#truestones

[yunessa]

My chest wound did not open the rest of the day. Neither did we encounter any of Kenabres’s citizens, bandits, or cultists. Some fires still burned but the heavy rain had refused to cease since we left Horgus Gwerm’s house.  He had burned the portraits until their ashen frames remained and once we were all leaving it was the both of us who exited last. I will never return to this house, Horgus had said. I asked him what he meant. Kenabres, as he knew it, was gone. Even if he refurbished his house, restored everything there, it was no longer the same. He would find a plan for this house and then make a new home if he returned. His tone was doubtful. Ever the merchant, I suppose. Finding new ways to profit. He asked me what I would do now. I told him we were going to the tower of Estrod. Seelah had gone ahead of us- more treasures of the Crusade were there and they should be rescued. After that we would return to the inn.  Do more runs potentially to aid the city and the crusaders.  Horgus watched me in a way that suggested he was studying me. He said the army was only days away, less than four by his estimation.  I made a flippant comment- I forgot what I said and then I said goodbye to Horgus Gwerm. It felt like it had been months since this started and the sky would forever be gray. Horgus was close in his estimate. Gallifrey was, at that moment, in time, almost here. A cleric by the name of Sosiel Vaenic had made it to the closest city -Truestone Quarry- and from there  he was able to send the alert for more help. Time had stopped fluctuating oddly in Kenabres. I was told it was only days to the rest of the country. But I felt as if I’d seen lifetimes of Kenabres and the cold grey rain. The sun started to break through the clouds as we reached the tower of Estrod however, and I couldn’t stop the feeling of relief at the sight of it brightening the day. Only for that excitement to disappear as the sunlight highlighted the evidence of the destruction that had happened. But for a single moment, I was happy and lighthearted. I had eighty one hours until my life changed and another seventy-six before the world changed forever. -Yunessa

[scots-gallivanter]

FOURTEEN

The Stinchar, descending from its interior heights, winds through a vale of which the scenery is, in my mind, unequalled, in wild beauty, by anything else in Scotland; and falls at last into the sea at Ballantrae.

ROBERT HERON, A Topographical Description of Scotland (1797)

AS OUR BUS rattles up the road that hugs the western sea, a large vehicle with four laughing men in it whistles past us towards Kennedy’s Pass, fishing rods sticking out of a side window like aerials. They may well just be off the Irish boat.

Fanning its tail behind it like a hand of cards, a kestrel floats on the breeze above the raised beach of Ballantrae and rides the sky beyond one of the oldest industrial buildings in Scotland, a windmill built in 1696. The weather here on the south Ayrshire coast has downgraded itself from unsettled to changeable and six stolid cows gather at a gate, clearly expecting rain more than the Met Office does.

A madcap aristocrat used to fly a biplane on the breezes here. In March 1928 Time magazine wrote of the daughter of Viscount Inchcape, head of P & O Ferries:

‘Dark, not unattractive, graceful, habitually well-gowned and bejeweled, Miss Mackay was the envy of most women. Her silver Rolls-Royce flashed by at breakneck speed. Her horses invariably galloped.’

Elsie Mackay was born in colonial India and was bred on the family estate at Glenapp castle, a mile and a half south of Ballantrae (the castle is reportedly where Churchill and Eisenhower planned D Day). In 1917 she eloped with Denis Wyndham, a South African actor, and after the war she became the silent screen actress Poppy Wyndham. The marriage lasted five years, whereupon she was welcomed back into the family fold. Her father prayed she would buckle down to the cushy life of an aristocrat, but she gained her pilot’s licence in 1923 and, five years later, she made off with a one-eyed war hero, Capt. Walter G. R. Hinchcliffe, to fly across the Atlantic against the prevailing winds. They took off from snowbound Cranwell aerodrome in England, but they were never seen again beyond the Irish coast. A crowd of 5,000 stood all night at Long Island, New York, waiting for them, but they never landed. Only a slither of debris was ever found. While they were missing, the New York Times stated: ‘Every luxury money commands has not satisfied Lord Inchcape’s daughter in her thirst for adventure.’

