The Trials of Knighthood

This is the GM document for The Trials of Knighthood — a three-session solo adventure for a single level-1 Jedi Padawan and one GM. It runs a lone apprentice up the oldest temple in the galaxy to face the five Trials that make a Knight, and a quiet villain who has kept those trials for a very long time. Everything here is GM-facing; the player gets the spoiler-free landing on the Adventures hub. Read the Real Story and the Solo tuning section before session zero, then run the acts in order. This is a story about one person, so most of the usual "how the party met" machinery is set aside — see How You Came to Tython below.

Synopsis

A Padawan's master has judged them ready, and the Council has sent them alone to Tython — the green Deep Core world where the first Jedi raised the first temple — to face the Trials of Knighthood: five ordeals that measure Skill, Courage, the Flesh, Insight, and Spirit. They are met at the foot of the ruined Temple of the Prime Jedi by the Keeper, a gentle old presence who greets each pilgrim kindly and offers to guide them up. The trials are real, and hard: the Padawan duels the temple's ancient guardians, braves a Force-storm and the beast it drives mad, endures a crucible that costs them something, and sees through an offered shortcut that is too good to be true. But the Keeper is not what he seems. Long ago he was a Padawan who came for these same trials, faltered at the last, and fell — dying on Tython, his spirit bound to the world. For centuries he has "kept the trials," steering each pilgrim toward his own fall and feeding on those who break. The true Trial of Spirit, at the summit, is seeing the Keeper for what he is and refusing his offer of power. Refuse, and the Padawan is Knighted while the old spirit is finally freed. Accept, and they become the mountain's next Keeper. The adventure ends at the knighting — the moment an apprentice chooses a vocation and becomes a Jedi Knight.

The Real Story

What the player thinks is happening — a solemn pilgrimage, a kindly guide, five tests to pass — is true. What's underneath it is not. In order:

• Tython is a real place of the first Jedi. The Temple of the Prime Jedi crowns a mountain wreathed in Force-storms — the world's signature phenomenon, born of the tension between the light and dark sides. For as long as there has been an Order, Padawans have come here to be tested. The trials are genuine.
• The Keeper was one of them. Centuries ago, a Padawan — the module never gives his living name; he has forgotten it himself — climbed this mountain for these trials. He passed Skill, Courage, the Flesh, and Insight. At the Trial of Spirit, offered power to escape his own fear, he took it. He fell, and the fall killed him. His spirit did not move on; it soaked into the dark-side hollow beneath the summit and stayed.
• He kept keeping the trials. Unable to leave and unwilling to be alone, the Presence learned to wear a kindly face — the Keeper — and to meet each new pilgrim as a guide. He walks them up, he eases the path, and at every step he offers: understanding, then comfort, then power. He is not lying about the trials. He is seasoning them with temptation.
• He feeds on the ones who break. Most pilgrims pass and leave, and never know what he was; the Order remembers Tython as a hard, strange, holy place and nothing more. But a Padawan who falters — who reaches for the dark to win a trial, who takes his shortcut, who accepts his offer at the summit — feeds him, and sometimes stays, another echo in the hollow. He is patient. He has all the time in the world.
• The real final trial is him. The Trial of Spirit, as the Council intends it, is confronting your own darkness and mastering it. On Tython, with the Keeper, that darkness has a face and a voice and a very reasonable argument. To pass is to see the kindly guide for the ruin he is and refuse him anyway — which frees him. To fail is to take what he offers.

The Keeper's Offer (how the temptation works)

The Keeper's seduction runs across all three acts as roleplay, not a tracked score — there is no corruption meter. He makes three escalating offers, one per act, each a real solution to a real problem the Padawan is facing:

• Act I — Understanding. "You don't have to be afraid. I can show you how it's done — I've watched a thousand climb this stair." He offers knowledge: a hint that trivializes a trial, told with a grandfather's ease. Harmless on its face. It plants the idea that the trials have a cheat, and that he holds it.
• Act II — Comfort. "You're hurting. You don't have to. Let it go — let the anger carry you, just this once, just to get through." He offers relief from the Flesh trial's cost, and a shortcut past Insight. Taking either isn't instantly damning, but it's the first taste of solving a trial with the dark instead of through it.
• Act III — Power. The mask thins. "You'll fail up there. Everyone fails. I did. But I found another way, and I can give it to you — you never have to feel that fear again." This is the real offer, and refusing it is the Trial of Spirit.

