#52Books - July

September seems to have a bookish theme on the blog.  Don't worry, I don't believe in boring books - I like mine filled with sex and violence... ;)

#17: William Hope Hodgson – The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’

This is a real oldie, being first published in 1907.  You can pick it up for free from the Gutenberg Project here.  Most people associate weird tentacle horror with HP Lovecraft, but Hodgson predates him.  This is a weird horror tale concerning the adventures of a group of seamen after their boat sinks and their lifeboats encounter strange islands and an eerie weed continent.  The book was written over a century ago and the prose features a lot of quirks.  For starters there are no dialogue tags.  The entire book is written as an account of the narrator’s adventures.  Despite this I didn’t have any problems with the pacing and found it an enjoyable, if old-fashioned, yarn.

If you’ve devoured all of Lovecraft’s works and fancy something in the same vein, The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’ might be worth a look.  Hodgson has a similar flair for weird horror.  The weakness he has compared to Lovecraft is there is no over-arching mythos underpinning the work and it lacks the cosmic bleakness of Lovecraft’s stories—it’s more of a romantic adventure in a very odd setting.  The story is effectively eerie and creepy in places and worth reading for fans of old weird horror.

#18: Wrath James White: To The Death

Zombies meet MMA cage fighting in a satisfyingly brutal book from Wrath James White.  The default setting for the ever-popular brain munchers is zombie apocalypse, so it’s refreshing to read a book where the apocalypse sort of fizzles out and never materialises (there’s a minor subplot where an African warlord uses them as an army and fails).  The real focus of White’s book is to put an MMA fighter in a cage with a zombie and describe the messy results in graphic detail.  Being a former fighter himself allows White to bring a degree of verisimilitude to the brutal and pulpy fights.

And it is a pulp story—there are evil mob bosses, cops and a hard-up fighter trying to win his last lucrative fight and get out with the money before the authorities shut everything down.  Tyler Pope is the fighter, and waiting for him in the cage is the monstrous Lester Broad (I’m guessing an expy of the real-life Brock Lesner), a recently-deceased former professional wrestler, former MMA champion, and now returned as a hulking, two-hundred-and-eighty-pound, ravenous-for-human-flesh zombie.

The editing is a little sloppy, but thankfully this doesn’t detract too much as White’s entertaining slice of gore-noir zips along at breakneck pace.  I thought White might have missed a trick with the ending though.  One of the characters would have made a good foil to his recurring main villain, Vlad, in future books, but alas, a round two is not to be.

#19: Cameron Pierce – Ass Goblins of Auschwitz

My experience of Bizarro fiction thus far appears to be this:

Books written by Carlton Mellick III == good.

Books not written by Carlton Mellick III == meh.

This book was not written by Carlton Mellick III.

Pierce’s sophomore effort is a tricky book to write about.  It’s set in a suitably bizarro universe where nazi-themed ass goblins (asses on legs with eye stalks emerging out of the butt cheeks) abduct kids from Kidland and take them to Auschwitz to make toys out of children’s body parts.  Pierce has a fantastically loopy imagination and a flair for describing the gross and perverse.

The book didn’t really hit the spot for me.  Pierce is going hell-for-leather for total offensiveness and gross-out description, which is great to see, but the characters were too detached from reality for me to really care about the varied and highly imaginative indignities Pierce heaps upon them.

#20: Shane McKenzie – Bleed On Me

Fasten the seatbelts, this one is high-octane gore fuel.  Deadbeat slacker, Chris Taylor, goes down to complain about the noise his gangbanger neighbours are making and finds himself in the middle of a massacre.  The new drug they stole and tried out has the unfortunate side effect of opening up the body to demon possession.  And by possession I mean rip the body apart and reshape it in new and imaginative forms of body horror.

The book is short, fast and completely drenched in gore.  There’s barely a chance to pause for breath as Chris is pursued by twisted demons.  It would make a great action-packed horror film.  There are some weaknesses—McKenzie could have filled in some more of the background, in particular why a character’s blood does what it does—but overall the book is fun, fast-paced and perfect for gore lovers.

Japanese Mushroom People and Ghost Ships: The story of how I rediscovered William Hope Hodgson

I was a voracious reader as a child.  My school had a small library and I devoured all the horror, fantasy and science fiction I could find.  I loved (and still love) scary short story collections.  There were two stories I remember as really scaring the bejeebers out of me.