Time reported three months later: ‘Since the death of Elsie Mackay is now presumed, her father, mother, brother and sisters presented her residual estate of £500,000 to the British Exchequer, last week, announcing that they ‘have no desire to profit from her death’.’

Shrubs were planted in Glenapp, so that the name Elsie could be read from the sky. Nature has erased her name, but she is commemorated in a stained-glass window in the chancel of the church at Ballantrae. There is the inevitable ghost story. There are some who claim the steel-nerved socialite haunts the corridors of Glenapp Castle. The industrialist James Hunter built the castle as his home on ground he had purchased from the Earl of Orkney. It passed to the wealthy Mackays in 1917. In 2015 the castle was acquired by Paul and Poppy Szkiler. Paul is the Chairman of the Truestone Group. They have upgraded it into a luxury hotel.

As if to pay homage to the late aviatrix, the Monte Carlo rally passed through Ballantrae in 1961. It was the one and only time: the fact that an over-zealous policeman charged 10 drivers with speeding may have had something to do with that.

Nowadays visitors to the hotel can sail up and down the rugged coast accompanied by the resident falconers and Ripley, the resident sea eagle.

Fishing and farming fed the villagers of Ballantrae for generations, as did wholesale smuggling, and Robert Burns met many local smugglers when he was a boy in Ayrshire; he wrote to Dr John Moore, of Mauchline, of the smugglers’ ‘swaggering riot and roaring dissipation’. In his History of the Counties of Ayr and Wigtown (1863) James Paterson tells us boats with 30 guns had once landed their cargoes in Ballantrae, while a hundred ‘lintowers’, some of them armed with cutlass and pistol, conveyed the goods ‘by unfrequented paths through the country and even to Glasgow and Edinburgh’. Cellars were dug in kitchen floors along the coast and there were holes and caves stuffed with contraband. There is an apocryphal story that a farmer’s wife made porridge with brandy one morning and only realised her mistake when there was a noisy demand for seconds.

Ballantrae, whose original name was Kirkcudbright-inner-Tig, is a now a one-horse town along the A77, albeit with a sand and shingle beach and hulking dark rocks haunted by terns, sandpipers, cormorants and kittiwakes. The laybys here attract twitchers in quest of rare birds. Porpoises, grey seals and basking sharks pop up too now and then, but they are hiding today.

I’d a nap in a layby along this bracing shoreline after watching shags shimmying across sea-sculpted stones; I woke to a seabird symphony, and the daybreak splendour of the islet of Ailsa Craig surfacing from the water. Alas, I hadn’t dandered ten yards along the foreshore before I stood on a blackened heap of empty pop cans, wet wipes, polystyrene receptacles, half-consumed packets of a snack called Ringos, and what looked suspiciously like a condom. Who would defile this splendid coastline? What bampottery drives you to set fire to lemonade tins? And what would Elizabeth Anderson Gray have made of it all? It was along these picturesque shores that this local heroine spent her whole life collecting and classifying fossils. By the time of her death in 1925 she had extensive collections in several British museums.

Think The Wrong Turn meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets The Silence of the Lambs and you’re getting close to the tale of Sawney Bean, who, tourism marketeers have long informed us, lived in a cave north of Ballantrae; that he was the head of a family of mutant monsters who waylaid travellers, robbed and murdered them, and then ate the evidence. There are tales of caves full of pickled and salted arms, legs, and other human body parts. Reportedly the male fiends were finally dismembered in front of the women, then the women and girls were burnt in a bonfire, but there is no historical record. There is a theory that the arch-Unionist and English spy, Daniel Defoe, put the story out to disparage Scotland.

An anonymous contributor to the online history group Ayrshire Notes observed in 2002: ‘The story cannot be traced beyond the 18th-Century equivalent of the Sunday Sport, so is it worth pursuing at all? I can think of no sound reason for doing so other than gratuitous and morbid titillation. What is most reprehensible about all this is that the myth is popularized as part of a despicable conspiracy of the heritage industry, tourist agencies and local authorities to turn parts of Scotland into little more than gruesome theme parks. If peddling the Sawney Bean story attracts tourists to Carrick, surely, they are the wrong kind of tourists.’

Ouch!

