Dom sets out, with Hrsh-Hgn (his tutor, a swamp-dwelling "phnobe"), Isaac (his robot, equipped with "Man-Friday subcircuitry") and Ig (his pet swamp "ig") in tow, on a picaresque adventure to find the Jokers' world. He visits many corners of the "life-bubble", encountering Joker artifacts, his god-father, who is a sentient planet, and the sexless, octopoid "Creapii", among many other weird and diverse aliens and planets. At the same time he finds himself surviving – at increasingly improbable odds – numerous assassination attempts by a mysterious conspiracy which has long worked to prevent anybody from locating the Jokers, assassinating anybody deemed by p-math having a chance of doing so.