Like these?
A spear of southern design with an explosive charge that will spew fire over two tiles when ignited. The charge is only usable once per battle, but automatically refilled after battle. Can be bought at a Marketplace in southern city states. Can be bought from an Alchemist. Can be looted from...
battlebrothers.fandom.com
The way I'd described them previously was that they're crude satchel charges of gunpowder and nails etc, tied to a spear. Vark was originally using them to take down big undead before he started using a bow instead. I would probably say that's he's not an overly skillful guy in that he's not practiced lots of things, but he's innovative and comes up with lots of things to meet the needs of a task.
Oh now that I thought of it the merc missions can easily sub in for getting magic assistance rather than rely on a standard action.
Depends what you want really. You could buy the services of the some of the Scarlet mages if you wanted, or you could get the Kirin Tor to work for you more. It really depends and what you wanted would define the required actions or resources.
Something we need to be aware of is that every civ on Azeroth that goes too hard on a single magic type inevitably crashes and burns.
Ideally yes, everyone would be educated in using all of them, but the time investment is terrifyin
I would modify that to 'every civ inevitably crashes and burns'. After all, 'No king rules forever'. Naturally some people pursue single types of magic and they invest time and create the infrastcuture for such things. Some of that infrastructure is mutually exclusive. You can't put a druadic world tree next to your Fel Dark Portal or your complex arrangemnet of ley lines around your Sunwell. They'd all be problematic, just like you can't have a coal mine or a fracking station next to a nuclear power plant because you might get earthquakes or whatever.
However, there's a big thematic thing around civs building up and considering themselves so beyond others that they specialise a lot in a certain area and that then all comes crashing down.
It's also entirely understanable. If you're the Highborn you would indeed look down on druids or on some random other tradition. Why would you care about the trolls and their Loa? Your queen just went and wrecked them and what did the wild gods do?
I also really like the ideas in some fics that the magics are mentally mutually exclusive. For example there was one fic where you couldn't use Light and Arcane because Light requires you to have self confidence and clarity of purpose, whereas Arcane requires you to be constantly breaking things down in an academic fashion.
While muskets and rifles would not be that much use to orcs who are physically strong and can utilize melee weapons to greater effect, I think Vark may come with ideas to adapt human warfare to orc phisique.
I've had a quick google around this and there's no standout benefits to guns. Sure, you can have a bigger gun with more range or a deadlier bullet, but that would seem a waste of the Orc's inherent physical strength and abilities in close combat, which are probably second to none (as a race anyway).
It's similar to the Orc longbowmen thing. They would indeed be extremely scary if they consistently tried to use things that weren't just runnign up adn attacking. They're still scary when they do that, but at least they're consistent at it.
While typical that our actions did not find or stop the meta plot
What's funny is that, as far as I understand, we didn't really do anything, the Scythe seeker simply achieved his goals behind the scenes, and needed the human Worgen no longer. Some sad luck in the mad, mad world (of Warcraft)...
You still had a significant effect on the saftey and security of Gilneas and it's people. In the background there's this elf thing going on sure, which Grok is unaware of and is resolved utterly without him, but as a coutnerfactual you might say for example that if Grok hadn't been there and Alpha Prime had still got the Scythe and left, he might have left the worgen Grok killed there. I dont think he'd have hung about and rallied all the worgen? He was just interested in the Scythe so I think he would have gone into the Emerald Dream as soon as he could perhaps. In any case, you retook Gilneas city, saved lives in teh villages, and then subsequently were very helpful in providing a place for all the refugees to go afterward.
I'm open to feedback on such things btw. I can get it might be frustrating to turn up and have hte matter seemingly resolved without your input, but equally I want the world to feel alive with people adn factions doing their own thing in the background. For example, Grok was indeed instrumental in the attack on Naxxramas, however he only took 1 wing whereas Dathrohan and friends attacked Kel'thuzad and you could say were more influential in the long term.