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Percival Frederickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo the Third died in the dungeons under Whitestone Castle, eight days after his eighteenth birthday from a combination of shock and blood loss. So it goes. These things happen when you've been tortured for weeks on end.
(Don't worry, this is still the story you know. These threads were here all along, hidden, but providing the necessary structure for more prominent lines. Consider this a peek behind the tapestry, if you would.)
Say it with me: The de Rolos live as long as Whitestone lives.
It's not just a semi-famous adage. It's true. So when Cassandra saw her brother dead on the cell floor and begged him to wake up, he did.
Cassandra rationalized what happened, of course. She was no healer - and Doctor Ripley had left Percy in terrible shape. It was easy to mistake someone in a coma for a corpse. Clammy skin was expected when you were wearing little more than rags in a stone dungeon in the middle of winter. Grey-pale complexion was not a surprise considering the amount of blood pooled on the ground. His limp limbs were an obvious side effect of being unconscious. It was understandable that between the gore and the panic that she would make incorrect assumptions. Those achingly long minutes moments where he didn't seem to breathe... Cassandra was young, and scared, and inexperienced, and not thinking clearly. Percy hadn't died, hadn't lain dead in her arms. He'd groaned awake when she'd asked, after all. She wasn't a fool - she knew how resurrection worked. A magicless girl with no training or knowledge of the arcane whatsoever couldn't pull off a high-powered and notoriously complex spell like that.
(Unless, of course, she was a de Rolo, on whitestone, asking for the soul of the last remaining son of the rightful ruler of Whitestone.)
Let me explain.
There's something you already know about whitestone. The rock, not the city that it's built on, built of. It's important. It's why it's so incredibly rare, and therefore incredibly valuable. That's right - Whitestone amplifies magic. It's more pronounced in its refined form residuum, of course, but whitestone alone has noticeable effects, if you care to notice.
There's something you might not know about magical things. They have a... memory, so to speak. If you use a focus for the same spell, again and again and again, it will become easier for anyone to cast that particular spell from that focus, regardless of their skill level. Even if a magical item wasn't terribly strong to begin with, it certainly would become so after enough repetitions. That's one of the reasons why ancient artifacts are so sought after, and why they're so powerful.
The de Rolos have lived on whitestone, in whitestone, for Whitestone, for over a thousand years. It's easy to forget that living is a magic all its own. There is a rhythm, a cycle, a ritual to it. Birth, life, death. The same names, repeated every few decades with an extra number at the end. Birth, life, death. The same green eyes, generation after generation. Birth, life, death. The same talents, passed down from father to daughter, from mother to son, from grandfather to grandson, from aunt to niece. Birth, life, death. The same traditions, year after year, season after season, always slightly different, but always exactly the same. Birth, life, death. The same bones, put to rest in rows under the same stones that they'd once walked on. Birth, life, death. The same rituals, repeated. Century after century, their memory engraved into the stone one life at a time just as surely as the steady tread of de Rolo feet wore deep divots into the solid whitestone stairs.
You might not know, but may have guessed, that the de Rolo line is as human as they come. No elves, no dwarves, no gnomes, no orcs, no halflings, no dragonborn, no tieflings, no aasimar, no goliaths, no tabaxi, nothing. Not even any half-versions of any of the above. Only and always fully human, which is honestly rather rare in Exandria. And yet, through a combination of their isolated location and the occasional bout of straight-up racism, there is not a single drop of magical blood in their collective veins.
In most cases, this would be an insurmountable barrier to being able to perform magic. However, Cassandra is not just any human, and her blood is not just any human blood.
She is a de Rolo, and that blood was spilled, over and over, on whitestone, in skinned knees on the cobbles and sliced fingers in the kitchen and births in the bedrooms and minor concussions in the courtyard and hacking coughs in the infirmary and duels in the hallway and bitten cheeks in the dining room and papercuts in the library... tiny sacrifices to the magic of living. Drop by incidental drop, Whitestone was thoroughly soaked in the blood of the de Rolos long before the Briarwoods darkened their door.
You also know, of course, that there is no stronger magic than blood magic. The de Rolos are indelibly bound to whitestone, and Whitestone is bound to them.
