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Godric was born the third son of a third son, out in the back of beyond. His parents worked the land for their liege lord, poor but loving, and everyone around the settlement -- in the depths of the woods around Pridehall -- was more or less part of the same sprawling extended family. He was a hard worker, cleverer with his fingers than some of his brothers and sharper with his mind than most, but an odd, quiet boy who didn't really have much use for speaking when he could be dreaming, wondering, or attaching himself to stories of greater things. He learned herbcraft from an old man who lived near the edge of the woods, and when the Father Mercy of Pridehall sent his Mercies to circuit the land with the Knights of Solace for guides, he attached himself to the feet of their robes every year, and learned what he could. When he was old enough to apprentice, he earned permission to tag along, and followed in their train for awhile, but he was disgruntled by the mellow patience of those he traveled with, and demanded reasons for everything, until finally he went his separate ways with the Mercies and attached himself as apprentice instead to a traveling bonesaw named Kiton, Crownsworn, who wandered doing doctoring for pay along the roads and paths, and grew a reputation as particularly creepy for haunting graveyards after funerals and digging up the dead to study their rotting bones. There are doctors who are educated at fancy physicians' colleges, but Godric learned first from the gentle healers and then from the vicious, wandering the world with bright, fascinated eyes and learning what he could, where he could, with the appetite of a young man who wanted to know everything. He knew that Kiton was involved in some darker practices and while he didn't like it, he found he could ignore it in pursuit of his studies of anatomy, the inner workings of blood and bone, the mixtures and tinctures and practices he learned. Many young men have sins, but Godric's worst and defining one was curiosity. He never asked what Kiton did with some of those bodies, though, until one day the Inquisition came. At the end of that night, Kiton had lost an eye to the tender mercies of the House of Questions, and was Shreve Tyde's loyal man for life, as long as that was. Kiton and Godric both worked for the Inquisition after that, and if Kiton ever dug up a dead body again, he definitely never did it where Godric could see him. One night, after patching up a young woman after a particularly brutal round of questioning from several confessors, an Inquisitor of a rather different mindset caught him on his knees, vomiting, on the grounds behind the House of Questions, trying to hide his dismay. No matter how hard he tried to mask and bluff with some of the others, Laric knew him after that for what he was -- a human being with human compassion -- and when the Grayson Prince became High Inquisitor, Godric found that he no longer had to mask and bluff quite so hard. Kiton died with several other Shreve loyalists when the new Master of Questions took over the Inquisition and began cleaning house. That was when Godric found himself promoted to Inquisitor, without fear of the blood on his hands getting there in quite so hideous a way as before.

There's an element of shaggy to the salted dark hair that tufts from Godric's scalp a lot of the time, as though keeping track of haircuts is not high on his list of important things to do. He has long-fingered, clever hands. His features are strong, the apples of his cheeks defined by excellent bone structure, his nose aquiline, his jaw angular but sturdy. The pinch of lines at his brow, at the corners of his mouth, a scar on his chin-- all these things suggest age. Though his features have their own distinct, almost rugged handsomeness, there's something about him that suggests the future crag and droop of an English bulldog. His eyes are dark, a deep, liquid brown, beneath the heavy thickness of sardonic brows.

Godric is dry, sardonic, and edgy. He has seen it all, man, and frankly, he's too old for this shit. An old country doctor with a slightly bad attitude but a heart of gold beneath that craggy exterior, what he hasn't seen gives him a headache; he'll take it in stride, but mysteries give him a bellyache; he's a kvetcher, a complainer, but he'll knuckle down and get it done. He badgers his patients to take care of themselves, because like many men cursed with compassion, he cares too much; he'll be rude about it because he doesn't have time to guard feelings when there's work to be done. Will the patient live, Doc? How would he know, he's not a psychic. Facts beat feelings every time.