Track the player's leaning in your head, not on paper. If they keep refusing him gently, the summit is a clean test of will. If they've been taking his offers — reaching for anger, accepting shortcuts — the summit offer lands with real weight, because they've already said yes three times. Either way the choice at the top is theirs, made in the open. Reward a player who saw through him early with a harder, prouder knighting; reward a player who was tempted and refused at the last with the adventure's best moment.

How You Came to Tython

This is a solo module, so there's no party to assemble — just one Padawan and the reason they're here, which is the same reason every time: their master and the Council judged them ready, and named Tython. Open session one with the pilgrimage already underway. The player has traveled alone (a Padawan is sent alone on purpose — the point is that no one can carry them through this). Hand them one of these framings to make it personal, or let them write their own:

If the player brings their own level-1 Jedi Padawan, even better — a personal character makes the summit choice mean more. Ask them, before session one, two questions and write the answers down: what does your Padawan fear most, and what are they most attached to? The Keeper will use both. That's the whole adventure in two sentences.

Solo tuning — read before session zero

This is the module's defining difference from a party adventure: it is balanced for exactly one PC, and it is tuned to the hard end of what one Padawan can survive, because the trials have to be earned to justify a knighting. A trial the player strolls through is a trial that doesn't mean anything.

• The difficulty budget is fully spent. A solo Padawan needs ~900 XP across the arc to go from level 1 to level 3 (300 for L1→L2, 600 for L2→L3). This adventure spends all of it, weighted toward the climax: ~300 XP in Act I, ~200 in Act II, ~400 in Act III. Every combat block below lists its XP so you can see the math.
• Tune to party-level +1, the climax to +2. A lone TR 2 genuinely threatens a level-1 PC — that's intended. The Act I guardian gauntlet and the storm-beast sit at the hard edge of what a fresh Padawan can take. The Act III Reflection is built at TR 3, scalable to TR 4 — a true climax for a level-2 character about to be knighted.
• Challenge comes from design, not just HP totals. The pressure here is hazards (the Force-storm, the crucible), time and nerve (the failing bridge, the smoke), enemies that fight smart (the guardian adapts to the Padawan's habits; the Reflection uses the Padawan's own tricks), and — above all — the moral weight of the Keeper's offer. Don't just inflate hit points; inflate stakes.
• Failure is a setback, not a death spiral. A single PC can't afford a bad-luck cascade, so the trials are built so that losing a fight costs without ending the run. A Padawan who drops in a trial is not killed — the trial rejects them: they wake changed, wounded, and behind, and the Keeper is there, gentle, ready with an easier way. The only terminal failure in the adventure is accepting the Keeper's offer at the summit (the dark ending) — and that's a choice, never a dice result. See each scene's Setback note for what a loss actually does.
• The solo safety valve. Give the player one guaranteed "second breath" per act: the first time they would drop below 1 HP in a trial, they instead hold at 1 HP as the Force (or sheer stubbornness) carries them one more round — narrate it as the trial testing, not killing. Karru also has Force Healing; a BYO Padawan without it should be handed a 2× Medpac I in their kit before session one so a solo run isn't a coin-flip. Use these openly; a scared player plays worse, and this adventure wants a brave one.
• This is a one-player module by design. A Padawan takes the Trials alone — that's the whole point of the ordeal, and the reason the adventure is built and balanced for exactly one PC. There is no two-player mode; the encounters, the difficulty budget, and the trials themselves all assume a single apprentice on the mountain.

Act I — The Ascent

Estimated length: 1 session, ~3–4 hours. Starts at level 1. What it covers: the landing and the Keeper (roleplay + the first offer), the Trial of Skill (a guardian duel that teaches initiative, cover, and lightsaber tactics), and the Trial of Courage (a Force-storm crossing and the beast it drives mad). Ends with the first milestone: level 1 → 2.

Tython fills the viewport green and wild, a single mountain rising out of unbroken forest with a ruin at its crown and a slow wheel of storm-light turning around the peak. This is the ascent — the mountain, the guide, and the first two trials, which prove the body and the blade before the mind and the spirit are ever tested.

