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Video Game / Northern Journey

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Northern Journey is a 2021 FPS/RPG game by Slid Studio set in a strange Norwegian version of The Middle Ages . The game starts with the unnamed player character rowing through a fjord when unseen assailants pierce the bottom of his boat with an arrow. Barely reaching the shore near the small village of Deadwell, the player character gets recruited by a travelling Flute Player to help him retrieve some Dimensional Violators, powerful artifacts which can open portals into other worlds. The journey will lead the player through forests, swamps, caves and mountains, all the while encountering hostile wildlife, demonic impostors, scheming witches, and worse.

Gameplay takes the form of a first-person-shooter with heavy emphasis on exploration and puzzle solving. The game rapidly switches gears as it progresses, switching from freeform exploration to linear combat gauntlets with abandon. The story sees you trek up and down the fjord, visiting both the highest peaks and the deepest caves. Also noteworthy is the game's arsenal. Due to taking place in a time before firearms, your weapons are ancient missile-launchers such as longbows, hand-axes, crank-operated crossbows, and more.

This game provides examples of the following:

• Anachronism Stew : Downplayed. The game's world for the most part stays in a Medieval European Fantasy setting. For the most part ; there are also crank-operated automatic crossbows, most of which are magazine fed, a bathysphere that you get to take down to the bottom of a ghost infested lake (Plus the Nokken), and in that lake is a big, metal, riveted pipe that looks right out of the industrial age.
• Saving is disabled on any precarious ledges or in the middle of an "interaction" (read: near monsters or during a scripted event) to prevent unwinnable situations or accidentally breaking scripts.
• The first are the witch sisters, who are the villains for the first third.
• The second is the village priest impostor .
• The third and final is none other than the village idiot .
• Awesome, but Impractical : The Ballista and Bear Crossbow deal impressive amounts of damage, fire fast projectiles with generous firing arcs, and can be pre-loaded so they're ready to fire immediately after being brought out. Unfortunately, ammo is hard to come by and it takes several seconds to load each shot. The Ballista in particular has a lengthy un loading animation that must play out before you can reload it, and the recoil throws you back a few feet every time it's fired— often straight off a ledge if you're not careful.
• Big Bad : Arguably the Village Idiot, who stole the Dimensional Violators, fed his pet worm enough to turn it into Nidhogg, and spends the last bit of the game trying to mess with the Flute Player's plans to fix the situation. Despite this, he doesn't really care much about what's going on and is mostly an antagonist through the irritating trouble he causes .
• Big Creepy-Crawlies : The player will come across many types of invertebrate during the journey, and they all want a piece of them: dragonflies , leeches, spiders , flies, centipedes , bumblebees , spiders , ticks, mosquitoes , diving beetles, spiders ...
• Black Comedy : Used frequently to break up some of the tension. The crowning moment is probably the encounter with the witch daughter on the bridge. She eerily walks forward onto the bridge, makes an ominous declaration, then raises her arms and starts shrieking as she sprints towards you... only to slip, fall, and go careening into the ravine below with a splash.
• Boring, but Practical : The stone sling has a bit of wind-up and doesn't do much damage, but it has endless ammunition, a long range if you know how to arc your shots, and it gets a damage upgrade in the latter half of the game.
• Bows Versus Crossbows : Your mainstay weapons during the game will be one heavy-hitting bow and a variety of repeating or heavy crossbows.
• Does This Remind You of Anything? : The game takes heavy inspiration from Norse myth, but often does so in subtle ways that go against traditional depictions of characters and events. For instance, the Flute Player is heavily inspired by Odin- he's a sly, offputting and devious person who seems to be able to get anywhere in the world before the player character. He uses a raven to communicate (just like Odin) and can possibly even be a shapeshifter, if the wolf you see throughout the journey is potentially him in disguise (note the wolf pelt that the Flute Player is wearing). He makes a departure from Odin by being somewhat young-looking and still having both of his eyes, so while elements are borrowed to help make connections, they are not one-to-one parallels.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind : The Village Idiots' "pet worm" turns out to be a demon and is the final boss of the game. Its final form is a huge red dragon.
• Everything Trying to Kill You : But of course, from mosquitoes to moose.
• Exact Words : Shortly before fighting a horde of troll-spiders , the flute player earnestly promises you that this will be the last time you have to fight any living, air-breathing spiders in this world. The next three kinds of spider you fight are, respectively, spider-shaped undead monsters, underwater sea spiders, and located in another world entirely.
• Fire and Brimstone Hell : The door which the Village Idiots pet worm came through turns out to lead into one of these, complete with Big Red Devils .
• Floating Limbs : A weird variant, as the game is an FPS. The player character's limbs are detached past the elbows, making them just float there.
• Giant Spider : Almost something of a Mascot Mook for the game considering how many varieties there are.
