Restored Conversations: The first Feral Halflings conversation (the one with Entu) causes the second group of Halflings (in the furnace room) to turn hostile to one of their own members. As soon as your conversation with Entu is finished, the two Halfling Warriors attack Necre. While testing, I found a similar quirk of their AI: If you Ctrl-J directly into the furnace room (or, I imagine, sneak past the first group of Halflings so that they cannot initiate conversation), Taibela has a pacifism problem: She will cast PfMW as soon as she sees you, and then do precisely nothing for four rounds. She does not suffer from this problem, however, if Necre has already been killed. Quite curious.
Non-Mages Sending the Solamnic Knights Home: True, you can talk to the Knights and agree to try to find a way of sending them back, and you can talk to Ribald (and I assume Wessallen) about it, but you are never given any sort of hint as to where to go, not even in your Journal. Perhaps the "Mage-specific" part of the quest should be extended a bit further for non-Mages, so that Teos makes a token appearance and leads the player towards Ribald and/or the Radiant Heart.
Also, when entering the Sphere after seeing Ribald, I get the following error message:
OBSSOL01Starting Conditions Errors:- Special Case: Player Not found. Check for proper brackets. Line Number: 1