need actual HAM hardware and license for this, or can it work over LoRa?

Short answer, yes. Long answer, soon I will begin working on adding support for reticulum network, which can support lora.

And again I say unto you: very cool need to fix my #meshtastic soon

Keep inond reticulum network is a custom firmware that runs on many(not all) lora type devices. No ip addresses, tor like routing, no permanent address, it finds a path automatically to the pubkey. Hamstr will enable use of it for nostr and lightning payments and soon cashu.