• Gonk : Even good, helpful characters look like super creepy. And then you have the villains...
• Guide Dang It! : Getting the ballista near the end of the game requires you to find a certain amount of red potions hidden throughout the game.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place : Location names gradually get more overtly hostile as the game goes on, starting with the innocuous Deadwell and Greenslit and eventually reaching the accurately-described Drowned Veins and Hypothermia Waste.
• Infinity +1 Sword : The Ballista is this, requiring the player to find at least 40 health upgrades and hitting things very hard, one-shotting the lategame mooks you'll be facing afterwards. Its overall unwieldiness keeps the weapon from being totally overpowered.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold : The Flute Player is one sardonic asshole, but he gives you good advice, praises you for your hard work, and dishes out supplies as you proceed through the journey. He's also the one who sunk your boat at the beginning of the game, but considering how losing the Dimensional Violators was a serious problem and he ends up paying you back in the end by giving you valuable treasure, it can at least be rationalized.
• Junkie Prophet : The Timewaster Seer will take a huge breath of smoke rising from his brazier and then tell you things that either already happened or which you can't prevent .
• Jump Scare : Sprinkled liberally throughout the game to keep you on your toes. Notable ones include your first meeting with the witches on the raft and the return visit to Deadwell where the demon woman escapes.
• Lampshade Hanging : After fighting yet another nest of spiders, the Flute Player will promise you that you will face no more living, air-breathing spiders after this point. Cue the skeletal and aquatic spiders.
• MacGuffin : The Dimensional Violators which the Flute Player keeps losing track of.
• Mood Whiplash : Used liberally, as Tropes Are Tools . The developer describes the game as being "happysad", which is a literal translation of the norwegian term Gladtrist. This term describes a work that oscilates between extreme cheerfulness and dire circumstances, which also happens in this game. One minute your traipsing around the woods or interacting with the funny locals, and the next you're battling terrifying supernatural monsters buried deep underground.
• Our Sirens Are Different : The Nokk seen in the page image lives in a big, deep lake and will try to physically pull the player character into the water with its song. When you dive into the pond later in the game using a diving bell you see that it is in fact a big cephalopod-like creature that always keeps its many tentacles below the waterline.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner : The player character utters one before the final fight against the fully evolved Petworm on the tower : "Petworm, is that uncooked meat I see?"
• Save-Game Limits : A tooltip at the beginning of the game helpfully informs you that the game provides zero autosaves and only four manual save slots to rotate between. Where you can save is also harshly limited, letting you do it only on flat ground away from any NPCs.
• Shown Their Work : The range of giant invertebrates pitted against the player is truly impressive; alongside familiar fare such as spiders, centipedes and beetles are more obscure creatures such as pseudoscorpions and harvestmen.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity : Boss battles and large enemy encounters are well signposted by the large amounts of health and ammo pick-ups scattered around their arenas. Gets to comical levels in the second-to-last fight against Nidhogg , where the entire arena (a narrow walkway) is lined with health vials and spare bolts.
• Super Drowning Skills : The player character can't swim at all, so stepping into water that is below knee deep is a sure way to see the Game Over screen.
• The Unfought : Dnarg Dlihc is the only witch who doesn't attempt to kill you, instead merely rowing you into Darkthroat and confidently telling you how dangerous her mother is.
• The Time of Myths : A low-fantasy variant, but still. The game takes place in the far reaches of the northern parts of the Nordic countries during the Medieval Ages. As such, witches, trolls and other ghoulies still roam the lands.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works : The only way to use the Exhumed Axes, Swords From Below, and Throwing Spears is to lob them at enemies. They do respectable damage, and benefit from fast reload animations as you simply pull another one out of your pockets.
• Underground Level : The player goes into underground caves and tunnels several times to fight trolls, beasts, or retrieve artifacts.
• Unique Enemy : The game boasts on the Steam store page that it has more than 50 unique enemy and boss types, and this is no exaggeration. Each zone has multiple encounters with completely unique enemies or bosses, each with their own methods of beating them.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight : The people of Deadwell do not seem to mind the many-eyed snakes or burrowing mole creatures that run around their village.
• Wham Line : The game ends with the player character rowing away from Deadwell in your repaired boat. The Flute Player tells them goodbye and says that if he needs help in the future, he'll sink their boat again.
• Wolfpack Boss : A good chunk of the boss fights are encounters against a small horde of powerful Mooks. Special mention goes to the five shield-wielding ghosts in Greenslit, who will dutifully only attack you solo or in pairs.
• Nocturne In Yellow
• First-Person Shooter
• Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi

