Again I stand in awe of the expertise that proliferates here...  But in response to Martin, yes sir: it works as you can see by this image.  And it probably would have at first had I started out the right way.  My problem (and I swear I'll never do it again!) was that I just kept adding stuff onto one project in hopes I could get it to morph into something good.  Instead I created confusion.
Now, this image is not quite a finished product, nor do I consider it my crowning achievement.  But being able to achieve it is a huge milestone for me.
Now please excuse me while I go and connect a powerfractal to the seed input of the Voronoi noise node... See you in my dreams, Volker!