A Zillion light-years away across the Cosmos, out there somewhere, lies a serene planet, the planet of Nol-Ya-Bab and its peoples: a simple and naive race of folks who see the natural world through a lens which we would call “supernatural”. On the face of it they are weak and easy prey for other violent civilizations that populate The Known Universe.
But, they are protected by Mardouck. Mardouck The Could-Ram and ruler of the slave planet Ferricite! Mardouck the destroyer of Worlds!
But not every world is “earmarked” for destruction, as if Mardouck is some kind of Barbarian! Out of the all the possible worlds they detect, only the ones that show the slightest sign of acquiring technology are targeted. No questions are asked of the inhabitants. Their planets are reduced to cosmic debris by a violent geo-gravitational mega-cataclysm that is a quantum leap above the devastation of an Extinction Event. The systems they inhabited often became unstable, and if their parent star or stars are big enough and the planets close enough, most of them end up at the bottom of their parents stellar gravitational well, down deep inside a star’s core.
And, one day they turned their attention to Earth. But they couldn’t just destroy Earth with a whim! Those who thought they were gods and used Murdock to do their beckoning concocted an excuse to save this particular planet, this Earth planet. This was breaking the strict doctrine that ALL technologically advance civilizations should be obliterated with no questions asked, and there was good reason to hold to this doctrine for there had been terrifying attacks that had devastated them in the past!
And what was the excuse? Why water. But of course, water wasn’t really the prize. Somewhere on Earth there was a seed. A special seed, a seed borne out of the ancientness of the Cosmos. A Cosmic Seed, perhaps one of the seeds that had given birth to organic life forms and perhaps a thing that was at the heart of the power of those who had assailed them in the past. Many powerful rulers who only met outsiders in the Spires of Nol-Y-Bab desired it.
Mardouck is sent to Earth to secure the planets water but is “drip-fed” the real reasons for his mission. And his masters, they make sure there is going to be something close to him to keep an eye on his progress. A female that has haunted him, in his dreams and in hallucinations, down through the ages of Murdock’s lifetimes. Against a backdrop of Velikovskian Upheaval, Mardouck travels to the great Ziggurats on the planes of Mesopotamia in search of the jewel.