The cool eyed White was Brendas. We get conformation in LoC.

As for Talents, there's an RJ quote somewhere saying that a circle doesn't add up the Talents of its members. Their strengths in the five powers aren't added either. However, if various circle members have related or complementary Talents suited to a task, then you pick them no matter the strength because they can pass control of the circle around as need demands. We've seen from the bonding of Rand that two linked women can complete a single weave by passing control around. So you can pick a man and a woman with great Healing Talent, and link them with another man who may be uselss, and then have the man and woman pass control around based on what kind of Healing may be needed, since men are better than women in some aspects, and vice versa.

Likely the same kind of thing was done for ter'angreal.

Will reply to the rest of the stuff later, but agree with you on the other posts. Great job!