Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 4

Unlocking the Soldier Job and finding the Imps

This is part 4 of my playthrough of monster girl hentai game Monmusu Quest: Paradox.  The first part can be read back here.

So far we haven’t made that much progress.  Mainly because it looks like Toro Toro Resistance has stuffed this game full of game mechanics.  It took nearly 2,000 words and two blog posts to describe the tutorial stuff.

But now we’re free.  We’re out in the open countryside, baby.  Let’s see what debauchery awaits us.

I let the freedom go a little to my head and wander a little too far.  In the west there’s a big forest.  The notice at the entrance warns novice adventurers not to enter.  Now where’s the fun in that.

I deliberately wander into the forest and a pair of fairies obliterate me so savagely it’s comical.  After a bit of naughty flower suction applied to Luka’s member I decide I’m probably not supposed to go in there just yet.

Or too far north apparently either.

We run into an earthworm girl.  She coils around the party one-by-one and reduces each to quivering orgasm (yes, the monster girls can do the sexy stuff to each other) and then applies the suction tail to Luka’s cock and slurps him up until he’s empty.

Hmm.  I suspect this is following the Dark Souls school of player guiding.  The correct path to follow is the one where the monsters don’t obliterate you in two combat rounds.

That would appear to be the small cave in the south.  Along the way I bump into more pink bunny slimes and one of them joins the party.

The other monster girls are the slug girls that were encountered just after Alice in the original MGQ series.  While the artwork and Bad End is the same, they do have some additional art linked to their temptation attack.  In this case the Slug Girl offers to wind her long, slimy tongue around Luka’s cock and give him a very satisfying blowjob.

If you accept a temptation attack and let the monster girl carry on doing the nice stuff until your HP runs out, the rest of the party expresses their disgust and leaves Luka to his Bad End.

I suspect this will be a very common fate for Luka…

I was a little disappointed when I played the demo and saw most of the encounters were monster girls that had already appeared in the previous MGQ series.  Normally that would look a little lazy, but I think what Paradox has done in giving the old monster girls new art and moves (slime girl’s slime heaven scene in the Pocket Castle, slug girl's temptation blowjob) keeps them from coming across as too stale.

The Cave of Trials that contains the item needed to unlock the soldier job is a little way to the south of Iliasville.

Down in the cave a new monster girl shows up – the stupendously busty imp.  In the original series she was a joke encounter that appeared later on (twice).  Luka only lost to her if he chose to and there was even a special achievement if you unloaded Luka’s max-powered sword skill on her.  Here she appears at a time more in line with her power level and can fight.

The imp also has some fairly aggressive sex attacks.  A few times Luka was thrown on the floor and found his dick wedged up in tight imp pussy.  This is another change from the original series.  In those games if Luka’s manhood ever entered monster girl pussy that was usually the end of the fight.  It might take a while for the sexy monster girl to suck out all his HP, but the moment Luka entered her he was helpless to do anything as she slowly slurped up his HP.  In Paradox he has a party backing him up.  If they beat the imp before she makes him come it’s all good.  In fact it doesn’t even matter if the imp rides him all the way to lusty cumplosions.  Luka is just a member of the party.  As long as the whole party isn’t wiped it doesn’t matter how badly he’s despoiled in the process.

Conceptually this is a pretty big change.  The sexy stuff being done to Luka has less impact when it’s just part of a general party melee.  The game can’t really use the different art showing bound status either (not just Luka can be bound).  Personally I think there’s a trade-off here in that the fights and party management have grown in complexity at the expense of the eroticism of the original player-on-their-own fights of the original series.  To be fair the developers have tried to compensate for this with the new temptation attacks as well as the higher-happiness-unlocking-new-sex-acts mechanic in the pocket castle.

Like all the other monster girls so far, the imp is also recruitable.  I didn’t think it was possible to convey the imp’s ridiculous bustiness in the topdown dungeon-wandering sprites, but the artist in this case made a damn good fist of it.

