About the cult of the Absolute timeline: it sounded to me in the conversation with Gortash as Durge and from letters from Gortash and Durge, that they were doing this for a while, but in secret. Someone like Gale might have been selected exactly for his powers - let's send in our human bomb.
Still not sure about Wyll and Karlach. I mean, Zevlor was much longer in mindflayer hands and didn't get tadpoled, why should Wyll and Karlach get speed-tadpoled during a crisis? DId tehy need people quickly? They allready had tons of pods full of tadpoled people.
And Viconia: I get, why she wanted the artifact, but where had she find out, how to find it?