Scene 1.1 — The Foot of the Mountain

This is the adventure's first and most important scene, and there is no combat in it — it's the Keeper, and everything depends on him landing as a gift. Let the player talk to him. He answers everything, kindly and well:

• What he is: "The Keeper. Someone always has been. When one goes, another comes." (True, in the most sinister possible way. He will not elaborate, and he's not lying.)
• The trials: He names all five honestly — Skill, Courage, the Flesh, Insight, Spirit — and says the mountain sets them, not him. "I only walk beside. I can't take them for you. I wouldn't if I could." (Also true.)
• The storm: "Tython's always stormed. The old ones said it's the world arguing with itself — light and dark, never settled. It gets worse the higher you go. Don't let it in your head." (Good advice. He means it.)
• Himself: If pressed on his past, he goes quiet, then gentle: "I climbed it once. Long ago. It didn't go the way I wanted." He changes the subject. (Do not reveal more. This is the only crack, and it should read as an old man's sadness, not a clue.)

Scene 1.2 — The Trial of Skill

The Trial of Skill measures mastery of the blade under pressure — so it's a duel, and it's the adventure's teaching combat: initiative, cover behind the broken columns, and the difference between reach and range. The guardians are constructs — ancient temple sentinels, not living, not Force-touched. That's deliberate: this trial can't be solved with a Force-push cheat, because the guardians are immune to being pushed, pulled, frightened, or mind-tricked. The Padawan has to fight.

Scene 1.3 — The Trial of Courage

The Trial of Courage is a hazard and a fight: cross the failing bridge through a Force-storm (which presses on the mind), then face the storm-maddened beast waiting on the far side. The courage is in not turning back — from the storm, from the drop, from the beast — with no one to cross first and no one to fight beside.

The crossing (hazard): The bridge is a timed nerve-test. Athletics or Acrobatics (DC 13) to cross a cracked span cleanly; on a failure, a section gives and the Padawan is left hanging over the gorge — a second check (DC 12) or a Force Jump / Move Object to recover (no fall on a single failure — it's a heart-in-throat save, and a used nerve). Layer the storm on top: as the Padawan crosses, the dark side of the storm reaches into their head. Call one Wisdom save (DC 13); on a failure they're Frightened until they reach solid ground — Disadvantage while the fear rides them — as the storm shows them the drop, the fall, every reason to go back. This is a good Heroic Surge moment: a Padawan who spends it to cross anyway is the Trial of Courage passing in real time.

Act II — The Temple's Heart

Estimated length: 1 session, ~3–4 hours. Played at level 2. What it covers: the Trial of the Flesh (a crucible that costs the Padawan something, and the flesh raiders who test whether they endure it with control or fury) and the Trial of Insight (seeing through the Keeper's offered shortcut). This is where the trials stop testing the body and start testing the person — and where the Keeper's kindness starts asking for something back.

Inside the temple now, past the great doors, the ruin opens into halls the storm can't reach — quiet, close, and older than the Order. Two trials wait here, and both are won or lost in the mind. The Keeper is more present in this act than any other: he's helping more, and every help has a hook in it.

Scene 2.1 — The Trial of the Flesh

The Trial of the Flesh is about enduring pain and loss without letting suffering curdle into anger — so it costs, and the temptation is to pay with the dark side instead of with endurance. Cross the ring of burning light to take the stone: the fire is a hazard that demands real endurance. Endurance or a Constitution save (DC 14) to push through the burn each of the (up to) three steps across; each failure deals 1d6 Fire and cannot be healed until the trial is complete (the burn is the trial). A Padawan can lower the cost by giving something up — narratively, the trial will accept a sacrifice in place of pain: an attachment, a possession, a memory offered willingly. Karru could offer the training saber his master gave him; a BYO Padawan offers whatever answers the "most attached to" question you wrote down. This is the intended solution — the Flesh trial is passed by letting go, not by out-toughing the fire. Reward it: a willing sacrifice halves the crossing's cost and impresses the mountain.

The temptation (the Keeper's Act II offer — Comfort): at any point the player can take the Keeper's out — let the anger carry them. Mechanically, if the player chooses to draw on anger/pain to power through, let it work: they cross the fire without a save, no damage, fast and strong. Note it. It is not instantly damning — but it's the first trial solved with the dark instead of through it, and the Keeper's approval when they do is warm and immediate and just slightly too pleased. If the player leans on it again in Act III, the summit offer has real gravity, because they've been saying yes.