The first featured a remote part of rural America being slowly corrupted by a blight that came from a meteorite.  This blight took the form of a strange colour and caused plants and animals to grow in bizarre and horrifying ways.  I remember the plight of the hapless farming family, unable to leave despite knowing the colour is slowly consuming them from the inside.  The ending is unsettling as well.  On one hand it seems like it’s over—having eaten its fill, the colour shoots back off into space—but on the other the narrator reports seeing a residue still present at the bottom of the well.  Worse, the whole area is going to be flooded and turned into a reservoir, potentially spreading the contamination further.  For a child used to ghost stories with nice neat endings, an ending that implies it might not be over, that it might, in fact, get much much worse, gave me shivers.

Most horror aficionados will immediately recognise that as HP Lovecraft’s classic: “The Colour out of Space.”  I didn’t know who Lovecraft was at the time, but when I bumped into his work—and the Cthulhu mythos—again later, it was no great surprise to learn he was the writer responsible for a story that had left a mark on me.

The second story was about a group of sailors that found a queer abandoned boat.  The boat is floating in a patch of scum and covered all over in strange fungal growth.  As the sailors climb aboard, the sense of something being wrong deepens.  Below the decks they think they hear what sounds like the pumping of a great heart.  Then the fungus starts to move.  One man is gruesomely consumed and the others barely escape with their lives.  Worse, this is not a story that ends with the monster meeting a final and fiery end.  The narrator ends his story and the reader is left with the knowledge that the fungal ship is still out there.

Trying to identify this story was more of a puzzle.  Sadly, back then I was too young and stupid to actually pay attention to the names of the writers who provided me with these wondrous stories.  Or in this case even the title.  I knew it was a story about a creepy boat covered in man-eating fungus, but as I couldn’t remember either the writer or title, and had not come across it since, I figured this was going to be one of those pieces of nostalgia forever lost to the mists of time.

And so time passed...

Recently I watched the cult Japanese film “Matango.”  Fans of Kenkou Cross’s Monster Girl Encyclopedia will recognise that name.  It’s used for this entry:

No, not that Matango...

I don’t know if KC took the name from the film or both have the same roots in Japanese mythology.  (On a tangential note, Alraune, another frequently appearing monster girl, comes from German myth, and the Hanns Heinz Ewers novel of the same name has also spawned a few films)

Matango is an odd 1963 Japanese film where a bunch of characters get ship-wrecked on an island.  The interior of the island contains lots of strange mushrooms and they find the wreck of a research boat covered in strange fungal growth.  They avoid eating the mushrooms at first, but then food supplies run low and the horror kicks in when they discover eating the mushrooms turns you into a mushroom person (with appropriately icky slow transformation)

So far so Japanese.

Except it isn’t.  The plot is based on the short story “The Voice in the Night”, written by the English writer William Hope Hodgson.

“...boat covered in strange fungal growth.”  Could this be the mystery author of the mystery story that scared the bejeebers out of me as a child?

And indeed it is.  After a little digging through Hodgson’s bibliography and the wonders of out-of-copyright work being made available on the internet, I was able to rediscover “The Derelict.”

You can read it here.

“All about him the mould was in active movement. His feet had sunk out of sight. The stuff appeared to be lapping at his legs and abruptly his bare flesh showed. The hideous stuff had rent his trouser-leg away as if it were paper. He gave out a simply sickening scream, and, with a vast effort, wrenched one leg free. It was partly destroyed. The next instant he pitched face downward, and the stuff heaped itself upon him, as if it were actually alive, with a dreadful, severe life. It was simply infernal. The man had gone from sight. Where he had fallen was now a writhing, elongated mound, in constant and horrible increase, as the mould appeared to move towards it in strange ripples from all sides.”

Brrr.  Yep, still as creepy as I remember.

Hodgson came before HP Lovecraft and while his work lacks the core cosmic bleakness saturating Lovecraft’s works, he’s worth checking out if you like old weird horror.  His books can be found for free at the Gutenberg project here.  He also created the supernatural detective Thomas Carnacki.

And that, through a rather convoluted path, is how I rediscovered the stories of William Hope Hodgson, a writer who scared the bejeebers out of me as a child.

