Weird urxvtd/c dpi bug

I typically have my dpi set to 102 and everything was working fine until I installed virtualbox, I believe one of the qt dependencies it pulled down is the culprit.

After rebooting my dpi in urxvtc had shrunk to what I figured out was 96 even though everything I can think of checking (xdpyinfo, xrandr & xrdb) all reporting 102.

I removed vb and everything it brought with it but no change, urxvt (and everything else on the system I think) is working as it should but not urxvtc.

here is a side by side comparison: left=urxvtc right=urxvt

anybody have any ideas as to what is wrong or what I can try to fix it, my google-fu has failed me?

edit: I should mention in my xinitrc I have urxvtd start after I have set the display options:

userresources=$HOME/.Xresources
...
if [ -f "$userresources" ]; then
    xrdb -merge "$userresources"
fi
...
systemctl --user import-environment DISPLAY
xrandr --auto
xrandr --dpi 102
...
urxvtd -q -o -f
...

update…
tried changing what starts urxvtd but no change, however, if I killall urxvtd after everything is loaded and start it again, it picks up the correct settings.