There is a long history of tramps, misfits, and disillusioned loners giving two fingers to the rat race to reinvent themselves, to become hermits; and several have found their havens in caves along Scottish shores. For 30 years, for example, Henry Ewing Torbet lived the quiet, simple life of a troglodyte in Bennane Cave, which is a stone’s throw from the one associated with the Beans. He was tall, straight-backed, with a long black beard and shaggy eyebrows – a colourful character, so well-liked that the locals put up a small cairn above his beloved shore as a memorial to him when he died of pneumonia after freak weather in 1983. He’d been a refugee from banking (and marriage), who had drifted around Scotland, and been in and out of jail for begging, at one time throwing a bag of flour and two bars of soap at a shopkeeper who had refused to serve him when he did not have ration coupons. At Ballantrae he was treated kindly, although he never spoke much. He lived on rabbits and potatoes, built fires from driftwood, and did odd jobs, although, in his Travels in Galloway, Memoirs of South-west Scotland, Donald McIntosh tells us: ‘He was as cunning as a hill fox and the very mention of the word work was enough to make him physically ill.’

McIntosh had heard that Torbet, who called himself Snib Scott, was offered soup and scones for chopping firewood. He had told the housewife: ‘Missus, when a man’s belly is empty, he doesnae have the strength to work.’ Two plates of broth and 10 cheese scones later, he got up and made off, remarking with a belch: ‘Missus, when a man’s belly is fu, he doesnae need to work.’

It is said that, after trudging across the hills of Glenapp into Galloway, he tried to cadge from a young farmer at Newton Stewart. The farmer and his friends washed, scrubbed, shaved, suited and booted Snib, and plied him with food and whisky. They took this clean-shaven, well-dressed gentleman to the young farmers’ ball and introduced him as a wealthy visiting farmer; and many ladies swarmed about him. The day after the night before, the joke was on the farmer; Snib was off on his wanderings again with four bottles of Johnnie Walker whisky crammed into his haversack.

In a layby down from Snib’s cave stands a monument to the former Russian Imperial Navy cruiser Varyag, which ran aground while being towed near Lendalfoot for scrap in 1920. The first memorial to the crew, who had years previously defied a Japanese siege, was unveiled in 2006 in a ceremony attended by Russian top brass. A year later a bronze monument was added. I’m told the then harbour master fell foul of Westminster for unilaterally inviting the Russian visitors.

Over the centuries travellers have reported screams around Lendalfoot, none of which was ever caused by birds. The ruins of Carleton Castle are reportedly haunted by John Cathcart, a Scottish Bluebeard, and by the eight heiresses he flung from the cliffs in order to augment his estate. His ninth chosen bride and victim, Mary Kennedy of Culzean, escaped by preemptively propelling him down to the rocks below.

 

[uncadasspreadlove]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Wellness Way (@uncadas_spreadlove)

For Aliens Only 🖖🏾👽 #SpreadLoveCustomCreations #RawRuby #TrueStones #RealCrystal #CopperVibrations#CustomCopperJeweleryByDas https://www.instagram.com/p/CSPzhuTpcLY/?utm_medium=tumblr

[unkfunk]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Unk Funk (@funkadelicrelic)

#Repost via @heavygamebizworldwide #TruestOne @dankyducksta download or stream it. Link in his bio. #GrandRapids #Michigan #Atlanta #Georgia #HipHop #heavygamedotbiz #DankRobinson #DankyDucksta #GoReallaGrind #Tidal #AppleMusic #GooglePlay #Spotlight #indieartist

[dangerkittensluts]

If you don't know this you just a poser lmao

[thoughtfulgooppatrolpsychic-blog]

top quality meth,coke,adderall,mdma,oxy,heroin,WEED,CBD,heroin,and more in stock for you.just contact me for more infos

#pullup #girlswhosmoke #stoner #stonerchicks #weshouldsmoke #cutestoners #sexystoners #bluntblowin #itsadate #420 #weedstagram420 #weedstayhiigh #getlifted #710 #bobmarley #weedtreats #weedbrownies #edibles #maconheiros #rastafari #swishersweets #eatthepussyup #swirl #cloud9 #highsex #hightimes #truestoner #slowmotion #takeyourtime #maconha

