Rafe

Rafe is a tall man with short purple hair that has two light streaks of a lighter blonde color on the left side. He has usually wears a golden nose stud, and has a large back tattoo.

His hands are actually kind of rough, covered with calluses and small scars.

He’s a glassworker/artist that primarily uses blown glass techniques, but dabbles in most other glass techniques. His speciality is making accessories and charms that protect people from magic and physical attacks. In-game he runs a special accessory shop from his studio.

In person Rafe is a very calm and relaxed. He meets most confrontation with a laugh, and rarely seems to get riled up or insulted about anything. The chill personality means some people make the mistake that he doesn’t notice anything or is just a little slow. In reality he’s incredibly sharp and notices a lot more than people expect, often coming back with observations that catch people off guard when they try to pull one over on him. He just doesn’t see the point in getting upset about minor things, and can often get philosophical, though he is helpful when people ask him for assistance When forced into it, he does know how to fight very well. The sword over in his shop isn’t for decoration, and he would patrol Traverse Town with Leon sometimes. He’s also smarter than most people give him credit for, something he has mixed feelings about. He can’t look that stupid, can he?

His home is a cluttered, cozy place, with pieces of his glass art placed around piles of thick books scattered across furniture surfaces in no particular order. He also owns nine cats, that can usually be found in either his house or his shop depending on the time of day. One of them is a three-legged tabby, and two of the others are hairless cats that Rafe dresses in the ugliest cat sweaters he can find. The others are strays he’s adopted over time.

Rafe calls Radiant Garden his home, but it's not the world he's originally from. The world he's from is covered in massive forests, and most towns are built in the treetops, connected by massive networks of bridges. The area he grew up in was next to a mountain range, and the forest ran right up to the edge of a canyon where a mining village had homes carved into the walls of the canyon itself.

He arrived in Radiant Garden after traveling around for a while, where he opened his studio and lived until it’s destruction. He managed to escape, and ended up in Traverse Town, where he worried about some of his friends that he couldn’t find. He first meets Sora there, and encourages him, having been told by Mickey to keep an eye out for this particular keyblade wielder. Feeling guilty that he can’t do more for him, he keeps an eye out for him.

By Kingdom Hearts II he’s back in Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden working to help return it to the way he remembers it once being.

He most hangs around Leon and Co while in Traverse Town/the return to Radiant Garden in KH3. Yuffie calls him 'Uncle Rafe' sometimes. During Dream Drop Distance and beyond, he serves as a go-between for the Restoration Committee and the former Organization memebers. He's the only person who knows people on both sides, and the only reason the Restoration Committee was willing to trust Ienzo and Co at first.

When he was much younger, Rafe actually trained to be a keyblade wielder but failed to actually manifest a keyblade for various reasons despite trying. It's speculated that his fear created a sort of block. He started to truly believe he woudl enver get a keyblade, and this it wouldn't appear. His training was eventually terminated, and feeling angry, he set out on a long journey of self discovery. He met Mickey during this. Most of his knowledge of hearts, and what brief research he did into them was based on him trying to understand his own situation. Eventually he started to heal from the disappointment and let go his anger. His glassblowing was part of the focus that let him heal, so it is important to him, as with the accessories he produces from it he has found another way to help people.

Maybe finally gets over his fear of failure and manages to manifest a keyblade in Kingdom Hearts 3. It’s the first time he’s tried in years, despite encouragement from others