So there’s an Earthen in Orgrimmar, near the Blacksmith vendors, an Earthen by the name of Modaln.
https://i.imgur.com/afw3HcV.jpeg
And he mentions sea-side coolant systems, quarries carved into the very cliffs, which would in turn expand the amount of available space in Orgrimmar, and even a direct port to Orgrimmar itself. And it makes me think … how would Stormwind and Orgrimmar be improved with Titanic tech combined with the knowledge of the Earthen and the unique skills of the Horde and Alliance?
Orgrimmar
Orgrimmar is actually the city that shine the most with this, especially since the Goblins have access to Kajamite from Zuldazar and would have the Earthen to double-check their work. And we already have the Underbase left over from Garrosh’s rule as Acting Warchief. And in this, there’s actually a massive answer to several of Orgrimmar’s woes based upon its locations and nearby resources.
- Heating, Lighting and Sanitation.
Orgrimmar goes through a staggering amount of trees. Cooking, heating, lighting, industry and construction, all of it demands wood, be it lumber, logs or any other variation. It also produces a massive amount of waste, both from the people and animals, both pets and beasts of burden, and trash from all of that industry.
Orgrimmar also has massive amounts of lava and magma underneath it, along with well-established lava-tubes and caverns, along with the Underbase itself which was built into and through these spaces, including Ragefire Chasm. A combination of using treated sea-water channeled through pipes to help cool the city through the day, and using the vast amount of lava and magma beneath the city to burn the trash and waste produced by the city, could be used to produce electricity to light the city at night, reducing the reliance upon torches and bonfires.
The first part of this, the treated sea-water, could be funnelled through a system built over the top of a lake of lava or similar heat-source. The sea-water would both cool the system to prevent overheating or melting, and the heating of the sea-water would produce both steam and small amounts of salt, both of which are useful, and further treatment of the steam itself would result in both fresh-water and more salt. The steam could be used to turn turbine blades which, in turn, could be used to generate electricity much as we see Goblins using light-bulbs and electric heaters in Kezan due to pollution and expansionism having rendered much of the native environment toxic or incompatible with all but the hardiest of plant-life. Additionally, sea-water heats up faster than fresh-water, meaning that the steam and heated salt-water will power up a turbine system faster than fresh water would, albeit with an accelerated build-up of waste on the blades and other exposed surfaces from salt crystals and other contaminants, needing a much more accelerated cleaning cycle to avoid damage or strain on the system.
That quick and easy build-up of steam also works well with a system that’s long been a part of WoW’s mechanical and engineering progression, albeit rarely mentioned, the miraculous alchemical substance known as phlogiston, a mixture of gasses collected from the air itself and pressurized until it assumes a liquid state, at which point the material is combined in carefully calibrated amounts of water and oil. Various producers used different collection, combination and combustion techniques, but generally, the purer the ingredients the better the resulting phlogiston mixture was, and the better results one would achieve. The mixture is applied to a steam engine’s boiler and other components during activation, at which point the heat and pressure causes the mixture to activate and bind to any metallic surface that is also heated, leaving the metals with extreme resistance to both extreme heat and pressure, which in turn allows steam-powered technology to operate at absurd levels of heat and steam-pressure. This is what allows Azerothian steam technology to operate at the efficiency and potency it does without requiring actual petrol, or nuclear reactors.
Gnomes have gorram cheat codes, that is all. And the fact that phlogiston is so cheap and plentiful to make means that it is quite wide-spread amongst the population. With the steam and the water providing two thirds of what is needed, once the vapor and fluid is purified, through more machinery, through Shamanistic intervention or Arcane transmutations, the entire system can power itself through self-production of phlogiston, using the very steam it is creating to pump that purified water through out the city of Orgrimmar at high speeds. This not only allows the Horde to cool their city through mist-screens sprayed over the city during the hottest parts of the day, but hot water pumped through that same system at night will also elevate the ambient temperature of the city, reducing the need for individual heating.
Furthermore, technology. While the majority of the city won’t be keen to replace their wood-cooked meals anytime soon, heating elements in their homes and businesses will reduce the need for firewood, which will reduce their cost of living, and if the Earthen and Goblins can wrangle it, allowing super-heated air from the lava-tubes and caverns to be pumped through the city with equally-hot steam could provide a similar benefit without needing the additional cost of individual heating elements for every household. Adding to this, if it is done with a combination of Goblin Tech/Earthen Titanic Machinery/Orc, Troll and Tauren Shamanism, this could also be seen as a totemic system by the people of Orgrimmar, with the Elements granting heating and lighting and make sure the Orcs, Mag’har and other citizens of Orgrimmar do not become further divorced from their spiritual beliefs, rather seeing it as an evolution of such. Spirits have to be revered and respected for the system to work correctly and veneration of the Spirits of Water (the ocean providing the water), Air (the steam and the electricity), Fire (the lava and heated air) and Earth (the pipes, and their passage through the canyon walls) could lead to a large number of Shamans being involved alongside engineers and mechanics to make sure the system runs cleanly, rather than accumulating large amounts of toxins and waste to poison the environment around the plants.
