Trying to understand TS rendering + manipulation code

Hey guys, I've been poking around trying to understand how all the various components of the TS rendering system fit together, and I'm getting frustrated enough with all the little bits and pieces of spaghetti to ask for some help/inquire if anyone knows understands what's going on well enough to explain how it works. I'm particularly curious about how setstatics() and [save|restore]Merge[Verts|Normals]() works, as well as a proper description of how the animation and keyframing code works, but any pointers at all would be appreciated.

I'd really like to get my TGE rendering with vertex buffer objects, because with the current vertex-array pointer system there are instances where I have to push literally thousands of copies of the same data across to my graphics card EVERY frame, to the point where TSMesh::render() is taking up more than 45% of my total CPU time. Obviously a static VBO would go a long way towards alleviating that case, and VBOs in general could help pick up the pace in less extreme scenarios.