[Elminster, Simbul, and some interesting dates]
Now, this is a far better good-faith argument for possibilities with Gale. Don't worry, I'm intimately familiar with the realms, its events and its figures of note ^.^
Simbul is (was) one of the seven Silverhand sisters, and in interesting choice if you're looking for magic-related story inspiration... The magic eating element is indeed familiar, and I've no doubt someone on the team took it as inspiration; I might expect that we'll be able to find something a particularly unusual magic item that will be the catalyst consumption for the resolution of Gale's chest bomb problem, perhaps, if they're taking it that far. I'm not sure how it relates to a discussion of suspicious nature, though. If you're making that comparison, do you feel then that Gale is indeed the sort who would ultimately choose to sacrifice himself to save someone else?
Gale is extremely unlikely to be fibbing about the chest bomb: we get a chance to feel it both directly, and through his senses, on two different occasions, and it's definitely there, and definitely hungry and dark and oppressive. We also know for fact that if his condition isn't fed, he does indeed explode badly enough to warrant an absolute game over... so, no, he's not fibbing about that bit, or at least, we have no
reasonable grounds to imagine that he might be. I've said already that I would not be at all surprised if Larian ran with the Elminster idea, since it's the kind of extra they're likely to go for.
I hadn't actually realised that the dates around waterdeep lined up that well - I knew it was close, but hadn't looked into it specifically. Either way, I'll reiterate, again, just in case you've skimmed over it all the other times, that I've never denied the possibility that Gale is deceiving us in some way, and the Elminster idea is interesting... However, as before, there's nothing in the game at the moment that gives reasonable grounds for suspicion of this; there are lots of wizards in waterdeep. I'd say if Gale begins to reference events known to be associated with Elminster, or if his general worldliness starts to step beyond what seems reasonable for an archmage from waterdeep (which, admittedly is a high boundary to push on, unfortunately), then we'll have something.
What I will say is that efforts to speculate rationally without jumping to unsubstantiated conclusions are badly stymied by the fact that Larian lets all of their characters lie to us flawlessly whenever they want to, and we're not allowed to notice, or make a check, or call them out on it in any way, unless Larian wants us to, and that's really, deeply, unfair, especially since we are unable to keep anything back from any of them.
Probably worth me taking a few moments out to add my normal caveat here - if anything has come off harsh or argumentative, that's not my intention, and I apologise if I have. My aim is honest and frank discussion, without intention to argue, upset or offend. I'm not interested in 'winning' a debate, I'm just interested in the discussion.