A sort of entry for Literotica's Summer Lovin' Competition

Literotica have started their annual Summer Lovin' short story competition.  I wasn't going to enter, but then I remembered "Snared, Sucked and Slurped" had a summery setting and I'd been meaning to post it up on Literotica anyway.

It's not a serious entry.  I don't take the competitions that seriously.  Occasionally I enter a "nice" story to win like "A Summer Dance With A Succubus" or "Iron Girders and Steel Springs", but most of the time I have fun trying to see how many readers I can catch out with some weird and icky horror.  Regular readers here will remember "Snared, Sucked and Slurped", featuring vore and a Sea Anemone Monster Girl, is very much the latter type of story.

Feel free to put a vote in if you're swinging by.  I don't expect the story to place.  Bad End stories never do because of the bad ending (although "Halloween Nÿte" and "Don't Fuck The Flowers" came surprisingly close) and "Snared" is one of my more simplistic stories.  My objective is usually to see if I can pick up some extra readers from the increased exposure the contests have.

And to squick out unsuspecting Romance readers that didn't spot the category before they jumped in.  Hyuk, hyuk.

It's going to be a little quiet around here for the next month or so.  I'm deep into the last couple of stories for the next collection (more on that soon!).  You'll get a chance to see one of those new stories in the Halloween competition in a couple of months.  It features Nicole, which should please fans of my nicer stories, and yes, I will be trying to win with that one! :)

Succubus Summoning 207 and Plot vs Porn

It wasn't quite the first week of July as I was hoping, but I did finally manage to post Succubus Summoning 207 up on Literotica last week.  It was an awkward chapter to write as it features the reality-bending, fourth-wall-breaking Cέrμləa and her mind-melting description of how the universe of Succubus Summoning works (and also a few oblique hints to my other stories as well).

I was curious to see how this chapter would be received.

Anonymous - "this shit sucks!  THis is so fucking boring. Wheres all the fucking? I went fucking limp during this"

:(

Um, yeah...well...

To be fair, I'm highlighting one negative comment when most of them have been positive (thanks for those!).  Quite a few people were asking for more plot and background and I hope 207 delivered on that.

Plot versus porn is an interesting discussion.  I find a lot of modern porn a little dull and mechanical because it's completely stripped down to only the sucky-fucky.  On the other hand, in adding plot/characterization/background/etc it's easy to lose sight of what an erotica/porn story should do - arouse.  Water down the sexy bits too much and you end up with a tasteless gruel no one is going to find appetizing.  That's why I tend to stick to the classic erotica rule: Every Chapter Must Have A Sex Scene.

In this case Cέrμləa was going to provide the exposition and Ab'ĝalga the sex scene.  And then the sex scene came out...weird.  Don't get me wrong, I like how it turned out, but I'm fully aware it won't be everyone's cup of tea.  Then, given my other stories, this probably isn't much of a surprise.

The tl;dr version - this chapter was long and weird, normal succubus fucking will resume next month(ish).

And because this is probably the best place for it, here's some clarification for points raised in the Lit comments.

First off an important point on source reliability.  If you're a fan of Doctor Who you'll be aware of Moffat's "The Doctor lies" whenever a retcon is required.  Cέrμləa is a daemon.  Daemons lie.

On the inevitability of hell reabsorbing worlds - Cέrμləa perceives time very differently.  Many inevitable things take a very long time to occur.  (no one sweats that much about the sun going supernova and turning the Earth into a cinder even though this is part of the inevitable life cycle of a star)

Ab'ĝalga would have dissolved Phil if she'd decided he was too 'ordinary' (and Cέrμləa was aware of this).

Yes, there was a nod to the hell-space series of stories.

207 is at the upper range for chapter length.  It's easy for some fantasy series to get longer and longer as the writer gets more into it.  Personally I think this is a warning sign the writer is losing control of their story.  I'll be trying to get future chapters down to a more manageable 5,000 words or so (plus, I have to keep some stuff back for the inevitable ebook).

If you have any more questions/feedback feel free to put them in the comments below.

I'm aiming for first week of September for 208, although this will probably slip given my usual slowness.  It will feature Cέrμləa - or rather a facet of Cέrμləa we haven't seen before - and will see Phil visiting another dominion.

Oh, and if you ended up here because Google told you I like to blog about certain types of games and none of this post makes any sense.  Please feel free to start with this:

Available as an ebook from Amazon.  If you like games like Monster Girl Quest and Violated Hero, this book is perfect for you.

