Yancey Montgomery wants to be thought of as a visionary. Not willing to settle for just creative or talented or clever, he wants to be all of these things uniquely and superlatively. Yancey wants to be Great. He wants to be looked up to and remembered. To Influence and Lead and Make A Difference. He desires (almost pathologically) to get out there and experience new things and have grand adventures. And to his credit, he’s ambitious enough that he might just make those dreams a reality - if he doesn’t muck it all up for himself along the way.

He’s a lot. But you wouldn’t know it from a glance. Yam’s downright placid on the surface. His default mood is diplomatic and he doesn’t immediately give the impression that he’s as … rambunctious as he is. Unassuming, unflappable and even a little silly, he seems likeable – positively pleasant, even – if maybe a little boring. It’s good camouflage, because sedate this guy ain’t.

Despite every effort to seem unruffleable, Yancey is by no means a go with the flow person – he’s just pretty good at faking it in polite company (a lesson learned from growing up under the thumb of controlling grandparents). He’s competitive and calculating and passionate to a truly ridiculous degree. A dreamer of big dreams. An adventurer. Yam wants to win, but he doesn’t crave the spotlight; he wants to see his loved ones win and succeed, too.

More important to him than winning, actually, is being in control - a trait inherited from his father, no doubt. Yancey struggles with not being in charge of things. Take away that control – by making him feel helpless or giving him a truly hard time – and that unflappability goes out the window, and most of Yam’s composure, with it.

Yeah, so, there are some megalomaniacal undertones at work here, but it’s cool because Yam’s a good-hearted guy. He wants to do right by his friends and places a high value on being a decent human being. He has a strong sense of justice. It’s just that he’s not afraid to be a little underhanded – a little manipulative – to get what he wants. He's an ends justify the means kind of person, not about to be held back because someone he doesn't really know might get screwed. Call him Craptain America.

Considering he’s never been a super popular guy, Yance operates with a truly boggling level of self-confidence. He is curious, sociable and easily outgoing. A friendly extrovert, the sort unafraid to carry on conversations with strangers. He's nice - Minnesota nice. Unfailingly polite and diplomatic and, honestly, terribly passive aggressive.

Yancey’s confidence is hard won and rooted in overcompensation. He is self-conscious about where he fits in, stemming largely from the fact that he doesn’t fit neatly into either one of his families. So, instead of worrying about things, he forces himself to act when he feels self-doubt. It’s led to a lot of leap-before-you-look-ing, but he’s also been doing it for so long that it’s become genuine confidence at this point – mostly. There are times when a foolish opportunity presents itself and he takes it because he’s still worried about looking like he knows he can do it. So, in practice, when Yancey thinks something's Right, he goes for it. Acting or speaking without reservation – as diplomatically as possible, of course, but he's not going to back down from a hill he feels is worth dying on, either. He’s brave and adventurous, but his self-assuredness makes him incautious. Yancey has a talent for taking on too much and getting in over his head. Like going to Hogwarts. That was a stinker of a move. Thankfully, he hasn’t let his failures get him down, yet.

Well-placed in Thunderbird, Yancey is all about experience and not just in the sense of adventure and go-getting (although, yes, that, too). He has a very tactile personality, preferring to be as hands on as humanly possible – to touch and feel and sense. This lends itself nicely to his artistic interests, but on the flip-side, he has trouble with more abstract tasks. Academia has always been particularly challenging for him. He’s a smart kid with some brilliant ideas in his noggin, but he struggles in school. His predilection for being hands on causes him other troubles, too. For one, he has to consciously avoid violating other people’s personal space. He also tends to make messes of himself and everything around him – largely because he has a bad case of nervous hands. Left idle, Yam is a destructive force, taking things apart to occupy his fingers and his head.

He’s a romantic. And, honestly, how could you wrap yourself up in something like LARP and not be, at least a little? Big, fantastic stories and happy endings are his bread and butter. He delights in love. Loves adventure. Sees beauty in strange places. Basically, he’s a huge sap.

And as if that weren’t bad enough, his sense of humor is terribly corny. Yancey laughs easily and politely at most everything and enjoys teasing and being teased, but he's not producing any truly cutting humor, himself. A little bit of a dingus, he does impressions, speaks in silly voices and is generally a goof. A lot of his jokes land so flat that they wind up being funny, unintentionally. This is not on purpose. I swear.

Yam is a little scatterbrained. He’s good at focusing on things in the moment and great at noticing fine details, but actually retaining that information is a challenge. He’s usually thinking about a lot of different things at once, and doesn’t always commit the important stuff to memory. He forgets names. Forgets dates. Goes places and forgets why he went there. This penchant for forgetfulness does not mesh with his controlling nature and is a tremendous source of frustration for him. He combats it by keeping notes and lists of just about everything. His living space in the cabin is plastered with post its. His planner is his bible.

