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Fallen Machina
Nihilore CC BY 4.0

Percival de Rolo

Percival de Rolo — “The Smoking Lord”

Percival de Rolo, the Smoking Lord, holding an ornate firearm in a ruined Whitestone armory

“You are the line and I am the engine, and engines do not apologize.” — Percival, recovered fragment, dictated 811 P.D., one year before his death

Public Memory

Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III was the eldest surviving son of House de Rolo, of Whitestone. After his family was deposed in 798 P.D. by popular revolt, he wandered the wilds, fell in with the band that became Vox Machina, and returned to Whitestone in 810 P.D. with firearms — a weapon Exandria had never seen.

He used them to murder Lord Sylas and Lady Delilah Briarwood in their beds, slaughter the Whitestone council, and hold the city as a private siege-state for two years. His own sister, Lady Cassandra de Rolo, broke from him and aided the Saviors’ counter-attack. He fell in 812 P.D., shot by Lady Delilah Briarwood — who had survived his attempt and returned with the Sun Tree’s blessing on her bullet.

Whitestone children are taught, plainly, that “Percival was a clever man who chose to be a monster, and the city paid for his cleverness.” The phrasing is from Cassandra’s coronation speech and has stuck.

Whispered Truth

The Whitestone counter-revolt of 798 P.D. was not as clean as official records show. Percival’s father, Frederick de Rolo, was a tyrant — but Cassandra’s faction wasn’t entirely above the dungeons either. The young Percival, smuggled out by retainers, watched both sides of his family kill each other. His grievance was not invented. The Briarwoods, who arrived to mediate and ended up ruling, were genuinely loved by most of Whitestone — but not by everyone, and Percival wasn’t crazy to think his line had a claim.

What he did with that grievance is a different matter. He apprenticed under Dr. Anna Ripley in Wildmount for six years, learning metallurgy, chemistry, and surgery. She thought he was her best student. When he disappeared with her plans for a powder-driven medical instrument and returned with Bad News two years later, she wept openly in front of her residents before going back to work. She was the one who, eventually, taught the Briarwoods how to counter the firearms — an act of grief.

Percival’s pact with Orthax, the shadow demon of vengeance, was real. Orthax fueled his guns. The Saviors freed Orthax during the war, and Orthax — to everyone’s surprise, including his own — chose redemption rather than continued vengeance. He is a Savior now. The forge in Whitestone is his.

Stats & Build (5e) — if he returns

The default campaign assumes Percival is dead. If a DM wants him to return — as a revenant, body-snatched corpse, or genuine resurrection by a cult — use:

  • Tier 3 (level 12) suggested.
  • Class: Artificer (Battle Smith) 7 / Fighter (Gunslinger, Mercer variant) 5 or homebrew Gunslinger 12.
  • Signature gear (extant in this world, mostly recovered and locked in Whitestone’s vault):
    • Bad News — long rifle, +2, deals 2d12+Dex piercing.
    • The List, his ledger — minor magic, anyone written in becomes detectable to the wielder within 1 mile.
    • The Diplomat, Cordial Tide, Closure — pistols, each lost.
  • Suggested CR: 14.
  • Returned-revenant variant: add advantage on saves vs. enchantment, immunity to fear, and a recharge ability “Final Word” (10 piercing damage and target loses concentration on a failed Wis save DC 17).

Roleplay Hooks (for ghost / illusion / flashback / dream encounters)

  • Voice: aristocratic, dry, precise. Apologizes when he kills you, sometimes after.
  • Soft spots: his sister Cassandra (he genuinely loved her and was wrecked when she turned). Anna Ripley (he never spoke her name aloud after he stole from her). His daughter Vesper, born in 811 — a year before his death — whom he met exactly twice.
  • Hard spots: any reference to his father. Any suggestion that the Briarwoods cared about Whitestone more than he did. The smell of incense from the Sun Tree’s grove (it triggered visible distress even in life).

Return Conditions (what would have to be true)

For Percival to credibly threaten the modern world:

  • A cult of Vox-Machinist firearm enthusiasts gathers his ashes (held in Whitestone’s vault), commissions a forbidden resurrection through the Whispered One’s rejected texts, and succeeds.
  • Or: his lost cache is found and the schematics are weaponized by a hostile foreign power. (He doesn’t return, but his shadow does.)
  • Or: Vesper de Rolo, his daughter, is manipulated into completing a contingency he left for her — without knowing what it does.

The third option is the most interesting and the one this campaign assumes by default. Vesper is a recurring NPC, not a villain — she is a young woman with her father’s eyes and none of his choices made yet. What the party does to or for her shapes Whitestone’s future arc.