DoA breast physics – JRPG-style.

The Proof of Courage is in a chest at the bottom of the dungeon.  After picking that up we head back to Iliasville.

With Rami the imp in the party it’s now possible to recruit her two friends.  Both can be found in Iliasville.

Remi, who appears to be very timid, is hiding in the village stores (they can be reached down some stairs not far from the poison marsh).

The other one, Rumi, is sitting on a strawberry patch.

Remi is a useful backup priest.  Rumi starts out as a Martial Artist, but I changed her job to make her a backup Thief.  I’ve found it’s always good to have a backup Priest and Thief in case the other ones get knocked out.  The game gives you a lot of flexibility in swapping between main and backup parties even in the middle of combat.

Rami herself is a Magician and quite adept at setting things on fire.  What I did find useful about the imps was their Sexcraft attacks.  Melty Kiss has a chance of making the target horny, which (I think) increases the amount of damage future pleasure attacks do.  Melty Kiss followed by a pleasure attack like Lime’s Slime Draw often does a lot of damage.

Combos, combos…

Anyway, I’ll leave it there.  Next time I think we’ll leave Iliasville behind and head off to Iliasburg.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 3

Alice’s Portable Pocket Castle

This is part 3 of the likely epic playthrough of Monmusu Quest: Paradox.  Last time I hung out at the main temple in the starting village and attempted to absorb the vast chunks of RPG gameplay Toro Toro has crammed into Paradox.

We’re not done there either.  On stepping out of the village Alice introduces us to a new mechanic – the portable Pocket Castle.

Before then there’s another bit of plot.

As with the first series, Alice notices Luka is holding back out of fear of killing the monster girls and is about to give Luka the Angel Halo sword when—

“Time stop.”

—Nero shows up and half inches it as being “too powerful” for now.

Thieving bastard!

Although it does make sense.  The usual RPG mechanics of seeking out more powerful weapons would be rendered completely irrelevant if Luka was given an infinity+ sword made out of 666 melted angels right at the start.

Alice is a bit confused by not being able to find the sword, but it doesn’t matter.  As she puts it, monster girls are both tough and not fanatics.  They’ll give in before they get beaten up too badly so Luka doesn’t need to hold back.

She has another prezzie anyway – the Pocket Castle.  This is the headquarters Luka can enter at any time.  I imagine this is where his enormous (assuming he can recruit all the monster girls) harem is going to end up.  The castle is freaking enormous.  Thankfully there’s a maid who can teleport you from room to room.

This introduces another mechanic.  Luka can ask his monster girls for various sexy stuff providing their happiness is high enough.  Ostensibly this is a way for Luka (and the player) to safely (sort of) experience the various sexy Bad Ends.  For some monster girls it also unlocks additional scenes such as this delightful Slime Heaven sex scene with the blue slime girl.

This counts as one I made later.  To unlock it you need to raise her happiness to 100.  Raising happiness is done through giving them gifts they like (fish in the case of Lime) or having them fight alongside you in the party.  For fighting I think they have to be in the active party rather than the backup party.

Oh yeah, that’s something I probably missed.  The max party size is eight.  This is four active members and four backup members.  You don’t have to worry about leaving spaces for new recruits.  If you have the full complement of party members and recruit a new monster girl you’re given the option of sending her or one of the other party back to the Pocket Castle.  (Again, this is something that comes up later, but makes sense to talk about now).

From what I’ve see the backup members pick up XP and Job XP, but not happiness.  Getting Lime up to hundred took a lot of fights and fish, but the reward is a nice gloopy slime girl scene without worrying about the slime girl trying to digest you at the end (you didn’t know MGQ was that type of series?  Oh boy are you in for some fun in these coming weeks. :) )

Also in the castle is a small noticeboard right after the entrance.  I think that’s where various monster girls will leave details of possible side quests to benefit them.