Coming to the second part of this point, burnable trash can likewise be pitched into the lava, the smoke being collected by condensors or extraction fans, which in turn can power electric generators to provide energy for other functions, or even the trash-disposal system itself. Furthermore, the smoke can be condensed if fed through a unique mixture of metals that are liquid at normal temperature (The mixture is proprietary as of now, but the researchers at the Deakin university and the University Melbourne have admitted it uses a gallium, paladium and tin as part of the mixture, kept in a liquid state, through which the CO2-laden gas is fed up through pipes containing the liquid alloy, which then breaks the molecular bonds and turns the gas into flakes of carbon and gallium oxide.), which could help Orgrimmar avoid clouds of soot.
Or we could just have Mages compressing the smoke into cubes of carbon because Mutha-luvin’ MAGIC up in this business and using it in smelting metal, as well as its uses in ink, rubber and pencil lead.
And finally, all that running water would be very useful for keeping Orgrimmar clean. Even if the sea-water is not turned into fresh-water, the process of heating it will, at the very least, sterilize it and make it useful for washing down the streets and buildings and flushing waste away to aforementioned burnable trash plant. Yes, you 
is burnable, and probably better for health and safety to do so because of the bacteria and parasites you eject along with the waste, and a city’s worth of people can produce tonnes of the stuff on the daily. That’s a lot of waste to bury, which can in turn fester and become a breeding ground for diseases until the earth breaks or is disturbed and congratulations, you have a new plague on your hands.
- Drinking water, farming and fire
Durotar and Orgrimmar was founded with the idea that the Orcs would have to temper their fury and the ‘society’ that had been foisted on them by the Shadow Council and the Old Horde by taming and farming this hostile land, and for the most part, it worked.
Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut … as always with WoW, the story-beats went along the lines of “And then things got worse…” and Garrosh undid all of that by having Gallywix stripmine Azshara for the war-effort, which not only got rid of a lot of the lumber and arable land the Orcs were using, but also released a lot of sediment, heavy metals and mining waste into the Southfury river, which flowed down and polluted a lot of Durotar’s riverside, and when the river flooded, much of it’s central area. While great strides have been made to purify the river, its still not drinkable without boiling unless you want to be painting the walls red and brown, and its only really useful for watering crops since while the heavy metals are gone, the water is still a problem for drinking. A new, fresh supply of drinkable water is a must and the wells of Orgrimmar are kind of spotty because massive underground lava-tube network means there’s not much fresh water under the city for the huge population to use, and what water sources are available in the city come from springs atop the cliffs and rainwater stored during the brief wet season.
Rendering sea-water into potable water not only gives the citizens a stable supply of drinking water, but also purified, sterilized salt which is a necessity of a healthy body, especially considering the amount of labour that Orcs do and with the sheer intensity of it, they likely lose a lot of salt to sweating and that labor. Fresh drinking water available all over the city, and possibly even pumped out to the farms to reduce the risk of sickness from contaminated livestock and crops is only a benefit.
Furthermore, the ash from the burnable waste can be mixed into the soil along with the dung of the pigs to create a much more nutrient-rich soil-bed for more demanding crops, and a larger supply of water means more farms, and more bio-diversity amongst those farms, can happen. The Irish Potato Famine was bad not just because the pests targeted the crops, but because the land-owners kept selling their healthy crops for a profit and left the people working the land starving and deathly ill from consuming diseased potatoes. Orcs and Trolls avoiding contaminated rice and adding other stable crops to their diet without needing to pay horrendous import fees (Seriously, I am betting the Alliance is putting pressure there, and Pandaria is definitely getting into the Export/Import Tax Game to recoup losses and pay for the rebuilding of their … gosh-darn everything at this point!). Adding other livestock to the mix, not just pigs, also ensures if there’s something like swine-flu or some wide-spread infestation of parasites, the Orcs don’t immediate start starving because we’ve had multiple accounts that Orcs eat a lot of protein due to their muscular bulk. Alpacas, gazelles and giant beetles could all be imported from Vol’dun as alternative livestock options with little impact on the native flora and fauna, especially since most of the animals in the region are predatory (raptors and scorpids), and alpacas can be sheared and could also serve as less resource-heavy beasts of burden, since kodos require a massive amount of plant-matter to fuel their bulk and take up a large amount of space, along with being notoriously danger to be around if spooked or attacked, unless given intensive training as beasts of war.
