TY
I took the brick size from a catalog of bricks I found on line. Very cool.
and then I used dupliverts to make the swarm.
and the random from the id fields can make colors different.
and then as well, I used the variable for 'location' in the color and that attached to a 'emmiter' texture made the glowing brick storm.
I was trying to build duplivert arches that actually looke like real roman brick work, and I haven't gotten there yet.