WE LEARNED ABOUT FOUR OF THE TRIALS IN "THE TRIALS OF DEATH. HERE'S SOME INFO ABOUT ANOTHER ONE.


Col Lector was a famed General who was ambushed by a group of vampaneze during a scouting mission to find out if they were planning to attack Vampire Mountain. (This was not long after they broke away.) He managed to evade them for a while, but they caught up with him as he was swinging his way across an old footbridge above a chasm -- it was in very poor repair, so he had to dangle from the remaining boards and pieces of rope and haul himself across, hand by hand. The vampaneze hurled rocks and knives after him, and though they wounded him badly, he made it to the other side and escaped.


The Trial of Col Lector is held in a high-ceilinged chamber in Vampire Mountain. Bars and ropes have been strung across the top of it, and vampires have to dangle from them for five minutes, moving from one sector to another while attempting to dodge the rocks and knives that a selection of their peers on the floor are throwing at them. It's one of the more perilous trials, which seven out of every ten vampires fail. Mr Crepsley drew that as one of his trials on his way to becoming a General, and fared better than most, skillfully avoiding almost all of the flying rocks and daggers. In fact only one vampire managed to strike him more than once with his missiles, and that was his mentor, Seba Nile, who struck him four times, once with a rock, the other three times with knives, two of which buried deep in the young vampire's flesh and left him with scars for life. The famed quarter master of Vampire Mountain could never be accused of going easy on his students!