[flyingupward-a]

@moonlitalbatross​ said: 💬

       she hates it here sometimes. well and truly hates it. the other kids are mean to her, and while she likes to pretend she’s above it all, that she doesn’t care, sometimes it just gets to be too much. she’s in a corner of the library, wiping FRANTICALLY at her eyes as she sobs as quietly as possible. it had just been one comment too many, and she’s certainly feeling like she just wanted the ground to swallow her whole. not for the first time, she curses the accident of birth that had made her this way, curses the skin that REFUSES to bear the angels marks.

       when she hears someone approach, she’s shocked to see one of the shadowhunter boys. he’s on his travel year, she knows that. max...MAX SOMETHING. truestone ? tailblood ? she can’t remember. but another shadowhunter boy is the last person she wants to see right now. she turns further into the chair, hiding her tear-stained face. ❝ come to rub it in more shadowhunter ? maybe you should try focussing more on your life and less on mine ! ❞

[ursie]

5, 12, 34, and 38 for zane 👁‍🗨🫀 and 1, 5, 14, and 27 for literally any of your dnd characters dealer's choice i love them all

Sorry this took so long ❤️ @sleepcities ❤️ I had to use my computer for it

Zane :

5 : On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets?

like a perfectly organized wallet 😭 keys and phone like it’s almost too neat

12 : In what situation was your character the most calm they’ve ever been?

On the battlefield each time every time . He wishes she would at least grapple with the decisions he makes on the battlefield. She does not. He always calms down when the stakes are high and panic..Simply isn’t an option.

34 : Is your character more likely to keep trying a solution/method that didn’t work the first time, or immediately move on to a different solution/meth

yes and no? I think he would edit the solution but not entirely drop it. Like if she made pancakes he didn’t like she would want to make a batch each slightly differently to figure out what went wrong specifically then just. Try a new recipe or throw out the eggs 😭

38 : Is your character more likely to remove a problem/threat, or remove themselves from a problem/threat?

remove a problem or threat. She’s very objective and solution oriented-to a fault. When people are upset he’ll give honest advice instead of letting them complain or cry yknow? It’s a flaw

Dr. Barbara “Barbie” Grove :

1 : Does your character have siblings or family members in their age group? Which one are they closest with?

Yes!! Barbie is the eldest of 12 (rip her Mom)-she more or less raised half of them tbh shes. She’s THEE eldest daughter syndrome tbh 😭 is very close to her twin River but also they’re always fighting because he actually calls her out on her shit and sees through her acts. Truthfully shes probs closest with Joana whom Chris (her wife) took in as his apprentice

5 : On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets?

She actually holds most stuff in her prosthetic legs (which sorta operate as bags of holding) but generally sewing supplies and first aid materials-makeup, hairbrush, ect. Think Mom purse™️ and then put it in a dnd setting. Definitely that bitch that knits on the bus

14 : Does your character remember names or faces easier?

She remembers everyone but also she has trouble separating people unless you’ve been with her consistently like recently she’s gonna conflate you with 12 different people tbh she’s not forgetful as much as old though tbh 😭 faces blur together for her a lot she’s definitely better with names

27 : How does your character normally deal with confrontation?

She has scripts so to speak memorized so she tends to either : practical solution, mom her way out of it, or ignore it all together. She’s not one to be vulnerable with other people. If you hold her to the fire her “character” will break but generally she usually just talks her way out of it by being maternal or kind or smart ect. Whatever character is needed in the situation

Irena of the Hearth :

1 : Does your character have siblings or family members in their age group? Which one are they closest with?

She’s one of the den mothers of her order so her job is literally helping raise the kids. Cindy is probs her favorite due to her talent at the violin but otherwise she’s only particularly close to Mother Hatch and Mr. Truestone

5 : On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets?

A token of her faith, some rice she gives to ducks whenever she passes, and spare change to give to whomever asks for it

14 : Does your character remember names or faces easier?

Extremely good at it in gen!! Needs to remember who donates best to her church. Needs to remember who doesn’t 😭

27 : How does your character normally deal with confrontation?