Scene 2.2 — The Trial of Insight

The Trial of Insight measures perception and the judgment to see truth beneath a problem — and the Keeper has just offered to sell the Padawan a shortcut that is, itself, the thing the trial is testing them to refuse. There are two ways through, and recognizing which is which is the trial:

The true way — the door. The blank door opens for a Padawan who understands the trial honestly. This is a set of Insight and Use the Force reads of the gallery: the carved faces, the Keeper's own behavior, the wrongness at the edge of the mountain. Let the player investigate and roll:

• Insight·DC 14 reading the gallery: the carved Jedi all wear the same expression — not peace, but warning. The last few faces near the door are worn smooth, as if touched by many desperate hands.
• Use the Force·DC 15 at the door: it isn't locked; it's listening. It will open for honesty and stay shut for a lie — including the lie of a shortcut.
• Insight·DC 15 turned on the Keeper himself: for the first time, something doesn't add up. His concern is real, but it points the wrong way — he keeps steering toward the easy road, and an old, wise guide who has watched a thousand Padawans should know the easy road is the trap. (This is the first legitimate crack in his mask. Don't overplay it. A success here plants doubt, not proof.)

Speaking the truth the trial wants — the way through is honestly, not around — opens the door. No fight, if they see clearly.

The false way — the shortcut. If the Padawan takes the Keeper's offer and touches the "crack in the world" (a genuine dark-side vergence), it does exactly what he promised — it floods them with knowledge — and it also summons the trial's failure-state to test whether the vision is real:

Act III — The Cave and the Knighting

Estimated length: 1 session, ~3–4 hours (often shorter and more intense). Played at level 2, ending at level 3. What it covers: the Trial of Spirit — the climax, in the dark-side hollow beneath the summit, where the Keeper drops his guise, offers his real gift, and the Padawan faces a Reflection of themselves whose defeat is a matter of will — and then the Knighting, the final milestone into level 3 and a chosen vocation. This is the heaviest act; spend the most of the difficulty budget here.

Scene 3.1 — The Trial of Spirit

This is it — the reveal, the offer, and the last trial. The Keeper is the fallen Padawan, the Presence, the thing that has kept the mountain and fed on the broken. His offer is real: take his gift — surrender to the dark, to the hollow, to never feeling the fear again — and the Padawan gets power, immediately and enormously. And they become the next Keeper. The Trial of Spirit is refusing him — but the mountain does not let it be a simple "no." When the Padawan refuses, the hollow gives their darkness a shape:

Scene 3.2 — The Knighting

The Knighting is the payoff and the final level-up. The Padawan who passed the Trial of Spirit is made a Jedi Knight — and mechanically, this is the moment they advance from level 2 to level 3 and choose a vocation, exactly as the How to Become a Jedi guide frames it: level 3 is the knighting.

Endings

• Knighted (the intended ending). The Padawan refused the Keeper, mastered their Reflection, and was named Knight. The old Presence is laid to rest and Tython's storm quiets. The character is level 3 with a chosen vocation. Hook: the Council will want to know what happened on the mountain — and whether the Trials should still be run there, now that the Keeper is gone.
• Knighted, but the storm lingers (the partial ending). The Padawan passed, but at a cost — they took one of the Keeper's offers along the way (the anger-shortcut, the vergence) and refused only at the very end. They're a Knight, level 3, but something followed them down: a thread of the hollow, a whisper that isn't quite gone. Hook: the Keeper is freed, but the dark side of Tython found a crack in its new Knight — a sequel waiting to happen.
• Fallen (the dark ending). The Padawan accepted the Keeper's offer. They became the mountain's next Presence — a cautionary end, and a genuinely playable one for a table that wants it. Hook: years later, another Padawan climbs the mountain, and a kind old presence steps out of the trees to greet them. Run it again, with a new player, and let the old one watch.

Cast

Encounter Reference

GM Quick-Reference Card

• The one rule: the Keeper is kind until the summit. No tells. If the player likes him, you're running it right.
• The three offers: Act I Understanding (a harmless-seeming tip) → Act II Comfort (the anger-shortcut, the vergence) → Act III Power (the real offer, refusing which is the Trial of Spirit). Track the player's yeses in your head.
• Solo safety valve: one guaranteed "second breath" per act (hold at 1 HP for a round the first time they'd drop). Karru has Force Healing; hand a BYO Padawan 2× Medpac I.
• Failure is a setback, never a death — every trial's Setback note turns a lost fight into lost time and nerve, and the Keeper offering an easier way. The only terminal fall is accepting the offer at the summit — a choice, not a roll.
• Leveling: start L1 → L1→L2 at the end of Act I (Skill + Courage) → play Act II at L2 → L2→L3 at the Knighting. Each act sits at its own level.
• Pacing: end session 1 on the Keeper's fire after Act I; end session 2 on the door opening at the end of Act II; run Act III as one tight session to the knighting.
• The last line of the adventure is the vocation choice. Guardian, Sentinel, Consular, or Pathfinder — let the player name what kind of Knight the mountain made.