Your Nickname: Madeline
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How did you find us and decide to write with us? Other
If you have written other characters here: Yes
If Yes, list them all: Mary Beth MacEvoy
Archie Friar
Huxley Ward
Veronica Ward
Is this a Primary or Secondary Character?: Primary
11 ½” Birch with Runespoor Fang core. Inflexible. Smooth with several knots and chips. Ends in a sharp point, as though one part of the tip had been sliced off by a band saw.
Sam is tall, evening out around 6’1”, and well-built. Growing up performing lots of physical labor has really shaped his physique. His face is in keeping with his Pennsylvania Dutch heritage; he has dull cloudy gray eyes and dirty blonde hair.
He has a thin torso through which his ribs are visible. Though he gets enough to eat, he never seems to gain weight. This might be due to the fact that he is an “eat to live” rather than “live to eat” person, and besides satisfying hunger he doesn’t have a real interest in what he eats or when.
Sam’s face is rarely very animated, and often does not emote beyond a smile or a smoldering glare. In the face of danger his face is cool as a cucumber. In most situations it lingers at a consistent pleasant smile. His eyes are framed by crows’ feet and twinkle often. As a facet of his culture, Sam dresses in very plain clothing (although he tends to dress in more modern styles while at school) and keeps his hair free of product.
His voice is even and could be described as soothing, although when he is angered it is jarringly harsh. He has a lilt to his voice that comes from the dialect of Pennsylvania German that is spoken alongside English in his day-to-day life.
His biggest distinguishing mark is a tattoo of the traditional Pennsylvania Dutch single distelfink over his heart. His parents do not know about it. The distelfink, a goldfinch, is a traditional symbol of good luck among the Pennsylvania Dutch. The tulips surrounding the distelfink, called trinity tulips, symbolize faith in one’s fellow man and in oneself. The heart beneath the distelfink represents God’s love. Lastly, the black circle surrounding the entire tattoo symbolizes unity in Christ.
Sam grew up Amish, and as such he is very modest and unassuming. His culture stresses the importance of plainness, and of separation from worldly sins. Sam is an earnest follower of the doctrines of his culture (despite his inability to maintain a peaceful lifestyle), and tries keep a very low profile most of the time.
While he answers questions about his somewhat unique home life with earnest sincerity, he prefers to not bring attention to it. He also hates having his picture taken, though he will grudgingly do it most of the time.
Sam is a very goodhearted guy, but has a hot temper and can come across a good deal of the time as standoffish or angry. It isn’t odd to see the boy taking out his natural aggression with sports or the odd fight. His parents are concerned with his violent tendencies as one of the main tenets of the Amish culture is pacifism, although they understand that young men are often hotheaded.
He receives excellent grades in school, and mostly excels at wandwork related to dueling, and at herbology. He will not goof off with friends when there is work to be done. However, as he approaches the end of his term he has been more and more preoccupied with the fact that if he wants to return to his home he has to leave the wizarding world behind permanently. As such, he has begun to resent a good deal of wizard culture and deals with his day to day life grudgingly, a total one-eighty from the bright-eyed young boy who took to the new world like a duck to water.
He also has no patience for things he views as unnecessary or “fancy,” and will openly scorn things which seem superfluous, such as fancy uniforms, rich foods, or spellwork in situations where human effort is just as effective.
He obeys authority figures fairly diligently, although he will not follow orders which go against his moral code. Still, even when refusing a command, he does so with respect and politeness.
Sam is fairly naïve and has a very optimistic view of the world despite his grouchiness. He believes vehemently in the goodness of simple things and is more impressed by seeing people do the right thing than by any amount of showy magical ability. He is firmly of the mind that people are inherently good creatures and is always surprised by seeing them act cruelly or selfishly.
Sam's temper can get away with him in a dangerous way, and has gotten into a number of fights at school and on the field during games occasionally.
Being deeply religious, Sam had his doubts about the dubiousness of attending a school for 'witches.' He relaxed considerably when he realized that it did, in fact, not have anything to do with Satan and was instead a very neutral practice. He also saw the benefit of it in that he could use it to help people, and that was more important than the baser connotations of the craft.
Sam was born to Isaac and Miriam Lambright, two muggle Amish, on an unseasonably cold September evening around dinnertime. He was underweight and sickly as an infant, reluctant to eat and fairly small. He had an older brother, John, who was twelve years older than Sam and who was married and living on his own by the time Sam began attending SWIM.
