The forward, lower corner of a staysail is fixed. When the sail is set, the upper corner is hauled as far up the stay as possible by a line called a halyard. When the sail is furled, the halyard is slacked off. The sail slides down to the foot of the stay.
In earlier periods a furled staysail was generally bundled up in that position, using a long rope called a gasket. In the latter days of sail, though, ships often furled their staysails (and jibs) in long, skinny bundles along the stays. Getting the sail into that configuration must have required some pretty serious acrobatics on the part of the crew. I suspect the staysails were only furled that way when the ship was going to be in port for a long time.
On many models with furled sails, the staysails are omitted. They probably would be unshipped and stowed in the sail locker if the ship was in port for a while. To represent furled staysails accurately requires some rather awkward rigging. The sheets, for instance, tend to get tangled up with other gear when the sail is furled.
Somebody's mixed you up about the raising and lowering of yards. The procedure varied from period to period, but at any time after the middle of the seventeenth century it's pretty safe to assume that the lower yards were fixed in position. (They could swing back and forth horizontally, of course, and the ends could be raised and lowered. But under normal circumstances the lower yard didn't move up and down.)
The
Pamir is an example of the last generation of sailing ship rigging - about as sophisticated and efficient as it ever got. The rigging of a vessel like that is a conglomeration of 20th-century technology and the remains of some extremely old traditions. Among the latter are the names of the sails. They don't make much sense unless you're at least generally aware of how the sail plan developed over the centuries.
In order from the bottom, the sails on each of the
Pamir's first three masts are (in English): course, lower topsail, upper topsail, lower topgallant, upper topgallant, royal. (The yard to which the course is secured is called simply the lower yard. For silly historical reasons, the lowest sail on the mizzen mast is called the crossjack, or crojack, and its yard is called the crojack yard.) The lower yard, lower topsail yard, and lower topgallant yard are fixed in position. (That is, they don't move up and down during sail furling evolutions. They do, of course, swing back and forth.) The upper topsail, upper topgallant, and royal yards slide up and down the mast. when the sails are set and furled. If you look at the photos in the links that were posted in one of your other threads, you'll notice that when the sails are set all of them except the courses are of almost exactly the same depth. But when the sails are furled (or removed), the topsail and topgallant yards look like they're arranged in pairs, with one only a few feet above the other. That's because the halyards on the royal, upper topgallant, and upper topsail yards have been slacked off, letting they yards drop, while the lower topgallant, lower topsail, and lower yards have stayed put.
A lift is a line that runs from the yardarm (i.e., a point near the end of the yard) to a point on the mast above. (Lots of people get mixed up about that word "yardam." The yardarm is the outermost extremity of a yard. Each yard has two yardarms - one at each end.) The lift controls the yard's tendency to swing in a vertical plane. In earlier periods the lifts were often used to tilt the yards for various reasons (e.g., to use the lower yard as a crane for handling cargo). Latter-day sailing vessels like the
Pamir generally used "fixed lifts," which were shackled more-or-less permanently to the yardarm and the mast. In the case of a non-fixed yard (i.e., a royal, upper topgallant, or upper topsail yard), the lifts went slack when the yard was raised. The lower topsail and lower topgallant yards often were rigged differently: the lift ran from the yardarm through a block shackled to the yardarm above, then through another block on that yard near the mast, and then to the deck. In that system the lift had to be slacked off and overhauld when the sails were set or furled.
All this undoubtedly is confusing, because it's almost impossible to explain rigging without pictures. The Underhill, Villiers, and Harland books contain lots of excellent drawings that should make it all clear. You've got a long way to go before you need to start worrying about the rigging in any detail. Let's hope your copies of the books get there before you start the rigging. I'd strongly recommend against trying to rig any sailing ship model without good drawings for reference. The rigging instructions that come with Heller kits are hopeless; the people responsible for designing those kits were wonderful artisans, but it's pretty obvious that they didn't understand rigging.
Copper wire for standing rigging probably would work, but most modelers use thread unless there's some persuasive reason not to do so. I personally use wire for lines that have to be slack (e.g., footropes); it's difficult if not impossible to make thin thread hang in a realistic curve. For everything else I use thread. It's far easier to work with - especially when it comes to pulling masts and spars into precisely the appropriate alignment.
Hope this helps a little. Good luck.