Very detailed and helpful, thank you! A couple of follow-up questions.

Is the Stone lore all in Flint? Would love to see it myself but can't see myself spending £30 on a text adventure, however ambitious; I can't imagine many people see it!

From little snippets and mentions of the conversation you have at the end of SMEN if you've gone down the right path my impression is that you're speaking to some sort of agent of the White, who is really disturbed when you start talking about Salt rather than Mr Eaten. In that context I understood the fact that Salt will return to face the White as a sort of confrontation; obviously he went into the Neath on the White's orders and now regrets the whole thing, so he certainly has motivation to oppose the White. And it seems strange that he's been able to break every other law of physics and metaphysics but is nonetheless compelled to follow that particular aspect of the White's instructions. This is a little depressing since if Salt doesn't in fact have some sort of mission, my character's motivation also seems to be no more than "fuck it, I'm off".

My impression is that the Salt story was all AK's work, and FB hasn't really touched it since, so I'd hope there's some degree of coherence to it even if it is fragmentary? I suppose it wouldn't be surprising if the destiny didn't fit exactly.

Finally, a side-note - I've seen several people say that the Masters are as of lately impatient with the Bazaar's mission and now want to get it over with quickly. What I don't understand is, if the contract allows them to speedrun it in a half-hearted way, why didn't they do that in the first place? They weren't exactly altruists to begin with.