➥ MALLOREIGH HOLLOWAY. (nee [OPEN]) Mother, Half-blood, 36. Artist/Graphic Designer (Part-Time) Malloreigh is a passionate free spirit and enthusiastic mother who has always encouraged her children to follow their dreams. Mal has been a decent co-parent with Raleigh, despite her frustrations with him, and has had majority custody of Yance for quite a while. She an artist, though she has found little success selling her work. She is employed part time as a graphic designer for a tiny wizard ad agency in Turtle River.
➥ RAMIRO HOLLOWAY. Step-Father, Halfblood. Deputy Owlmaster, Great Lakes Region.
Yancey doesn't call Ramiro Dad, but he does think of him as a second father. Ramiro has always been there for him, a calming force in his life. Yam is incredibly proud of his step father's recent promotion to Deputy Owlmaster.
➥ LONDON HOLLOWAY. Half-sister. Beans on Toast monster. Looks fabulous like in her dreams.
➥ PARIS HOLLOWAY. Half-sister. Pear monster. Needs to stay out of Yam's room.
➥ DRESDEN HOLLOWAY. Half-sister. Coppertale Freshman. Absolutely, without a doubt, a monster.

➥ RALEIGH MONTGOMERY. Father, Pureblood, 36. Healer.
Raleigh is a compassionate but nervous man who, like his son, needs to feel in control to function. He is also the eldest child of the Pureblood Montgomery line and stands to inherit a great deal, so long as he does what he's told. When it comes to that side of his family, he's a pushover. He is active in his son's life, a good father, but often has the interest of The Family in mind oved the interests of his son.
➥ EILEEN MONTGOMERY (nee [AVAILABLE]). Step-Mother, Pureblood. Healer.
Perfectly alright. She hasn't adopted Yancey as her own, but they like each other well enough.
➥ BERNICE MONTGOMERY. Half-Sister. Eight.
Too young to be a monster, yet, but getting there. Bernie likes to owl Yancey magazine clippings of her current boyfriends from Gryffin Beat.
➥ THE MONTGOMERYS. Grandparents, Pureblood.
Yam's grandparents used to control most of his life, as they had selected him as heir. With the birth of Bernice, it seems that Yam has become the Spare. Still, they pay half his tuition to Gooseberry. He doesn't really care for them and tells them that he's at Gooseberry learning to become a wandmaker. Which is a lie.

INFANCY
In high school, Raleigh and Malloreigh were that couple. The sweethearts. The ones everyone knew would wind up together. So, it surprised no one when, at eighteen, they had their fairytale autumn wedding at the Montgomery Estate near International Falls, MN. Ever eager to impress his family, Raleigh jumped into healer training right after the honeymoon. Malloreigh stayed at home to focus on her art. It was less than a year before the problems started.

Neither was really at fault for the decay of their marriage. The external stressors - distance, successes and failures at work, family tension – didn’t help things, but on top of it all, Mal and Raleigh simply did what many teenagers do: grew up and grew apart. Malloreigh was a free spirit, a spontaneous woman who wanted to follow her dreams and had little interest in appeasing the Montgomerys – who didn’t care much for her pursuit of art. Raleigh was orderly and traditional and loyal to his family. No matter how badly they wanted, they simply couldn’t make it work. It didn’t stop them from trying to mend the cracks, anyway.

And that’s where Yancey came in. Unfortunately, although the pregnancy was easy, married life did not improve. Malloreigh was fifteen days from her due date when she realized her child would not save her marriage. So she sat Raleigh down for a frank discussion, and together, after a bit of grief, they settled on a plan. The two of them stayed together for six months after their son was born – until Malloreigh was well enough to get out on her own – and then they separated.

The divorce was settled quickly. As amicable as a divorce can be, thankfully. Both parents wanted to be involved in the life of their son, and custody was split evenly. The first few months of Yancey’s life weren’t quite tumultuous but they were certainly hectic. Thankfully, he had two loving parents taking care of him.

THE TWINS
Raleigh, of course, stayed near International Falls with his family and wrapped up his healer training. Malloreigh worked freelance with an ad agency and jumped back into the dating pool not long after the divorce was finalized. She found a steady boyfriend in Ramiro Holloway, a handsome, outdoorsy owl handler working at the Owlpost hub out of Turtle River. They became serious very quickly. Yancey was just two when his mother leaped back into marriage, heavily pregnant with twins.

The new family relocated to Turtle River. Custody of Yancey got a little complicated, but Malloreigh and Raleigh made it work. A year after the twins came Dresden, and although the Holloway house was loud and crowded, it was happy.

ADOLESCENCE
And so, half the time, Yancey grew up in a tiny home stuffed to bursting with girls – loud, monstrous girls, overflowing with personality – and the other half he spent in an old, empty mansion, full of things a little boy isn’t allowed to touch. It was jarring. Even though the girls scrambled to infiltrate his room while he was gone, he liked the little crowded house a lot better.

But the Montgomerys wanted Yancey for their heir and they weren’t letting go. He may not’ve been a pureblood, but it wasn’t a huge concern for a family that hadn’t been consistent in record-keeping that sort of thing in generations. And so as he got older Yancey’s Montgomery grandparents tried to exert more and more influence over his life. They decided the school – a ritzy private academy for witches and wizards in International Falls, separating him from his sisters – and his extracurriculars (a truly ludicrous assortment of typical upper crust pureblood activities, none of which Yam particularly cared for). It made him miserable, but his father, believing that this was the best for his son, consented to everything.