Right, that’s the Pocket Castle out of the way.

Let’s get out there to the fields of hungry wet vaginas.

But first, Lime (the blue slime girl) mentions she’d like to see how the soldier who tried to help her earlier is getting on.  This is a subtle pointer in the direction of the first quest.

The soldier has also managed to get himself trapped in the poison marsh.  We carry him out and he explains how to unlock the Soldier Job.  There’s a Proof of Bravery item hidden in a chest at the bottom of some caves to the south of the village.  It used to be easy to get (as witnessed by how staggeringly incompetent the soldiers of Iliasville are), but now monster girls have taken the caves over.

Seems like we have a first location to check out… tomorrow.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 2

Ilias Temple (Tutorial Location)

This is part two of the Monmusu Quest: Paradox playthrough I started yesterday.

Last up we went through the introductory quest and rescued Hans from the bouncing bunny slime.  Back at the village and the game is following the same timeline as MGQ as it’s time for Luka’s baptism.

Before then we’re introduced to the character hinted at in Luka’s diary – Sonya.

She’s his childhood friend and now a priest at the temple.

The gameplay function of the temple appears to be changing jobs.  I don’t know how that’s going to work yet.  Currently we’ve been receiving both normal XP and something called Job XP.

This time Luka gets to his baptism in time, but everything is twisted in comparison to MGQ.  In MGQ Luka was late, Ilias was supposed to show and didn’t.  In Paradox Ilias has been missing for three decades and the ceremony is largely ceremonial…

…until this time when Ilias comes down in person to tell Luka he’s the one chosen by destiny to save the world from an encroaching darkness.

That causes a little bit of a stir.

There’s even more to come as Luka returns to his inn to find Alice and Ilias fighting in his front room.  Both have been lolified and depowered, and they think the other is responsible.  With their powers sealed they want someone powerful, like Luka (not sure how they arrive at this conclusion), to accompany them.  The problem is they can’t stand each other so it’s an either-or case.

I guess this is where we make the big choice of which one to go with.

If I’d thought about it a bit more, or this was truly live, I’d have thrown the choice open to the comments.  That would have been nice.  But it would have required waiting, and I’ve already waited long enough for this game. :)

Angel God or Monster Lord.  I like bad succubi, so Alice would normally be a snap choice.  Ilias had some very funny lines in the demo, though.  A completely impotent, angry pint-sized genocidal god does have a lot of comedic potential.  I think we’ll still go with Alice and hope they get her out of that loli form at some point.

Alice gives her back story.  A rabbit depowered her and her castle is currently in chaos.  So more of this paradox stuff then.  That means we’re probably going to get a thorough working over by a super-level sexy bunny girl at some point then.

Luka fills in more of his history, and this highlights more differences between this universe and the MGQ-verse.  His dad was a great warrior who went missing.  Lazarus, a crazy terrorist in the last series, was a former member of Luka’s father’s adventuring group.  His sword arm broke down and now he’s a drunken bum hiding out in the village.  Sonya is also the daughter of the priestess from that original party.

Luka mentions Ilias’s appearance at his baptism, which is of course a bit screwy considering Alice was fighting Ilias cat’n’dog in Luka’s inn at the same time.  Shenanigans menanigans.

The next location is the house of the village chief.  He fills in more of the alternate history.  This universe suffered a great cataclysm that sundered the continents, shoved up a mysterious snow-covered continent and opened up tunnels to Tartarus.  Tunnels that are guarded by strange technology.  Ilias vanished back then and since then there’s more magic and more cooperation with the monster girls.

That might explain why no-one thinks it’s odd Luka’s running around with a girl with the lower half of a snake.  Alice is annoyed by the lack of respect as well.

After leaving the chief’s house (after first emptying the chests on the roof) we bump into Sonya, who forces herself into the party.

And another stranger shows up.

This one calls themselves Nero and describes themselves as “No-one special.”

Yeah right, pull the other one.

