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Personally, I would disallow Virtue/Vice magic for characters in RotRL - the whole point of the story is that Thassilon is not quite as dead as everyone thinks, and the more of those trappings you allow at the beginning of the game, the less wondrous all these secrets will be when they get revealed.
Just as a rule of thumb, here's a quick and dirty list of what things people might know, given their experience with Thassilonian history.
Untrained: It's a dead civilization from several thousand years ago. Their lands were in the vicinity of modern day Varisia.
Trained (1-5 ranks): Thassilon's empire existed somewhere between six to eight thousand years ago (but some radical historians believe it might have been existant even earlier than that). They were ruled by very powerful wizards, and enchantments laid down by those wizards are still in effect to this day.
Trained (6-10 ranks): Anything Brodert can tell them (their relationship to the seven virtues and vices, their association with the dead goddess Lissala, important figures of the Empire, such as the Runelords, etc.). Anyone with this much information is likely a noted scholar in Thassilonian history, and would not be able to learn much more than this without visiting Thassilonian sites and doing their own research.
Again, that's just off the cuff, without anything to back it up. I'd keep TNs high initially, just so the PCs have a reason to interact with people. As things go on, PCs can and should be able to make Knowledge checks to know more stuff about Thassilon, but early on they should be reliant on people like Brodert Quink to get them up to speed.
Also, recall this: when the party is searching through Thistletop, it takes a DC 30 Knowledge (history) check to identify wall murals as of Xin-Shalast or to identify carvings on the wall as depicting Runelord Karzoug. The group I'm GMing for were at level 5 at that point, with one character with the Thassilonian Scholar Trait and maximum ranks in Knowledge (History). On a roll of a natural 19, he was short by two points (or in other words you'd need a natural 20 to identify the carvings or wall murals).
It's doubtful any PC will have Vice magic. About the only source of training is a certain Necromancer that you'll run into during the second Book of the AP (yeah, seems Caizarlu Zerren is a Thassilonian Necromancer), so unless you either recruit him or train with him after meeting him starting with one level in Wizard, you're not going to have that type of knowledge. ;)