DONE WITH THE REF SHEET, HELL YEAH!!! This took so damn much time and effort, I overthought absolutely everything, BUT I DID ITTTTT!
Anyway! Rulfie is a highly cheerful, open, and expressive man. He loves a good joke, loves life, and genuinely likes people in general. He's a traveling bard, used to sail as a deckhand, and has zero memory of where or how he grew up. He desperately avoids armed conflicts and has a seriously silver tongue. In normal times, he is the kindest soul—uncharacteristically kind for a world like Faerûn. But everything flips upside down in critical moments. Basically, if he actually picks up a weapon and his eyes go completely blank, and you happen to be the threat—you are utterly fucked.
The thing is, when he was a teenager, the commune he grew up in sold him to the Cult of Bhaal. He had to survive a brutal slaughter against other blood cult "recruits." He managed to escape, but somehow (I haven't fully decided how yet), he ended up giving himself amnesia. So he remembers his childhood, but after that, he just woke up as a fully grown, scarred young man in a ditch, half-naked, and barely managed to crawl his way to the port.
And now I want to actually tell you about him, because honestly, I've been neglecting that lately, and it's just terrible. Anyway, this is my baby, my sweet cinnamon roll of a son, and honestly, a bit of a sona in some places. I'm even planning to draw an original comic with him in the future.
For Baldur's Gate, I came up with a twist: his story doesn't start on the nautiloid like in the game. Instead, he got played by Astarion in Baldur's Gate and lured straight into Cazador's palace. Astarion went like, "The master is old and dying, it would bring him so much joy if such a talented bard sang for him!" And Rulfie was just like, "Well, what do I have to lose?"
Turns out, fucking everything.
Long story short, our bard got imprisoned in the vampire lord's palace and had to sing praise odes to the local dark master. As for Astarion, who initially lured him out of pure spite and jealousy (like, "Ugh, look at him, so happy, living his best life without a single care, completely free, god he pisses me off"), after actually spending time with him—since he was, of course, assigned to watch over the new favorite and teach him how to behave properly so he wouldn't mess up—he started feeling this weird mix of guilt and profound melancholy, watching Rulfie go through the exact same hell he had to endure.
As a Child of Bhaal (yeah, he has Bhaal's blood in him), Rulfie catches the eye of a lot of powerful figures the second they realize who they're dealing with. So throughout the game, Cazador, Raphael, and especially his dear sister Orin and Gortash badly want Rulfie to drop his little songs, get his act together, "embrace his true nature," and brutally murder whoever they point at in the glory of the Lord of Murder.
Rulfie, as you can probably guess, tells them all to fuck off and tries his hardest to act like a good person, actively suppressing the dark urge inside him. The toll of this is that his mental health is slowly but surely going down the drain, and he would have completely lost his mind by now if it weren't for Astarion and Halsin.
Rulfie actually broke Astarion out of the palace before the illithids snatched them. He feels an intense need to protect him, both because Astarion helped him out so much back at Cazador's, and because he looks a lot like his late husband. Aaand there is a very, very long history to their relationship that I'm honestly too shy to dive deep into right now. As for Halsin, he is just the most stable, grounding, and hot thing that has entered his life recently.
If I have enough energy and hyperfixation left, I definitely plan to draw him with Astarion and Halsin later, but yeah, for now, here we are! If anyone wants to draw him, I'd be incredibly happy. And if you're curious about him or his dynamics with the BG3 characters, please feel free to drop a question in the comments or the retrospring/anonym box!
