If we gave an orb of sorcery to Kragg or Torek would they be able to forge something cool with it?
Able, yes. Willing? Another matter. The only reason they'd consider it at all is that Mathilde is the one asking. But there'd be a hell of a lot of research before anything is done, and a lot of convincing why this is necessary for the good of the Karaz Ankor.
I imagine not, or they'd already be doing cool things with regular power stones. Runesmiths charge their Runes with the winds proper, not their crystallized form - they have no actual magical ability, so they couldn't get the winds out of power stones or Orbs on their own even if they wanted to.
Being able to use AV to be able to recharge Runes very quickly is already pretty impressive and of military importance to them, honestly.
I'd agree with your argument
if powerstones had been around for a long time. But on runesmith scales, they haven't. Humans, the only plausible source, have been able to make powerstones for what, a hundred years? One fifty at the most?
Sure for humans that is a decent chunk of time. For runesmiths that's just about nothing. They're still only barely working on
guns, and the wiki tells me the dwarfs invented those four centuries
before Sigmar.
Golden Age Dwarfs worked with mages. Bok tells us as much. They knew and probably used powerstones. Modern runesmiths, modern dwarfs, have quire thoroughly repressed their cooperation with the elves, and crafting knowledge related to powerstones would've been among the easiest to lose without any way of sourcing them*.
In fact, our Hellfire Mountain Tower is probably the first time in multiple millenia that a magic construct was created that used both runes and enchanting (and powerstones). It's a powerful precedent, especially since Kragg was involved and it has literal divine blessing. So we might see some ultra-radicals poking at the usage of powerstones in a few centuries.**
But thinking about it, runesmiths should approve of powerstones, relative to normal wizard nonsense. In the dwarf->blacksmith, wizard-> molten metal throwers, this would be something like forming the metal into form where it stays in a stable molten shape. Still not something you should use to clobber others, but a useful crafting material. I could actually see some runesmith interest there. Though we would probably have to talk to Thorek for an actual sanctioning, but it could be a very useful trade good for the Colleges.
*The crown of eternity isn't really a good precendent, but it shows that carving runes on soldified magic and probably powerstones (if warpstone is the powerstone for dhar) works and has strong effects.
** I also haven't mentioned that most Runesmiths won't even know that powerstones exist, because again why would they? Humans haven't been able to make the for long, and they're not going to talk to the elves about it.
