Duelling Crusaders

I'm lousy at duels.

I tend to think in terms of PvE, not PvP, and duels --especially spur of the moment ones-- emphasize that.  I think the first duel I ever accepted I ended up running away from, because the warrior involved was absolutely crushing me.  (I now realize he probably had heirloom gear, but still...)  I'm one of those people who motor through the front gates of Orgrimmar so I don't have some enterprising young whelp challenging me.

So, it was with some trepidation this morning that I was doing my Argent Crusade dailies and I received a challenge from a Tauren Warrior while in the Valiants' Ring.

My mouse cursor hovered over the Decline option of a good five seconds or so, but I had second thoughts.  Oh, why the hell not, I thought.  We're both mounted and technically pretty equal.

We started out the duel matched evenly: both of us with our shields up and on full, and exchanging equal blows.  I was thinking that he hit me first, so if it came down to a complete war of attrition, I would have to do something to sneak ahead of this guy.  From experience, I knew the first one who broke would be at a disadvantage, but I didn't know what else to do.

Then all of a sudden I started watching the Tauren's lifebar plummeting toward zero.  He'd forgotten to keep up his shields.

He panicked and tried to run, and I was able to run him down and get a good joust in before the fight ended.

Yay me; winner by TKO.

I hung around to finish up my daily, and the Tauren reappeared.  "Give a guy an achievement?" he whispered to me.

Oh hell.  I was feeling generous.  Particularly so since I'd not actually won a duel before.  I became a sacrificial lamb, left my mount's damage in place without healing it, and just let him beat me.  (To be honest, that wasn't that hard of a thing to do, since I'm not the greatest mounted jouster either.)

Feeling pleased with having done a good deed for the day, I went back to grinding some quests in Stonetalon.  I pulled into the Horde outpost there, and while I was catching my bearings the magical duelling flag popped down.

You have got to be kidding me.

I hovered over the Shaman, and discovered she was L31.  Apparently she must have discovered my level at exactly the same time, because she scooted away as quickly as possible.

Sometimes, it's good to be the 80 in a low level area.

EtA:  Oh, and I almost forgot.  I finally got that Azure Whelp pet to drop in Azshara.  Time to go buy a lottery ticket!