Fun as it would be, I’m not sure that’s possible. Falcons are small birds; getting them to go after their natural prey and bring it back to you is one thing, but trying to convince them to suicidally attack something twenty times larger seems implausible to me. Let me know if you find anything that suggests it’s been done!
Yes…but it’ll be a game or two yet before you have much scope for R&D, so I’m not going to commit to any particular field being on the list just yet. 
Yes. They’re more trusted for many things; the fear of being poisoned by your helots is reasonably strong across the Hegemony.
Including me! Please keep them coming. Helps me think on the boundaries of gameworld science and tech.
Nope, just the capitals: Aekos, Shayard, Wiendwic, Nyrnakan, and Soretto. Their purpose, at least ostensibly, is to protect the Archons from magi assassins and make it easier to keep order in the biggest city of each archonty. Or at least in their core neighborhoods; as you can imagine, large areas grow up outside the Ward.
And there’s absolutely no way, ever, to “just drop a Ward for a couple of seconds so someone can cross,” not even for the Thaumatarch himself. There are gates in each Ward–heavily guarded, generally shut, with anything passing through them combed over closely by Theurges. If your flesh has been Theurgically changed (by healing, anti-aging, deliberate mutilation, Xaos-storm, auto-Plektosis, whatever), you’ll have to deal with the gate bureaucracy. If you’re an Ennearch, they might spare you the cavity search. Most people who can’t step across a Ward just have to accept that they’ll never get inside the core neighborhoods of a capital.
“I heard it from my old masters” isn’t an explanation? (We will hear more about those old masters in Game 2, btw.) 
That’s exactly what I’ll be aiming for.
Yes, and scarcity will drive more and more experiments of this sort. (Someone asked above what the reform agenda of the Diadoch is, and much of it is in this genre.)
Dee-enn-ay? Of what bizarre magic do you speak?
Theurges can make heritable changes, but they need to understand the lifeform they’re changing exceedingly well, and as the changes get more radical the chances of rendering the lifeform sterile go up quickly. Even if the raft of changes involved in making a hound into a spiky whip-tailed tank didn’t sterilize it, the additional raft of changes to the reproductive system necessary to allow a female Plekdog to give birth to an infant version are beyond what any Plexpert can currently figure out.
Welcome, @N1GHTMAR3! I haven’t yet written massive two-handed swords into the gameworld anywhere, but that doesn’t mean they won’t exist. Theurge-forging can be used for any bladed weapon, not just the swords and spears mentioned in Game 1. And yes, a Theurge metallurgist could make impenetrable armor as well, though the cost in blood would be far greater; a Theurge-forged sword is just trying to imbue a permanent change in the cutting edge (not even the whole blade), while armor would have to have it imbued it in every square inch.
I was thinking both of the Plektoi and (perhaps even more so) the dreadful fates that can befall the horses of Hector and his veneurs down some paths in Ch 3.