You probably do not know, though if given a chance you might reason it out for yourself, that the very first resurrection wasn't the flashy performance you're used to. Every ritual starts somewhere, and that somewhere is usually utter desperation. When you are on your knees with the ruin of everything you care for in pieces in your hands, you aren't worrying about fancy incense or specially embroidered cushions or what metal your knife is made out of. The pomp and circumstance are for an audience, not for you.
The first resurrection was no more or less than someone who had lost their world, begging the universe for help. The gods, rudimentary as they were back then, were moved to pity by that plea. There was no ritual, no heartfelt declarations of love, no sacrifices. Only a question ("Please?") and an answer ("Yes."). Those trappings came later, as the gods came into their power and people learned how to set up boundaries that would allow them to safely wield it. This was long before Whitestone, or even whitestone, of course. But something so fundamental is seared into the memory of the world.
So while whitestone wasn't there, it knew. It remembered.
It remembered the birth of a squalling male baby in the master bedroom on the second floor on a cold winter's day. It remembered scuffed palms at the entry to the main office as that toddler fell while learning to walk. It remembered a stubbed toe from a sibling prank gone wrong in the nursery. It remembered a bloody nose a few years later when he fought off a bully tormenting the cook's boy just outside the kitchen. It remembered a slit forefinger caused by the sharp edges of a brand-new Celestial book in the library. It remembered a smashed thumb from a clumsy hammer blow in the forge. It remembered a de Rolo, on the cusp of manhood, whimpering into a puddle of his own blood in the dungeons.
It remembered the bodies of so many other de Rolos. (Shot in the dining room, stabbed in the bedrooms, throats slit in the hall, tortured in the dungeon, splashes of red stark against the whitestone.)
Birth, life, death.
"Please?" asked a little girl who had just lost her world. (It remembers her birth, her life, her scraped knees and nosebleeds and sword-pricked fingers, just as it remembered every other little girl just like her raised on its stone.)
"Yes," Whitestone answered. This was its right. It was not a god, but it still had power. It was in its nature to amplify magic, and there is no magic greater than love, no ritual more rote than living, no bond stronger than blood.
Whitestone lived - therefore this de Rolo would live.
When Percy woke after his (first) resurrection, his hair was white as the stone he'd been born and lived and died on. A gift, perhaps. Or a reminder. A piece of home he could carry with him wherever he wandered. A marker to claim where he truly belonged.
Cassandra didn't notice - there was enough dried gore in his hair to make it look brown, especially in the dim light of the dungeon. After, everyone just assumed it was the trauma. But trauma-induced hair color changes appear slowly. Growing in from the shocked roots, not appearing wholesale from the tips to the scalp. Both of the remaining de Rolos are educated enough to know this. Neither of them has had the time nor reason to think about it through to the obvious conclusion.
(I told you that this was still the story you already knew. Now can you see how these threads weave together?)
When Percy woke after his (second) resurrection, it was also on whitestone, in Whitestone. This was a wise choice on Vox Machina's part. If they'd have tried the ritual elsewhere, it is unlikely they would have succeeded. Whitestone remembered this man, remembered answering his sister's plea so many years ago, remembered how he'd bled on the ziggurat steps as he fought to free Whitestone of the darkness that threatened to strangle the life out of it. Whitestone lived now, thrived, even, because of him. It lived - therefore this de Rolo would live.
(Sarenrae honestly appreciated the help. Resurrections are never easy, but one involving a brutalized corpse and a soul further brutalized by a vengeful demon? Even for a god, it was nigh impossible. Luckily, there is no magic greater than love, no ritual more rote than living, no bond stronger than blood shed together, for each other.)
A few years later, Whitestone welcomed the first de Rolo with a properly magical heritage into the world. Birth, life, death. Her hair grew in as white as her father's, as white as the stone they had both been born on, that they lived on. A gift, perhaps. Or a reminder. One-quarter elven isn't much, but when amplified by her de Rolo connection to whitestone? When she cast her first spell, it was with all the power imbued by both of her bloodlines.
(Incidentally enough, it was to heal her younger brother's scraped and bloodied knee. Whitestone remembers their father falling in just that same spot. That turn is treacherously sharp.)
Remember: the de Rolos live as long as Whitestone lives.