Cries. Is confused?? She’s very naive and generally just. Doesn’t know how to handle people being mean because?? Why? Will usually ask the matron mother for help or advice if needed-if it turns physical will ask Mr. Truestone to handle it

Johnny Creed :

1 : Does your character have siblings or family members in their age group? Which one are they closest with?

Yes. He has a sister and brother. After they were orphaned his sister and him dropped off their baby brother to be raised at a temple and parted ways a few years later. They love each other but aren’t particularly close. There’s a lot of regrets that they could never come to terms with. He eventually killed her for the crown in his early 30s something he doesn’t lose sleep over and that simple fact kills him

5 : On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets?

Lil trinkets he picked up like thimbles and rocks and maybe a lost guitar pic, spare change given to him for his performances, candy he gives to kids, pens, paper, loose notes and doodles, all sorts of things

14 : Does your character remember names or faces easier?

He’s been alive for uh. Almost ever so a lot of it is blurred or not quite right but very good at it in real time the issue with his memories is he’s an unreliable narrator in real time

27 : How does your character normally deal with confrontation?

King of deflection ❤️ but also incredibly self destructive ❤️ mentally ill ❤️

[johnnysuniquecreations-blog]

Completed an original character today which i want to work a story for. I got some cool ideas which i want to work on while im off uni for the summer break. Hope you like Captin Leon Truestone. #captinleontruestone #originalcharacter #characterdesign #oc #captin #sailor #male #landscapeillustration #landscapedrawing #illustration #illustrator #illustratoroninstagram #illustrationartist #ukillustrator #ukartist #instaartist #artistsoninstagram #artist #instaillustrator #digital #digitalcolouring #digitalart #digitalartist #blue #malefashion #beauty #fashionillustration #fasion

[rastafar1-blog1]

White Russian is one of the TOP strains. #whiterussian #bud #flower #indoor #selfsufficient #highgrade #quality #growing #grower #top #highlife #truestoner #stoned #ganjaman #weed #cannabis #cannabinoid #ganja #marihuana #cannabis #nature #natural #cure #cancer #sick #medication #medicine #herb #nug #nugg #nugget (at Konoplja v Sloveniji)

[johntruestone-blog]

It is said “ it takes a spark to a start a 🔥” And right now we are launching a Campaign to promote our company.(www.rightmeds.org) Well some may say “ how those that concern me? Well as much as we will love to ask you to do that for us for free @Rightmeds.org we can’t just ask you to do that, No! So we asked our “team” of young minds( my 5 years old Nephew) what he felt was the best way to show our company on social media? And he gave me the craziest idea. That we make “ eye catching banners and Ads with little content and just educative combination of foolishness” So here we are with the 1st. One, so we will love to here your feedbacks and shares on these designs, that will be 🌝. Thank you for helping and you can always Contact Us if you would like yours made also. We are also found right now @Pinterest( John truestone) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0O6yWpJzB9/?igshid=1ai7v4gj0z5tz

[convergencecon]

Here is a hot (or cold) tip: the fearless comedy party room, room 230, is serving coffee and nitro cold brew during the mornings courtesy of TrueStone. A great way to curb your hangover, literally or metaphorically.

[e2thg]

#trueston @donkeeboy and friends #myhouston #houarts (at 8th Wonder Brewery)

[thoughtfulgooppatrolpsychic-blog]

top quality meth,coke,adderall,mdma,oxy,heroin,WEED,CBD,heroin,and more in stock for you.just contact me for more Infos.

#meths #hightimes #truestoner #slowmotion #takeyourtime #maconha

#weed #marijuana #cbd #thc

[deadstockspot]

#Repost @endlesssessions ・・・ Thanks to @cashflowlu for stoppin by @deadstockspot and pickin up our #EndlessSessions gear #truestoner - (at DEAD STOCK)

[ogchevygirlboss]

THIS IS SOME REAL #blackhippie shit here doe!! #truestoner #OGCHEVYGIRL #iamogchevygirlboss #OGCHEVYGIRLBOS_MILLIYONE2016 #trillentertainment #trillfammilli #boss #bosslady #fwm💯 #atl #mississippigirls #louisiana #alabama #texas #datway➡️⬅️⬆️⬇️↗️↘️↙️↖️