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!