Both Alice and Luka call him out on it as well.

Nero doesn’t understand magic.  He also doesn’t know who Sonya is.

“I’m his childhood friend,” Sonya says, describing her relationship with Luka.

“Huh, he doesn’t have a childhood friend,” Nero responds.

And various plot point alarms go off.  Has Toro Toro been watching the last few seasons of Doctor Who.  Is Sonya the Impossible Girl?  (and can we pretend she’s Clara Oswald and throw her into the jaws of the toothiest horror we find)

So interesting plot twists ahead with Sonya I suspect.

It also made me wonder whether I should wait for the full English translation.  Machine translation can give you the gist of what’s going on, providing you have a rough idea of what you were expecting them to say anyway.  I doubt I would have spotted this had this section not already been translated into English.

Nah, there’s no fun in that.  Let’s blunder wildly about and throw Luka into as many hungry vaginas as we can find.

In the village is where you can recruit a slime girl for the party.  She’s trapped in the poison marsh accessible to the east.  Heroically wade over to carry her out and she’ll join the party.

Then it’s off to the temple.  This serves a number of purposes.  First off this is where you respawn after Luka has had all the white stuff drained out of him.  It’s also where you go to change jobs, which I guess will become clearer.  It’s also that location every RPG seems to have that’s stuffed full of tutorial NPCs that explain all the various mechanics.

And boy are there a lot of mechanics.  I think Toro Toro might have thrown in every mechanic from every JRPG of the past three decades.  It's going to take a long time to learn all this.

First off there are all the jobs.  There’s a big mess hall full of characters that explain what they all are.  There are the usual types such as Warrior, Priest (healer), Thief, Mage.  Master combinations of those and you unlock more advanced jobs like MagiKnight (magic plus melee, the munchkin power-gamer’s favourite).  There are also weirder jobs like Maid that use plates as a weapon.  Be interesting to see how that works.  Some jobs are available right away.  Others need to be unlocked by mastering other jobs first.  And others are only unlocked by carrying out specific quests.

Upstairs and there are characters explaining differences between SP and MP (SP regenerates after every combat and with each normal attack, MP only regenerates at inns, etc.  Basically spam SP skills all you like in combat, but be careful MP doesn’t run out on a dungeon run).

There’s also someone that takes special glee in describing all the status abnormalities.  There are the usual ones like Poison, Blindness, etc., but MGQ universe being what it is there are also ones like Digestion (yes, there will be vore at some point), that make a character more prone to being gulped down.  As it’s a hentai game there are an additional set of sexual related abnormal statuses which include obvious fetishistic states like Incontinence (I think I might avoid enemies with those attacks).

A bunch of monster girls are hiding out in the temple basement.  (This is where those of you that picked Ilias over Alice get one of the funnier moments of the game).

This section of the tutorial temple is to explain the strengths and weaknesses of all the monster girl races that can be recruited.  So it seems that alongside normal XP progression we have both Job and Race progression.  I’m curious to see how Race changing works.  I think it’s probably some kind of tree system.  Lime, the blue slime girl recruited in the poison marsh, explains she might be weak now, but if we level her up she can change (evolve I guess) into a choice of three different advanced slime races.  Maybe that’s how the progression works – Imps into Succubi, etc.

Right that’s a lot to absorb.  It’s also another mammoth post.  I think I’ll break things off there and tomorrow we’ll investigate the wild and raunchy lands around Iliasville (where there might be some actual smutty stuff).

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 1

It’s out.

I said I was going to do a Let’s Play series of blog posts on the whole damn thing, Ilias help me, and here is the start of what will probably keep the blog busy for next few months.

First, a little background for any newcomers.  Toro Toro Resistance’s Monster Girl Quest is pretty much the gold standard for monster girl hentai games.  Other games might have better artwork, or more depth in gameplay, but Monster Girl Quest does the whole package better than anyone else.  After three instalments the series had clocked up over 150 sexy Bad End encounters covering nearly every fetish imaginable.