#52 Books - June

More from my doomed mission to read 52 books for the year.  Leaving aside the initial cost of the kindle, ebooks are ridiculous value for entertainment hours at the moment.  The Herbert I picked up for 20p as part of Sony's (or someone else's) plan to take on Amazon (not too bright: you want to sell it for 20p?  Sure, we'll sell it for 20p too).  I also picked up most of Sinister Grin's backlist for less than a quid each as Shane McKenzie put on a promotion the weekend he went to the World Horror Convention (A smart move - I'll be checking out more of their books based on what I've read so far.)

#13: China Miéville – Embassytown

Miéville is one of my favourite authors.  If I had to pick a favourite book of all time it would probably be Perdido Street Station, although The City & The City might technically be the better book.

Embassytown is... tough.

Embassytown is Miéville’s foray into the type of science fiction concerned with space and alien planets, although the book is primarily concerned with language.  The eponymous Embassytown is a human city on Arieka, a planet right at the edge of known space.  The planet’s inhabitants communicate through two voices and the only way humans can speak back is to raise twins to speak simultaneously.  Then the humans try something different with catastrophic results...

Miéville’s great strength is the ability to write about the alien as if he’d actually been there.  Embassytown is no exception.  Unfortunately the book is very arid and a little too academic in style.  It is very slow-paced at the beginning while he sets up the world and background.  Most of this detail becomes important later, but I suspect a lot of readers will find it a little too dull.  The book was left half-read on my kindle for a very long time before I forced myself to finish it.  When it comes together towards the end it is very good—there is a real sense that the planet and the previously almost ephemeral narrator have undergone epochal change—but it asks a lot of readers to get that far.

#14: Shane McKenzie – Muerte Con Carne

It’s a Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but with Mexican luchadors instead of chainsaws.  Or rather a huge, fuck off, pound-you-into-mince-and-serve-you-up-in-a-taco luchador.

McKenzie’s book is a solid slab of splattergore featuring a family of crazed cannibals picking off illegals crossing the Mexican border.  There’s nothing really new here, but it’s executed well.  Marta and Felix, the hapless bickering couple dragged into the carnage, are imperfect human beings trying to do the right thing.  There’s enough to provoke sympathy from the reader, but also enough flaws to make you fear they won’t get through this.

Of course the key part of this type of book is the Grand Guignol ending and McKenzie doesn’t disappoint with plenty of splattered organs and some gruesome imagery to test the stomach.  Recommended for gorehounds everywhere.

#15: James Herbert – Ash

The last novel from legendary Brit horror writer, James Herbert, who tragically died earlier this year, and it’s madder than a box of frogs.  This reads like his revenge fantasy on the establishment as he blends fact and fiction into imaginative conspiracy theory.  There are fictional explanations for Lord Lucan’s disappearance, Dr David Kelly’s suicide and a host of past scandals.

I’ll drop an important caveat that this is a very British novel.  I suspect the use of real-life political scandals and establishment figures might leave a lot of non-British readers completely nonplussed.

Paranormal investigator David Ash is sent to investigate a spooky Scottish castle by a secretive and powerful organisation.  Similar to the cult British TV series The Prisoner (remember that one), the castle is a dumping ground to allow wealthy, well-connected individuals whose lives have been blotted by one criminal scandal or another to escape jail and live out their lives in luxurious exile instead.  Until now, because dark supernatural forces are rising and James Herbert is here to dish out the justice their real-life counterparts never received.

Herbert’s style is never going to win awards, but he’s always had a flair for the set pieces and one, with Ash and his love interest being threatened by a pack of possessed wildcats, is effectively tense.  Unfortunately the book suffers from trying to do too much.  Herbert’s secretive Inner Court organisation comes across as too venal and incompetent to be truly terrifying adversaries.  Even the dark supernatural forces set against them seem reduced to little more than bit players in an explosive climax that doesn’t really ignite.  It’s a fun read, but ultimately gets a little too silly near the end.

#16: Nate Southard – Down

Cool, another monster book and one that zips along at a ferocious pace.  A rock band’s chartered plane goes down in deep forest and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, the survivors are menaced by a creature in the darkness.

I love monster books, so I was always going to like this.

