Three Trials

The Three Trials, or the Three Trials System, is a system of ordeals used to prepare priests and paladins for their practice. Popularized by then-Bishop Johannes Moorwhelp during the War of the Lich King, the Three Trials system has since become common to most institutions of the Holy Light in the Eastern Kingdoms for the testing of candidates to holy office.

Nature and Sequence
Generally administered by a mentor, the Three Trials system is modeled off of the Three Virtues. In each ordeal, the holy man taking the ordeal must come into a "true and perfect encounter" with the Virtue that concerns that Trial, acting in neither deficiency nor excess that, in times of tribulation, one may look back to their ordeal as a moral inspiration.

The Three Trials are ordinal in nature and must be taken from beginning to end. It is integral to the training of a holy man that the ordeals be in order, e.g. Compassion cannot be understood with first knowing Respect.

In times of war or strife, a cleric's superior may declare one of the ordeals

The Trials are thus always taken in this order: Trial of Respect, Trial of Tenacity, Trial of Compassion.

Background
At the end of the War against the Lich King, the means by which paladins and priests were trained was called into question. Considered vague, arcane, and esoteric by the general populace, the office of a divine magic user was for some time considered unobtainable except to the most learned and noble.

When Johannes Moorwhelp came into office, this was still much the state of things. As he tried to unite the Order of Northshire with the rest of the Clergy of the Holy Light, he came into the perennial conflict between the cloistered clerics and the noble knights and priests of the city, one and the other demanding that their traditions were superior and must be respected. In truth, Moorwhelp thought, both systems were ineffective and needed serious reform.

After long suffering the ineffectual customs of the two orders, Johannes set out to this reform together with the first among the Clergy of the Holy Light. He sought to capture the essence of both the "practical" cathedral cleric and the "philosophical" abbey cleric's rubric, and, simultaneously, simplify the system.

As the Clergy grew (and the Church with it), the system caught on over the years and is now the common core education which most superiors require from their paladins and priests.