three ideas, what should I write this week?"

(That would certainly be one way to force me to get back to Phil's adventures... :) )

As I'm also planning to use a lot of the cash to fund art commissions, this is certainly poll-able.  Which H-space monster girl would we like drawn next and by who?  That might be fun.

4) Tuckerizations.

Get yourself inserted into one of my stories so you too can be killed off in a horribly gruesome sexy manner by your favourite succubus/monster girl.

This seems a decent possibility for a high-tier reward.

There will be some caveats for my own sanity.  I won't be inserting people into the story.  It'll likely just be names and descriptions hung over another character.  This gives me some flexibility if the story calls for the character to be an asshole or die in a particularly unpleasant fashion.

Those are some ideas anyway.

If you have any other suggestions for things you'd be interested in as Patreon rewards, please let me know below.

This also includes if you think this is a terrible idea and I'm being greedy arse.  That's probably worth finding out now rather than being traumatized six months later when my Patreon is only bringing in $6 a month! :D

At the moment I'm throwing it out there to test the waters.  If people are fine with it and would like to fund my various perverted endeavors, I'll see if I can get an account set up next week.

Let me know what you think.