The book is short, but gives the impression that’s because it’s been sent down to the gym and worked out until there’s not an ounce of fat left.  No flab to slow down the pace here at all.  I read it in two tasty gulps and enjoyed it thoroughly.

I was also pleasantly surprised when the explanation for the monsters turned out to be different, more supernatural, than I’d been expecting.  There is a Lovecraftian touch to what’s happening, but from first principles and without the usual how-many-Great-Old-Ones-can-I-reference baggage.

As an aside, I did chortle afterwards when I remembered the page at the start indicating the book’s events took place in 1993.  I wonder how tempted Southard was to write “i.e. before every fucker had their own fucking mobile phone to ruin good horror plots everywhere” underneath.

Hentai Game Roundup - Summer 2013

After the success of Monster Girl Quest monster girl eroges appear to be a thing now.  I haven’t covered any in a while because...well...Monster Girl Quest chapter 3 and its 80-odd separate scenarios.  The games are still coming out and here are a few worth checking out:

Violated Hero III

The Violated Hero series is onto the 3rd Installment.  This time it looks like you get to battle a nine-tailed fox spirit in a Medieval Japan-themed world.  The series has always had gorgeous artwork and fully-voiced H-scenes.  As with the last game there are fifteen new monster girls to ‘play’ with.  Be warned, they like to play rough.  The Violated Hero series doesn’t have the same enthusiasm for vore as MGQ, but they do like the classic S&M scenarios, so expect plenty of sadistic femdom taunting and a few ‘ouch, that looks painful’ (the plant girl has thorns there!?) moments.

Gamplay-wise they appear to have ditched the pseudo-3D dungeon crawling in favour of the branching event-chain maps similar to quest mini-games of Lvl1 Hero Breeding Plan.  A lot of the tutorial text is embedded in the artwork.  This would make working out which stat is which a problem, but thankfully Dargoth has already produced an English patch.  Get that from here before playing the game.

I’ll be playing the game over the weekend and will probably throw up a review next week.

Ever Dance With The Devil In The Pale Moonlight

Spillasoft’s follow-up/prequel to their Nymph Principal visual novel.  A succubus comes to a man with a challenge to see if he can resist her temptations over the next seven days.    The artwork looks like it’s been done by the same person (Nymph Principal was a little all over the place with the differing art styles).  The H-scenes seemed a little lacking in sound effects from what I saw.

House of Monster Girls

Hmm, wonder what body part fetish this is targeting.  I’ll freely admit to liking a big pair of boobs, but there are limits...

Okay, maybe there aren’t.  I still bought the game.

Another visual novel.  You find yourself in a spooky mansion inhabited by lusty monster girls.  There are five monster girl characters in total (slime girl, alraune, lamia, doll, succubus) each with two scenes.  Seems okay from my quick peek, although possibly a little too much text slowing things down.

ROBF

I think this one’s been out for a while.  I remember playing the demo a while back.  It’s another top-down RPG-maker-type clone.  The combat encounters are all sex battles—the only sword the hero gets to use is the one between his legs.  Sex combat seemed fairly well done from what I saw, with some animation to liven things up.  Unfortunately it doesn’t appear to have made it to the English dlsite, but I might track it down and give it a try at some point in the future.

Violated Fantasy

These dudes work fast.  It wasn’t so long ago they put out their first game—Violated Quest.  They don’t skimp on the monsterpedia either—the blurb promises 46 different monster girls.  The first wasn’t really a game so much as wandering around a top-down map while monster girls jumped out and molested you in largely hopeless fights.  The follow-up looks like it has more of a plot and possibly a bigger focus on the RPG elements.  I’ll give it a look when I get a chance.

Oh, and if anyone has been itching to play Monster Girl Quest, but can’t be assed to mess around with autotranslators and the like, RogueTranslator has completed the first partial patch.

And, as usual, I'll finish things off with the usual plug.  If you like the sound of these games I also have some reading material you might be interested in.

Snared, Sucked and Slurped - Pt3: Slurped

It's the final part of the little Sea Anemone girl tale.  And now we're onto the... er...  Well I guess this screen from Monster Girl Quest might be appropriate:

If you see this very bad things are happening to poor Luka

Yep, time for the Sea Anemone girl to get her delicious breakfast.  If vore ain't your thing you might want to look away now and imagine your own ending with Rob having plenty of naughty happy-happy joy-joy fun with his new gal on the sea bed.


