Hi Al,
I'll probably get back into a bit more programming on the particles front this weekend (been back to europe for a holiday the last few weeks!)...
I like the path following idea, so I might give it a go (no promises though, work is killing me lately!). Not sure exactly how it might work, but I have a few ideas and I'll have a play.
I wasn't sure what you meant by:
the path would also have the option of being join with seperate path so it could flicker, jump, whatever.
Can you do another sketch for that?
On the dupliverting thingy:
1) Parent the object you want to appear instead of each particle to the emitter object
2) Switch on "Dupliverts" in the object tab for the emitter object.
If you also want the object to rotate with the particles try switching on "Vect" in the particle effect, then rotating the child object (not quite sure how to make this work perfectly, you just need to fiddle with it!)
Cheers
Leon