It's an initiation ritual of the Hellknight Order he/she wants to join, so I can think that a higher-ranked Hellknight could just use some kind of device to summon the devil for the hero to slay. That's basically how the trainees in the Hellknight citadels do it.
Then again, I don't know where the nearest Hellknight base is in Carrion Crown.
Play the AP as-is. There's an erinyes in Trial of the Beast at about the correct level.
Problem is, the death must be witnessed by an existing Hellknight official.
One of my PCs had the same issue. I had his superiors summon a Salikotal (from PF26) to ambush him on the way to the Shloss. They didn't directly witness, but after the fight he came around a bend in the trail and found them. Good enough.
Note that I chose the Salikotal over the same CR (and much cooler) Levaloch from Book of the Damned 1, mostly because the party will already have to fight a bunch of constructs, and Carrion Crown is a little light on the rouge/stealth monsters.
there is also a few bone devils in "ashes at dawn".
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Ha! Nice!
Lets see, good places to fit in a Hellknight proctor in Ustalav... humhumhum...
Okay, if you're looking at qualifying for the Hellknight prestige class right off the bat at 5th or 6th level you're talking the end of Trial of the Beast... and that's a little tricky. Of course, as a GM, you can do whatever you want, but thematically, Lepidstadt doesn't really scream Hellknight country - for any organized Hellknight outing that is. You never know when or where a questing Hellknight might show up (especially of the Order of the Nail, the most local order). Heck, you might even have such a character show up as a captive in Schloss Caromarc - for reasons I'm sure you can cleverly invent that fit with your game. The PCs free him, take him back to town, the would-be Hellknight expresses his interest in getting made an honest Hellknight, and the former captive offers to preside over the PC's trial... but there's no local signifers to summon up a devil. Well, that's where Jude Darimid steps in. After reveling to the PCs that she's a member of the Esoteric Order, she'd be willing to part with some... hand-wavy one time devil summoning magic item (like an elemental gem, but for a specific devil) from the Order's vaults. That helps establish the judge as an ally with serious, and perhaps unseemly, connections, gives the PC an NPC Hellknight contact, and gets the PC the class he wanted. There's a fair bit of convenient coincidence in this setup, but sometimes being a PC means the Fates smile upon you.
If you'd rather make the PC wait and find a place where it might make more sense for a Hellknight to show up... well, honestly, you might be waiting a while. Barstoi is the most martial of Ustalav's counties and you get pretty close to it by the end of Broken Moon, but never actually go into the county. There's a named Hellknight who serves the count there and it'd be conceivable that she has an Hellknight aide or occasional visitor. This isn't a terrible fit if you don't mind going a bit out of the way.
After that... hum. Sadly, Caliphas in Ashes at Dawn is the first city really cosmopolitan enough that the PCs pass through where you could easily explain away almost any type of character. It'd be easy to fit in two or three there and have then host the PC's trial... but by that point it's so late in the campaign that it's probably not worth it.
If I were running it, I'd probably go the captive route at the end of Trial of the Beast, or try something similar around the Ascanor Lodge in the beginning of Broken Moon. But really, whatever works for you game.
Hope this gave you some ideas! Best of luck!
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Heck, you might even have such a character show up as a captive in Schloss Caromarc - for reasons I'm sure you can cleverly invent that fit with your game. The PCs free him, take him back to town, the would-be Hellknight expresses his interest in getting made an honest Hellknight, and the former captive offers to preside over the PC's trial... but there's no local signifers to summon up a devil. Well, that's where Jude Darimid steps in. After reveling to the PCs that she's a member of the Esoteric Order, she'd be willing to part with some... hand-wavy one time devil summoning magic item (like an elemental gem, but for a specific devil) from the Order's vaults. That helps establish the judge as an ally with serious, and perhaps unseemly, connections, gives the PC an NPC Hellknight contact, and gets the PC the class he wanted. There's a fair bit of convenient coincidence in this setup, but sometimes being a PC means the Fates smile upon you.
I like this idea. Thanks. Doing it as a trial will prevent the other characters accidentally aiding the would-be hellknight.
I like this idea. Thanks. Doing it as a trial will prevent the other characters accidentally aiding the would-be hellknight.
Oh totally, that's completely the intention of this. This facet must have gotten lost somewhere along the line. (One reason I'm not a HUGE fan of prestige classes is that by the time you've got all the rules you need to make them work you've usually spent about 2 pages, and if you want to include fluff on all of that, you've got to spend even more - and as we tend to think of content in two-page sections [spreads] they're just a real awkward size). Pathfinder #27 has a ton of details on all things Hellknight.
Regardless! Yeah, the idea for this prerequisite is that all the Hellknight armigers get lined up in a courtyard after they've reached a certain point in their training. Up until that point they've gone through various martial rigors - and maybe even a bit of brainwashing - but they're really not much different than the elite forces of any military. That's when their signifer proctors upon the walls start summoning in barbazus. Each armiger must then fight and slay the summoned devil or be killed themselves. Those who fail are unfit. Those who succeed have faced not just mortal trials, but have faced and defeated a denizen of Hell itself. After confronting one of Hell's legions in battle, what horror can the mortal world hold? That's what makes them Hellknights.
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Just a note, I was looking at the same thing, my in person group has a person who when we get playing is intending to make a hellknight so I was trying to consider that. He should hit his hellknight level right at the end of the trial, so what I am intending was to swap out the LE judge's fighter levels for a few hellknight levels and have him play a bit of a bigger part, keeping an eye on the character(I'll start him off as an arminger who helped the professor at some point).
When the trial concludes he will approach that character and tell him that his focus on following what fit the law and tracking down justice over mob rule in protecting the beast was notable and will reward him with his armor as part of the monetary reward the group gets at the end.