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Player Lessons

So I, as a GM, have a unique opportunity to teach my players some lessons, in game. Let me explain:

My players, completely of their own accord, decided to join the Pathfinders! So I'm going to run them through the Pathfinder Society's "boot camp." To make it a bit more interesting than some skill checks and a few combat encounters, I wanted to use the opportunity to teach my players (who are somewhat new to Tabletop games) some valuable lessons.

Since the Society has 3 teachers (Combat, Magic, and Lore), I figured I could get away with 3 lessons. For the Combat, I'm going to teach them about teamwork using training courses that they can only overcome by working together.

The problem I'm running into is coming up with lessons for the Magic and Lore teachers. So I ask the boards:

What lessons would you want to teach your players?
Accommodating Character Concepts
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I didn't know whether to put this in General Discussion or Advice, since it is a little bit of both. The question is:

How much are you, as a GM, willing to change the campaign world (either homebrew or pre-gen) to accommodate character concepts that don't fit into the world?

Is it the GM's responsibility to adapt the world to the player's wants, or is it the player's responsibility to create characters that fit into the world?

I ask because I'm making a homebrew campaign world and I have a player who a) keeps changing character ideas and won't settle on one, and b) keeps coming up with concepts that don't fit into the world.

deeper explanation:

First he wanted to be a bare-knuckle boxer, so we looked at monk archetypes and I made a Victorian-like country since the world was still in early development.

Then he changed his mind and decided he wanted to play a necromancer cleric. Since I don't allow evil characters, I included Wee Jas as a god since she's a neutral goddess who allows undead. Then he says that he has no intent of following her guidelines to which I reply that clerics who spite their gods may lose their powers.

So then he wants to play a Russian Spy. Problem is, my world is finished (maps and all) and I have no Russian-like country to accommodate him. But he still wants me to make him one.

Then he wants to play an ice sorcerer but doesn't like the water elemental bloodline or the boreal bloodline and thus wants me to houserule him another ice-themed bloodline.

I've played with him for years and he's never done this before. I'm just worried about the effect this will have on the campaign.


I plan on talking to him about this, but I'm looking to the board for help. Should I keep changing my world to suit him, or tell him to accept what I've made and work with it?
How much should I hurt my PCs' opponent party?

Okay, so some quick background here:

I'm running a homebrew campaign and the four, 8th level PCs are working with four 8th level evil NPCs to work though a dragon's lair in order to get an artifact that both parties want.

The two groups recently split because, (a) they were getting on each other's nerves and (b) combat was taking way too long to run. As soon as the two parties went their own ways (still with the same goals) the PCs started talking about killing the other party after they'd taken out the dragon. Not unexpected. Here comes the problem.

Since that time, the PCs have run across a couple of encounters and thus spent resources such as HP, spells, wand charges, etc. My question is, how many resources should I take from the evil party (who have also hit a few encounters), knowing that they will fight the PCs? I want this to be a somewhat even fight.

Thanks in advance for any advice.