Most revenge stories revolve around a simple concept: hurt people tend to hurt other people, and settling the score makes everything right somehow.
The Legend of Vox Machina doesn’t seem to be a fan of those types of stories. Percy de Rolo’s arc is an honest portrayal of trauma and vengeance in animation. And at the center of his story is Orthax, a shadow demon who acts as a mirror Percy can’t look away from.
Percy’s Pact with Orthax Explained
As a teenager, Percy watched as Lord Sylas and Lady Delilah Briarwood, along with their ally Dr. Anna Ripley, slaughtered most of his family and seized control of Whitestone, the city his family ruled. He escaped, only because his younger sister Cassandra freed him from captivity. As they ran, Cassandra was hit by several arrows. Assuming she was dead, Percy kept running, but the decision to leave her behind would haunt him for years.
The trauma of the coup combined with his survivor’s guilt caused Percy’s hair to turn white. He wandered alone, with no home, no family, and no purpose other than the burning need to make every person responsible for this tragedy pay.
The details of how Orthax found Percy are murky. In the first campaign for the web series Critical Role, Percy describes having a dream where a being explicitly offers him the chance to get revenge in exchange for souls. In the animated series, it’s ambiguous on whether Percy understood what exactly he was getting into, with Orthax himself describing their pact as an “unspoken partnership.”
Either way, the end result was the same. Orthax planted the designs for a hexabarrel pepperbox pistol into Percy’s mind, a weapon unlike anything that existed in the world of Exandria. Once Percy built the gun, called The List, the pact was sealed with the names of his targets engraved on each barrel of his gun: the Briarwoods, Ripley, Sir Kerrion Stonefell, Professor Anders. The people who destroyed his family. In exchange for the gun, every soul Percy killed in revenge was consumed by the demon.
What Revenge Does to a Person
Each time Percy kills one of his targets, it’s a chilling yet beautiful display of violence. None of the people involved with the coup at Whitestone are sympathetic and it feels good knowing they’re finally getting their comeuppance.
It doesn’t change the fact that Orthax is a shadow demon that grows stronger with every soul he consumes. Not only that, but Percy himself becomes corrupted over time. The sharp, empathetic, calculating man his friends know starts to disappear whenever he draws The List. He shoots the Briarwoods’ coachman without any mercy. He hunts down anyone with even the faintest connection to the people on his hit list. The black smoke surrounding him when he draws The List isn’t just visual flair. It’s a sign of how much of himself he’s given away.
The scene that really disturbs Vox Machina is the one with Professor Anders, Percy’s former tutor. They saw something in him that wasn’t just anger anymore. Something was very wrong here.
Even Percy’s iconic plague doctor mask is a warning.
Orthax’s true form is beaked, shadowy apparition. Without realizing it, Percy modeled the mask after the demon living inside his gun. Putting it on transforms him from a grieving nobleman seeking justice to No Mercy Percy, a figure of fear designed to terrify his enemies.
What the show is trying to say is revenge doesn’t heal your wounds. It infects them instead. Orthax externalizes that process literally; Percy’s pain becomes his power, and the more Percy feeds it, the more of himself he gives away.
How Percy Broke Free From Orthax
Percy eventually breaks his connection with Orthax by shooting himself in the hand, forcing the demon back into The List. Then Scanlan throws the gun into acid.
It should be over. But Orthax, like the trauma it represents, doesn’t just disappear because you decide you’re done with it.
The demon resurfaces through Ripley, having made a deal similar to the one with Percy. Percy tries to reason with Ripley as he offers to help her reach her full potential so she could use her brilliance to help others. Ripley responds by killing him.
When the half-elf twins Vax and Vex avenge Percy by killing Ripley, Vax realizes that Orthax is inside Ripley’s gun, Animus, and so is Percy’s soul. Vox Machina performs a resurrection ritual to save Percy, but Orthax blocks their attempts as he tortures Percy’s soul. It takes Vax defying his god, the Matron of Ravens to “bend” Percy’s fate along with Vex finally declaring her love for him to finally break Orthax’s hold on Percy. When the resurrection is complete, Keyleth severs the connection between him and Orthax for good.
Percy’s arc is one about grief and trauma. The Legend of Vox Machina isn’t afraid to admit that revenge isn’t as satisfying as it seems. It doesn’t bring back the ones you’ve lost and can actually make things worse by taking you down a dark path.
What saves Percy from Orthax are his friends. Vox Machina sympathizes with his loss and gives him the support and love he needs to weaken Orthax’s grip on him.
Trauma leaves behind an open wound, but the people who love you can help with the healing process.
