Taran'atar

I bet that the plot twist has something to do with whatever's behind that skull-looking mask on the Sith guy/gal, and that it'll establish some kind of personal connection between that Sith and the player character.

I suspect that what you "tell" the game regarding the first KOTOR will change how things got to be the way they are in KOTOR 2, but it won't change the way things are. What I mean is that the Jedi will be on the verge of extinction and the Republic will be in shambles no matter what, but how it happened will be up to you. With the light side ending, maybe the Republic, thinking the Sith were mortally wounded, declared the war to be over. The Sith rebuilt and attacked the Republic again, etc etc. Revan became disenchanted with the Republic and left for unknown space. For the dark side, maybe Revan lost a critical battle against the Republic (he/she is only human after all) and his/her followers turned against him/her. Revan escaped and started hiding in unknown space.

"Endless he?" What are you talking about? KOTOR actually did very well with the gender pronoun thing. Far better than most games with variable gendered characters. I know of only two instances when the player character or Revan are referred to as "he" while playing a female. One of them can be chalked up to the ignorance of the character (Canderous). Since Revan wore that cloak and helmet, Canderous could have just assumed Revan was male. Obviously he hadn't actually met Revan before. The other is during the torture scene on the Leviathan, if you cave in, Saul will refer to you as a he. Other than those two instances, I didn't notice any gender pronoun errors.

I'd like to see Bastila, Jolee, and Mission. However, the only the non-droid returning character likely to have a major role is Canderous. He's the one character that you couldn't kill in the first game, no matter what.

No one expects them to go to every forum on the face of the planet. However, this place isn't like every forum on the face of the planet. This is their own forum. Why is it unreasonable to expect them to drop by and answer questions occasionally?

I don't think they'd give away such a big plot point with such an obvious clue.