Now it’s time to see what imaginative craziness is in store for us in the sequel, Monmusu Quest: Paradox.  I say sequel, but this doesn’t follow on from the events of the original MGQ.  Neither is it a remake either.  From what I can gather it’s the same characters but there’s some alternate universe timey-wimey weirdness going on.

Paradox is a more complex game than its predecessor.  The original was more of a visual novel with some RPG elements.  Paradox is a full RPG created with one of the RPG makers (whichever one has a dragon’s head for an icon).

You’ll notice from the screenshots that some of the text is in English.  I downloaded and applied the patch Dargoth’n’team provided to add English translations.  I strongly recommend picking this up.  Currently it’s only a partial patch covering what they were able to translate from the demo, but crucially it has translations for most of the common menu options and that makes playing the game a good deal easier (Don’t be a Jackson).  They are planning to translate the whole game, which will likely be a mammoth undertaking.  If you wish to check their progress or lend some support, go here.

The first option on starting a new game is selecting a difficulty level.  Normally I’d go for Easy, not because I’m shit (unless it’s a platformer, where my gaming abilities have the pungent tang of week-old manure), but because I want to get to the next H-scene with the minimum of hassle and frustration.  Then I remembered one of the hot things about the original game was when the monster girl surprised me with a new attack and legitimately beat me.  Let’s go for Normal.  No, let’s have some fun.  This is a typical JRPG rather than the linear series of puzzle battles from the original MGQ.  Let’s go straight to Hard.

(I might regret this)

I’m one of those players that tries to grab everything while playing an RPG, which usually ends up in me grinding to the point where most encounters become very easy.  That doesn’t work so well with the femdom feel of the series.  At hard it shouldn’t feel like we’re always topping from the bottom to get the lewd content.

(I’ll change this if I find the game is getting too grindy in order to get anywhere)

As with the original MGQ, Paradox starts with a dream of Ilias.  In keeping with the alternate reality theme of Paradox, something is clearly wrong with this universe’s Ilias.

A diary in Luka’s room fills us in with the background on this world.  Thankfully this is one of the bits that has already been translated.  The big difference in this universe is that there was a catastrophe 30 years ago and Ilias hasn’t been seen since.  As before Luka is sort of an orphan in that his mother died while he was a child and his dad went off to save the world and never came back.  Luka was running the family inn on his own, but now he’s come of age he’s eager to go off adventuring and find his father.

Then we have the same commotion in the village that kicked off MGQ.  In an interesting twist, it’s a friendly slime girl that announces one of the villagers has been kidnapped.  And it’s not a single slime girl lurking on the edges of the village but a whole village of them in the hills to the north.  Most of them seem friendly.  And obsessed with boomerangs for some reason.

Not all.  There are a few bad girl slimes.  The first encounter is with a familiar face.

Fights are slightly different this time.  The largely linear sequence of single encounters from MGQ has been replaced with the many random encounters typical to most JRPGs.

There are some new mechanics.  There’s a new Friendship mechanic.  One of Luka’s combat actions is to talk to his opponent.  This raises Friendship.  At lower levels it requires Luka to give them money and other gifts.  At higher levels they start to give gifts back.  Also, a high friendship level will be needed later on to recruit new monster girls to the party.  Thankfully the friendship values carry over for all monster girls of the same type.  This is a nice touch as it means you can let it build while travelling through an area rather than having to focus on a single fight.

The other new thing is a Temptation attack.  Knock the monster girl’s HP down low enough and sometimes she’ll ask if she can do some nice things to you.  From what I saw in the demo this sometimes involves seeing new H-scenes.  Too much niceness and it’s game over, but getting these sexy Bad Ends is pretty much the whole point of the MGQ games anyway.

