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Like many others I have a full grid, completed the 14 letter changes and character revelations, have a solution to step 2 (unsure exactly as with others before, but confident enough that any depiction will be acceptable within the destination), and know the theme, characters, destination and survivor.

Really struggling with step 3. Could any kind person who has completed it give a hint as to what the preamble means by "use" the extra words. Am I looking for synonyms? Am I using the letters in the words themselves? Failing that, how many "further characters" are there to change? Feel like I've exhausted every avenue my brain can conjure up.

Many thanks in advance.

The mechanic is that you take each word in turn - let's use BobcaT as an example..

If your survivor encounters a B, you change it to a T then move to the next cell where you use your 2nd word (if you need to change the letter) etc.

Jordan, thank you so much. Saved me no doubt hours of frustration. I thought it might be to do with the first and last letters due to their reasonable closeness to what I thought was what I was looking for, but could not quite make the breakthrough.
Very grateful.

Bobcat, surprisingly the preamble means what it says, literally. In the penultimate sentence of the preamble, if you replace the word “from” with the word “changing” and reread the instruction, using the words in order, you may see what to do. There is only one survivor, two words

Apologies for the late and probably unnecessary post. My page had not updated, even though I always try

Keep "trying" quisling, I staggered over the line only with the help of you and others on this thread! Thanks...

With everything complete except for the graphical depiction, I am befuddled. The thing that seems most likely to me given the source text, which is also what is suggested at post 89, is hard for me to imagine, because that possibility only makes sense if the graphical depiction were the final step of the puzzle. Performing that operation on the grid before the final step would alter a necessary cell in such a way that the final step would be impossible.

Does anyone feel confident enough about their graphical depiction to provide any nudging here?

I have completed the grid. By the sound of it, now the fun really begins.
I’ll pause to say that actually I have begrudgingly enjoyed the initial slog. The satisfaction of cracking (for me) difficult clues is rewarding. I may well change my tune as I now attend to the rest of the preamble.

Chrisremo, I am confident that erasure is incorrect, and that the representation must be within the destination.

Muraria, I much appreciate your comment @126, thanks.

On the matter of "Then depict (graphically, not physically) the fate of the characters within the destination": as others have noted, this seems open to at least two or three interpretations.

Do others think that this part of the preamble is ambiguous, or am I missing something (which is usually the case in the rare event that I think there's a problem with a Listener preamble)? I'm in two minds whether to get the coloured pencils or an eraser out, or perhaps something else entirely. Should I be racking my brains for a penny-drop moment? Quisling @129 perhaps suggests that a PDM is possible?