And he was kind of right. Early on, it was clear that Yam benefited from small classrooms and attentive teachers. Despite being a bright and articulate child, he struggled in classes where rote memorization was required, and had difficulty wrapping his head around things he couldn’t get his hands on. Catching these challenges early proved to be a godsend. Yam learned early on how to study and ask for help when he couldn’t figure things out.

He alternated weeks throughout the year – being a wizard made that consistent, at least – never quite feeling 100% right in either home. Never completely at ease. The kids in International Falls didn’t like him because he acted like he was poor. The kids in Turtle River didn’t like him because he acted rich. And his sisters tolerated him – and Yancey really liked his sisters, even if they were monsters, so that’s what mattered.

Yam’s life was shuffled again when, at eight, his father met someone – a fellow healer and pureblood, Eileen. A year later, they married. A year after that, Bernice was born. And suddenly the Montgomerys weren’t so enamored of the oldest Montgomery boy, anymore. Raleigh was still there for his son, but the older Montgomerys lost interest. Going from hyper-involved grandparents to nearly non-existent grandparents was something of a shock to Yancey. It wasn’t entirely unwelcome, but it left him adrift even more than he had been before. He dropped most of the activities they had enrolled him in, picking up youth hockey and, after begging his mother, a stint at an art day camp back in Turtle River.

It was at the summer day camp that Yancey finally found a place that felt completely right to him. He was introduced to sculpture and ceramics and fell in with a group of kids who didn’t quite jive with anyone else; outcasts who got together at night to while away the hours having adventures in Dungeons and Dragons. In one fell swoop, Yam found both his passions: ceramic art and roleplaying games. Yeah, this kid is doomed, socially.

When he turned eleven, with the Montgomerys barely interested in him, Yancey chose to go to Ilvermorny – a far-away adventure and … also where a number of his friends were going. He was sorted into Thunderbird and took to the Boarding School Experience well, although, without the tiny, focused classrooms of his old school, he started to flounder academically. Socially, he fit in a bit better than he had back home. He immediately started a D&D group, which didn’t earn him many social brownie points, but once again his outgoing, friendly personality kept him afloat.

Yancey continued to pursue his other favorite hobby – art – in his spare time. Making things for friends or entering pieces into fairs and contests. He amassed a ribbon collection significant enough to earn the attention of Gooseberry, which was a huge deal. Raleigh lobbied for Yam to go and Yancey, unable to resist the allure of a new experience, got it in his head that he had to try. So he applied and was, shockingly, accepted on a partial scholarship. Despite the scholarship being for art, the Montgomerys agreed to foot the other half of the bill – Gooseberry was much more illustrious than Ilvermorny, in their opinions – provided Yam also pick a more practical focus.

HIGH SCHOOL
Leaving his Ilvermorny friends behind was tough, but Yancey came to a school with an honest-to-goodness art class, and an Artificing shed and a LARP club. He was sorted into Ribbonfin after a great deal of consternation and immediately set about making friends and getting involved. He dove into art and artificing immediately and with passion and, after figuring out exactly what it was, joined LARP. His new love. Yam ran out the rest of his freshman year essentially following around and playing servant to the upperclassmen heavily involved in LARP.

His sophomore year was more of the same. Working with Mr. Hightower, Yam hammered out a collection of classes that would challenge him without being too overwhelming. He also found his way onto the cheer squad, despite being a tiny string bean. Again he spent most of his time affiliating with the LARPers. It was also in his sophomore year that he picked up crafting weapons and accessories for LARP. He told his grandparents he was learning how to make wands. Not a complete lie. Just most of one.

As the year started to wind down, Yam heard the siren’s call of adventure when word dropped about an opening to become an exchange student during his junior year. He applied without thinking – or checking with the rest of his family, first – and was accepted. It was no trouble convincing the Montgomerys that he should spend a year abroad at Hogwarts, but the Holloways weren’t quite so keen on it. Still, they relented – the Montgomerys were the ones paying half the tuition, anyway.

So Yancey arrived at Hogwarts for his junior sixth year of school. He was sorted into Slytherin – sort of jarring, since he’d associated the house with meanness and my goodness Yancey Montgomery is never mean. Hogwarts wound up being something of a misstep – unsurprising for leap before you look Montgomery. He struggled academically, didn’t have an outlet in art, and couldn’t really find anyone to LARP or play Dungeons and Dragons with at school. It was sort of miserable. To make things bearable, he aggressively corresponded with his friends at Gooseberry, requesting regular updates on the LARP plot and general goings on. To pass the time, he took up exercise.

Yancey didn’t quite notice when he grew into his looks, but everyone else did. There was a lot of interest in Yam at Hogwarts by the end of the year. It made him terribly uncomfortable and, more than ever, he was glad to go.

Over the summer, he spent a couple of weeks laying about in recovery, telling his sisters wild and ridiculous lies about what it’s like at Hogwarts. He spent a couple of weeks as a counselor at an art summer camp for young kids. He pestered his friends via owl, mostly, and prepared to return to Gooseberry.