Later slime girls start using binding attacks.  These aren’t as strong as in MGQ.  Luka can still attack, but for reduced damage.  But until he struggles out he can’t use items or special attacks and the enemy’s attacks do more damage (and lewdness).  Slime Heaven isn’t the auto-win here it was in the original, but it does do a hefty amount of damage.  Give in to enough temptation attacks and you get the same thing anyway.

Which Luka… uh… ‘accidentally’ did here.

The Bad End is the same as before I think.  Much penis glooping until the blue slime girl turns white and then off we ooze to a life of slimy slavery.

As with the first series, Ilias (or some fragment of) gives us post-loss recap/scorn/advice.  Then there’s a new bit as Luka shows up in a cave with a grim reaper girl.  Stepping on the magical symbol returns us to the bottom of the hill.

There’s a wider range of items and weapons in Paradox.  And also some crafting.  I run into a slime shopkeeper (blacksmith?) who tells me to bring her a fish and boomerang.  I’m glad for the English translation on this as I probably would have missed this aspect of the game from dodgy machine translation.  I don’t have a fish, but I know where to buy one.  Unfortunately it’s back at the bottom of the hill.  Predictably the first encounter I run into after buying a fish and the slime girl drops a fish anyway.  Oh well, it’s levelling Luka up.

Back at the blacksmith (slimesmith?) and fish + boomerang = the slightly better fish boomerang.  Nope, I don’t understand it either.

After travelling over a bridge there’s an almighty thump that shakes the screen about.

Ah this must be the bit where Alice crashes to earth.

Oh wait, that’s not Alice.

Okay, so what’s going on here?  This is a lolified Ilias, the goddess and central antagonist of the previous series.  She’s still the same genocidal monster as before, but someone has stolen her powers so her attempts to carbonize Luka fizzle rather embarrassingly.  She runs off in a huff.

At the top of the hill we run into one of the new monster girls – a bouncing (extremely bouncy) pink bunny slime.  Normally I’d throw the fight in case she was a boss, but I remember from the demo she returns as a normal wandering mook fairly shortly afterwards.  I save beforehand anyway.  I’m not walking up this sodding hill again!

She nearly gloops me with a Slime Heaven type of attack, but I manage to chomp through a bunch of healing herbs to eventually win the fight.  And that’s the first boss fight won.

I feel it would be rather remiss of me if I didn’t see what her Bad End looked like to satisfy… um… scientific curiosity.  I pull the same saved game tricks I used in Violated Hero to throw alt!Luka into her slimy embrace.  Actually I wanted to see what her temptation attacks did, but other than the first fight where I resisted, she seemed unwilling to get in the mood.

The Bad End is a bit of slimy paizuri that sees Luka’s cock absorbed completely by her rather substantial boobs and stimulated until he’s nearly dyed them white.  Hop and hop and much slop indeed.

After the fight a lolified Alice shows up.  She’s hopping mad and after the white bunny that lolified her.  She beats up the bunny slime for a bit before realising she isn’t the rabbit she’s looking for and then storms off.

Nothing weird about this start at all.  Uh oh.

And I’ll break here as it’s already three times the number of words I wanted to make each Let’s Play piece.  This is going to be the start of a regular series.  I’m not sure how to tackle this, given that the game is likely to be enormous, intricate and feature a ridiculous number of monster girl types and scenes.  Most likely I’ll put in a couple of hours each night and post the progress the next morning.  Part two should go up tomorrow morning.

I'm back online and another snippet from A Succubus for Saint Patrick's Day

And finally I have regular internet again.  The phoneline was connected to my new house today.  Obviously the first thing I did was download Monmusu Quest! Paradox. :)  I'll be starting with the Let's Plays as soon as I get everything setup on this new laptop.

Before then, Saint Patrick's Day might have gone by but I still have a brand new collection of delicious and evil short stories to promote.

Here's an excerpt from "Rogue vs. Succubus Lamia" (the strikethrough is deliberate, for reasons that will make sense once you've read the story).  This one is supposed to have a more traditional fantasy feel.