We’ve also seen that stone can be made to burn with magic. Having water-pipes through-out Orgrimmar means if there is a fire, just knock some valves off and flood parts of the city to help reduce the damage. Riots? More of the same. Heat-wave? Turn on the mist curtains and knock a few hydrant caps off and let the water flow.
- Powering the heart of Industry
It has been mentioned that a lot of the metal-working industry in Orgrimmar is broken up and isolated, individual forges and smithies that work independently, hence why the Horde has struggled in previous conflicts to provide enough weapons and armor to properly equip their troops, and why a lot of Horde war-machines, the zeppelins and their siege-tanks, were mostly wood rather than the more heavily-armored version that the Alliance could field.
Part of this is due to the Orcs left after the war who knew how to work metal, and those who learned how from their parents or other individuals or groups, knew they had tremendous value to the Orcish society, both for producing good-quality weapons, tools and armor, and as a respected and valued non-Warrior position within their society, making it a coveted position for an Orc who might not be able to, or was no longer able to, fight for the Horde. And part of it was that Thrall did not want the Orcs to be able to mass for war easily because he was trying to wean them off the self-destructive teachings of the Shadow Council and bring them back to their Shamanistic roots.
However, if mass production is put into place, especially with the ingenuity of Goblins fueled by Kajamite gas and Earthen eager to put their knowledge of Titanic engineering to new tests of skill, we could see a revolution of Horde machinery and equipment. Rifles and other advanced firearms could become much more wide-spread, more reliable and more cost effective with mass production and less reliance upon reckless Goblin engineers without access to Kajamite and Orcish and Tauren gunsmiths treated every weapon they made the same as more traditional weapons, something to be respected, an individual thing akin to a riding wolf or battle companion.
Vehicles might be produced in huge numbers, or they could be produced at similar numbers but now with much heavier, and more reliable, armor and weapons and less likely to explode or fail at a crucial moment because of engineering failure or cut corners in the fabrication process.
We could also see a revolution in tools necessary for farming, forestry and mining, with Shamans and Druids working to renew and restore farmland and forests quickly after the harvest, while mining machines could replace the bulk of Peon labor, meaning in turn the Peons are put into less danger, don’t have to work such horrendous shifts and can have much better lives. Focused, large-scale production sites could render trees into lumber and other wood-based products faster, with less waste and targeted waste sites to prevent unnecessary pollution and damage to the nearby environment.
- Expanding the home-front
Taking a page out of Coober Pedy, quarrying and mining the canyon walls of Orgrimmar might not just open up new ground for buildings and industry, but homes as well. Coober Pedy is a town in Western Australia where it gets absurdly hot, and given that the town was founded to mine for opals, eventually somebody had the bright idea to make their home in a mine, and today, we have inns, houses and even government buildings built underground, the walls smooth as marble and well insulated against the heat and the elements. Applying this to Orgrimmar, with the mining skill of the Earthen and the ingenuity of Kajamite-fueled Goblins, we could see entire warrens of homes built into the very rock itself, fortified and re-inforced of course to withstand assault and siege-weapon strikes, but clean, well insulated and fitted with all the latest innovations brought by the Earthen to the Horde.
A port leading directly into Orgrimmar doesn’t make Bilgewater Harbor superfluous, but it can change things up in new and interesting ways. Bilgewater can remain the Horde’s primary military port, where its navy docks and trains, while a large ‘merchant’ dock could be built within Orgrimmar itself, meaning that a strike on the capital doesn’t cripple their naval power and allows Bilgewater to send the fleet around to strike at the rear of the stockade, while that canon can lay down some destructive cover-fire at a safe distance, while a strike on Bilgewater alerts Orgrimmar and allows them time to close the docks off and ready themselves for a siege.
It could also revolutionize the Horde’s access to the bounty of the sea. The Dark Spear certainly are punching well above their weight in this arena to provide the Horde with plenty of fish, but it is the same issue as the Orcs and their industry, it is done individually, with small family-run ships all operating in small groups, not actual fleets going out into deeper water to chase the big schools.
If somebody more familiar with Stormwind wants to tackle that, go nuts. Otherwise, I’ll try to tackle it tomorrow after I feel less cruddy after this radiotherapy session. The flesh is weak and unwilling and the mind is not much better right now.
What are your thoughts?