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?
You don't think it's possible that he could be lying?
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.
Again, he could be lying. Everything we know about him is based on what he tells you. As for the mind meld, again, he lets you in. Who is to say that he is not making you see or feel those things? Netherese Magic is meant t be the most powerful magic in Faerun. If he happens to end up being Elminster, he's powerful enough to trick you into feeling what you felt inside him.
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 feel you're contradicting yourself here also this is why is called speculating, it doesn't have to be in the game for you to think, "Hey, could it be possible that this is the case?" That's the fun part of playing a game that has a deep story. Things can happen or people may show up where you're like, "Hmm, I wonder if this mean that or does this person have an ulterior motive?."
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.
I feel like your making it complicated for someone to give you their reason for why they think that way. No metacontext for you. I know there are situation where we do confront our companions, not sure where you feel we are not allowed call them out. I don't see that as unfair in regards to our character story, the reason why we can't keep anything back is because our character doesn't really have a deep backstory, just the whole situation with the mindflayer.