* * *

“I want you to steal the Heart of Aphrossi,” the elegant veiled figure lounging on a luxurious divan asked Nai.

Her name was Madam Esqetti and she was rumoured to be the most powerful individual in Bollinbrocco’s infamous pleasure district.  So powerful that even the notoriously corrupt ruler of Bollinbrocco, Lord Vingsloteni, reputedly stayed out of her affairs.  This was the first time Nai had met her.  Her face was obscured by a black veil and she wore an elaborate—and expensive—gown of overlapping velvets.  Nai could ascertain nothing about her age or beauty.  His first impression yielded no impressions.  That meant he’d assume the rumours were true and treat her as someone not to be trifled with.

Two bare-breasted beauties had greeted him at the entrance to Madam Esqetti’s legendary bordello and led him up to this opulent room on the top floor.  Curtains of exotic fabrics, held in place with chains of precious metal, decorated the walls.  Rare furs and plush cushions were positioned around the room.  The bare-breasted beauties had left him alone with the infamous Madam, at which point she’d made her request.

“Okay,” he answered.

Madam Esqetti laughed.  “Most thieves would baulk at such a task.”

Nai gave her a rakish smile.

“I’m not most thieves.  I’m the best thief.”

“They said you weren’t short of confidence,” Madam Esqetti said.  “I hope your abilities match your bravado.  Weakling failures are of no use to me.”

She produced a roll of parchment and unfurled it on top of a small table.  Nai guessed it was plans to the Temple of Aphrossi.  He listened as she gave him information on guard numbers, patrols and other defensive measures he’d need to overcome.  Nai was impressed with her thoroughness.  He listened to her proposed plans, stopping her occasionally to interject his own suggestions.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why I want the Heart of Aphrossi and what I intend to do with it?” Madam Esqetti asked him once they’d gone through the plan.

“No.  I’m interested in only the gold you’ll give me for bringing you the Heart of Aphrossi.”

“You’re not curious at all?”

“Not at all.”

“How very professional.”

“There is one additional thing I require for this task...” Nai said.

Update and another snippet from A Succubus for Saint Patrick's Day

Some updates.

First off, thanks to everyone who bought my new collection.  I hope you all enjoyed reading it.

Currently I'm still in the middle of the moving house.  I don't have regular internet access at the moment, which means I'm not able to keep as up-to-date with replying to emails/comments and the like.  This should be fixed when I get a phone connected on Thursday.  Not having internet while my first book in around 18 months is out and I need to promote it is not the best timing, but there you go.  (I suspect there will be something else I'll be doing as soon as I get online as well).

On some of the questions I've received about A Succubus for Saint Patrick's Day:

I don't know why it hasn't gone up on Smashwords.  I'm checking with my publisher at the moment.  (UPDATE: it's now live on Smashwords)

Also, there will be a print version at some point.  That's another thing I'm checking with my publisher. (It's my fault more than their's.  Once again the deadline snuck on me far faster than I anticipated.)

Mon-Musu Quest: Paradox is out.

Yep, I will own up to cursing a little that they picked this weekend to put it out.  That's definitely one for how to have your book release utterly over-shadowed. :)  Only a minor bit of cursing - I'm as excited to play it as I'm sure eveeryone else is... when I get a damn internet connection again!

As soon as I'm back online I will be doing a let's Play of MQ:P.  I suspect that one might take some time...

As to my own writing.  Next on the todo list is "Sandwiched by Scyllas".  I'm hoping to get that out before the end of March.  After that it's the one I imagine a lot of people have been waiting for - I finally get around to finishing the Succubus Summoning 201 arc.  Also I haven't forgot about that little Twine game I was working on either.  Now I'm not rushed off my feet I'm going to see if I can sneak a few hours on A Night With Ceptophthorié a day.