He was a humble and polite child, easily pleased and always eager to try new things. Making friends came fairly easily to Sam and the kids kept busy working with their parents and sneaking off to the nearby town to hang out with “English” (the Amish term for non-Amish) kids. Sam never regretted being unable to own the frivolities that his English friends did, as he was allowed to use them occasionally anyway through them and he had fun things to do anyway.
As a young boy, Sam began showing signs of unusualness when his temper, when getting slightly out of control, would start fires. He had several such mishaps before his parents ever thought to attribute them to their son. It was a drought, after all, and fires hadn’t been unheard of in the region.
His acceptance to SWIM was a big shock for his poor parents, who fought over the idea of it for a long while before begrudgingly accepting it. The Amish, after all, hold their children to less strict standards than they do fully baptized members of the church, and were willing to view his dalliances into wizardry as his running-around period, the “rumspringa,” a period of time in which the youths of the community go out into the world to experience all of the things not present in the Amish community. A person does not become a true member of the Amish church until they are baptized as an adult. As such, they want their children to be absolutely sure of their commitment when they make it. Therefore the rumspringa is an important period of decision-making for a young person.
They do not discuss his abilities whatsoever in the house unless for very practical and logistical purposes, such as to ask whether he's finished with it finally or not. They have told people that Sam goes to stay with his cousins- ex-Amish who have left the order and now live in a small town on Lake Erie- and that he comes home summers to help work the fields. The most recent two summers, however, Sam has opted to stay with friends to avoid the increasingly nosy behavior of his parents and neighbors, and has not seen or heard from his family in nearly two years. Ironically, he actually has also stayed with his cousins in Lake Erie.
The community are willing to accept his parents' explanations of Sam's whereabouts, especially because many of them have had children leave in the middle of the night and disappear entirely. Children who leave the Amish often choose to do so after dark to avoid confrontation by the church elders. Sam is no exception. Every fall he packs his things and slips out of his home wordlessly after everyone has gone to bed. Since his decision to not return, the community rarely brings him up.
Early life at SWIM wasn’t as much of a culture shock for Sam as it was for the other kids, mostly because Sam found the aspect of separation from the outside world oddly comfortable. His studies were a big focus for him, though he viewed it all more as a novelty than a pressing matter, as he was faced with the nagging reality that magic was essentially the same beast as modern technology, and that both were contrary to the tenets of his religion.
Therefore, he had realized from the beginning that a life of magic would effectively bring about the end of his life in his community.
So, from the start, Sam tried his absolute best, hoping to see a glimmer of what his real potential would be magic-wise before he had to make a decision on which life to pursue. And it was obvious to him that he was gifted and focused when it came to magic, although he hadn’t any idea of what kind of a career he’d pursue when he finished school, if he decided to stay in the wizarding world.
As he progressed through the years, Sam took full advantage of SWIM’s wonderful athletic programs. He was very active in all facets of the sports teams. He was named the captain of the interscholastic baseball team in his fifth year and plays first base on that team as well as on the intermural team for Agrippa Hall, where he lives. He is also on the football team as a fullback and is on the quodpot team.
Despite his seriousness, Sam is well-liked. He is a generous and helpful soul who would, in perfect honesty, rather freeze to death than let a fellow human being go chilly. This leads to him being taken advantage of at times, although most feel too guilty to screw with him. As a result of this and his avid sports career, he has a good deal of close friends and is more or less friendly with the vast majority of his classmates.
Sam has been offered a place to live by one of his closest friends if he decides to abandon his Amish life. He's spent a good deal of time with his friend's family and they treat him well. It is something that he mulls over almost every day.
He was invited to attend the TWT as a champion due to his outstanding athleticism and grade point average. The staff also felt that he’d be a good diplomat if he didn’t get into too many fights.
Sam is very physically capable and is also quick on his feet with spells.
Sam is a young Amish man of intense temperaments. He has great faith in his fellow man. He loves sports and has a good deal of natural aggression that he has to let out via athletics or he ends up getting into fights. He is currently struggling to forge his identity and needs to decide whether he wants to leave his Amish life behind to pursue his wizarding abilities.
Samuel Lambright: Salem Junior