Snared, Sucked and Slurped - Pt3: Slurped

Rob watched and felt it happen through a thick, comfortable fog.  Like it was nothing more than a weird erotic dream.

She gently kissed his nipple and tickled the nub with a moist tongue.  Her lips left behind a tingling warm ring of pleasure.  Lascivious tentacles turned inwards and rubbed against his body in lewd caresses.

“Time to gobble you up.”

The fleshy base of her body swayed and pulsed.  Rob slid around inside a moist elastic cavity as bands of muscle squeezed and manipulated him.  His erection pressed up against an indentation that gave and drew his entire length into a warm tunnel lined with a thick layer of flesh as soft as the most luxurious of cushions.  Muscles squeezed and he felt peristaltic suction ripple up his engulfed member.

His gasp of bliss was caught by her mouth as she wrapped her luscious lips around his in a kiss.  Again he felt that strange prickling pleasure, like microscopic needles were injecting an aphrodisiac drug into his lips, causing them to swell and magnify the pleasure he felt a hundredfold.  He felt the same sensation across his chest as she pressed her soft boobs against him.  His body went slack and she held him in her arms as the stub of her sea anemone body swelled and gulped more of him down into the fleshy sac within her.

She pulled back as the thick cushion of flesh lining the orifice at the center of her body stretched over his shoulders and then contracted to form a collar around his neck.  Rob felt strangely relaxed, as if he was wallowing in pleasure.  Her warmth and softness enveloped him completely.

“All caught now,” the girl said.  “Time to suck out your baby juice.”

Her lower body swelled and he felt a rippling pull on his cock that travelled down his shaft until he felt it in his balls.  His penis was buried in a fleshy cuff that squeezed and tugged and took him to peaks of pleasure he hadn’t known existed.  The sea anemone girl’s black eyes shone in triumph as she lay back on a round fleshy stump that resembled a bed.  She rocked and swayed with the pulsing motions as her inner walls massaged and caressed him.

He heard gurgling sounds as warm wet mucus was secreted from her inner walls and rubbed into his naked flesh.  More fluids trickled out of the moist lining, forming puddles around his feet.  It felt like a luxurious bath.  He was sitting in a luxurious hot bath and fucking a gorgeous girl with big round titties.

The girl moaned and her big breasts rocked and swayed with her body as she thrust against him.  The fleshy base of her sea anemone lower body swelled and throbbed with greater force and frequency.  Rob was rocked back and forth by its motions, but barely noticed as the sensation of his aroused cock plunging in and out of a deliciously juicy vagina overwhelmed everything.

The girl threw back her arms and head and released an unfettered cry of climax.  Rob’s cock sank all the way into the fleshy cuff and was held there as rippling undulations of soft pressure tugged at him...tugged and sucked until a dam broke and a wave of ecstatic pleasure flowed from his balls and he emptied their contents into her quivering flesh.

And that wasn’t the end of it.  The sea anemone girl sat up on her elbows and stared at him with eyes like black pebbles.  Her upper body rocked with the motions beneath her—slow steady throbs that enveloped Rob’s sex and pumped semen out of him with irresistible pulses.  His body convulsed with helpless ecstasy as each pulse triggered another orgasm.

* * * *

The sea anemone girl lay back and relaxed.  The human quivered helplessly within her as her venom seized control of his reproduction organs and stimulated them into overdrive.  Her body pulsed with slow, rhythmic throbs as she pumped the semen from his body.

Good seed.  It would give her many young.

His body empty now, she expanded and drew the rest of him down inside her.  Her tissues secreted other fluids and she throbbed and churned as she rubbed them into his flesh.

Seed wasn’t all she needed.  She needed meat, to give her children strong bodies.  The human would feel no pain.  His mind was already gone, burnt out by the pleasures she’d induced in him.

She curled up and folded inwards.  To the outside eye she looked no different to any other boulder lying on the sea bed.  Even the coastguard retrieving the wreck of Rob’s boat didn’t notice she was there.

After a month of lying dormant she opened out like a flower.  Her central cavity gaped and a jet of tiny wriggling motes was expelled up into the water column.  They formed a cloud spreading out across the bay, each looking for an inviting spot to settle and grow.

THE END

*burp*