Plenty to look forward to. ;)

But I'm also supposed to be promoting my brand new collection.  So here's another tease, this time from the title story, "A Succubus for Saint Patrick's Day", to entice those of you that haven't yet bought it:

* * *

“Luck of the Irish, eh, Irish” the barman said as he poured Nic a commiserating shot of whisky.

Nic wouldn’t know.  He was born and bred in the home counties.  The closest ties he had with Ireland was a grandmother from Dublin he hadn’t seen in over a decade.  Nic had a knack for accents and after travelling the casinos of Europe he’d noticed everyone loved the Irish and hated the English, especially plummy-voiced Southern boys.

The Irish accent also worked much better on the ladies, not that Nic was in the mood for anything other than getting drunk and moping.  Just to rub it in, this would be the night one of the hottest girls Nic had ever seen came up and sat on the stool next to him.  Nic didn’t know the Ribchester did shows.  The girl was dressed up in bright green top hat and tails like a cabaret dancer.  Vivid red hair spilled out from beneath her top hat and cascaded onto her shoulders in shimmering waves.  She had the delicate elfin face and high cheekbones of a model, but rather than being cold and haughty, her large eyes and warm smile gave her the expressive features of a girl that looked fun to hang out with.  She also looked like she had quite the figure hidden beneath that waistcoat judging by how the material bulged and was stretched taut at the chest.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi?” Nic said.

Normally this would be the point he’d turn on the fake Irish charm and see how far it took him.  He wasn’t really in the mood.  Not after losing his shirt—twice!—in the same night.

Besides, she was probably a working girl and there was no way he could afford her.

on account of losing his shirt—twice!

She was wearing an odd choice of clothes for a hooker, though.  And normally they liked to get their claws into some shmuck on a lucky streak.  There were no mirrors nearby, but Nic suspected he looked like someone who’d just watched their favourite puppy get run over by a lorry.

“I’m your succubus,” the highly attractive girl said while flashing him a smile that’d give a butterfly diabetes.

“My what?” Nic said.

“Succubus,” the girl repeated.  “The stone you have in your jacket pocket is a succubus tablet—my succubus tablet.  Whoever owns a succubus tablet is master of its succubus.  You own the tablet.  That makes you my master.”

Nic shook his head and took a gulp of his whisky.

Hooker, waitress, showgirl, prankster; as hot as she looked, he really didn’t need this nonsense.

A Succubus for Saint Patrick's Day - Out Now!

I'm glad to announce my sixth collection is now out and available to buy.

Amazon link
Excessica link
Smashwords link
(let me know if it's absent from your ebook purveyor of choice and I'll check with my publishers)

Here's the blurb:


Who is the lucky one—the man given sensual pleasure beyond his dreams, or the succubus that ensnares and drains him?

Dangerous and delectable sirens abound in M. E. Hydra’s sixth collection of horror erotica.  Within these pages you’ll find thirteen tales that will tempt, tease, titillate and terrify.  Read and enjoy as dark temptresses weave their seductive webs and draw in their (un)fortunate prey.

In “A Succubus for Saint Patrick’s Day” a down-on-his-luck gambler thinks his fortune has changed when a magical succubus comes to his aid.  A strange agency provides an unusual service in “The High-School Sweetheart Removal Agency”.  A researcher has a dangerous and highly sensual encounter with an alien creature in “A Real-Life Goo Girl”.  In “Number 66” an expat searches for an unusual girl in the fleshpots of Bangkok.  An accomplished thief falls prey to a shadowy guardian in “Rogue vs. Lamia”.  A rich man gets the bigger dick he’s always wanted in “Crabs”, only to discover the treatment has some alarming side effects.  And finally, a young man gets a surprise when he tries to rape the wrong victim in “Joe Boyega Picks a Bad Night to Become a Rapist”.

They'll give you pleasures beyond your wildest dreams, and terrors beyond your darkest nightmares...

I hope you all enjoy it.  Please leave your thoughts in the comments below (or better still leave a review up on Amazon or other places).