Casual reminder that Thrall’s duel with Garrosh was not a Mak’gora, and was taken in contempt of court (“Thrall gets to kill him” was not the final verdict of Garrosh’s trial), and is therefore murder even by Azeroth’s standards
Mak’gora rules state that:
- Select each one weapon.
- A shaman of the combatant’s choosing is to bless it.
- No armour. No clothing save a loincloth.
- Each combatant gets at least one witness, but more are permitted.
- There is a traditional challenge cry.
- Once a weapon is dropped, neither side are permitted to retrieve it.
- By Thrall’s own decree, standard Mak’gora undertaken by Azeroth’s Horde is to be non-lethal; to be valid Mak’gora, it must be stated to be lethal before the duel begins, and both parties to agree on the extra stipulation
OK so let’s go through that shall we
This isn’t really aimed @ the OP, I think they bring up some valid points to consider and I could definitely see why they don’t consider it a valid Mak’gora.
Honestly, I figured it was pretty open to interpretation whether it was a valid Mak’gora or not. I always went in with the idea that it wasn’t necessarily Mak’gora in the traditional Azeroth sense, Thrall just said that because a) it was a continuation on their previous duel (which had been interrupted by the Scourge invasion of Orgrimmar), and b) Blizzard/Metzen thought it would sound cooler instead of saying “duel to the death”.
I’m not going to comment on that first Mak’gora between Garrosh and Thrall further because apparently you could *watch* the two duel in game, and they were fully armored and everything… which, as you can guess, goes against the rule of no armor. Thrall also used elemental power in that fight, and that was deemed a proper Mak’gora so your argument about him using his shamanistic powers making it invalid either means that this first duel was invalid, or that Thrall was within his rights to do so again in Draenor.
However, that duel between Garrosh and Thrall the PC was there to witness almost felt a lot more like perhaps in Draenor’s Warsong terms, Mak’gora WAS always lethal and to be expected, which is explained in the new Hellscream story:
“Mak’Gora is a fight to the death,” Grommash said. “Mak’Rogahn is how the Warsong prove their worth. They enter the pit and fight, only stopping when their bodies fail. There is no surrender. No mercy. Only a pure display of the will to survive any hardship and endure all pain. Those who give up are exiled. That is how you can prove you have a Warsong’s heart. Our clan will never tolerate weakness again.”
Until Blizzard explicitly says it was a valid or invalid Mak’Gora, you could spin it either way based off of previous evidence within game/lore. At least to me, anyways.