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A Review of ‘Northern Journey’

This is a review of a videogame ‘Northern Journey’ by Hild Studios. I found out about it via this video;

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I thought this would be interesting to False Machine readers and OSR types as a game art which has a bunch of OSR-type theming and but also as a distinct work of art by chad neurodivergent creator who made it while sitting in a cellar for several years.

(Maybe also with fans of 'Thief' and the Thief modding community maybe? It has that kind of feel.)

Chad Neurodivergent Creator

Interviewer - " Working on your own, you must have had a pretty deep schedule."

Chad - " No I didn't really have a schedule or a plan. As you are working on something, things, story beats, come to mind. So for instance you might realise you want some mountains, or you want to fight a witch. Then you might be in a forest and realise you need something to go between the forest and the mountains or it doesn't feel right "

Chad - " There were a lot of things I didn't spend time doing. Like sketching and drawing and planning enemies and whatnot. I usually just made them then and there ."

Chad - " The game was made in a cellar and there were a lot of spiders there so there are spiders in the game."

Chad - " Anyone can make music really, you look at pictures of the place you are making music for and start making sounds."

So, he made the game by making the game .

I will return to this in the end.

The Level Design

Northern Journey combines vast-feeling levels and wide-open spaces with complex, nested and carefully planned challenge routes. In the interview above the creator says they often solved design problems by just removing space, bringing things more closely together.

Often the routes and locations are nested vertically, with looping fishbone paths, leaps and scrambles taking you from one to another, or caves, long diversions or surprising detours leading you back to somewhere you have already seen from afar, maybe only a few feet away from where you were standing, buy previously unable to reach.

The internet tells me that this is “like Dark Souls”  whatever dude.

You are almost always in sight of the promise of a future journey,  being shown expanses you might traverse, places you might visit and methods you might use. There are keys to open doors but there is also a winch thing you can use to access ziplines which take you whooshing across these densely-plotted levels - you can see the ziplines coming in but can't access them till you get this widget. In terms of level design this is in practice, just another kind of key or teleportation system, but it doesn't feel like that, instead it feels like an extremely cool reward for achieving stuff.

How could this feeling be expanded to OSR-style games? With difficulty I think. The functioning of team play using largely the minds eye and maps doesn’t work the same way as in a videogame. In Northern Journey, the ‘correct’ or accessible routes are obvious and the language of the game and movement in its space is easy to accept. You know you can’t climb things above a certain set incline, so you don’t bother. In an OSR game you can try climbing things above a set incline, and can try doing a whole bunch of things that wouldn’t work in Northern Journey.

As well, the presentation of a vertically nested environment is more difficult in map form, and the sheer power of a open view of a big landscape promising various adventures and possibilities wouldn’t act the same way.

Perhaps to some extent, partial maps, rumours and ‘promising objects’ serve a similar aim in D&D adventures. I tried to do something a bit like this in Demon-Bone Sarcophagus but apparently fucked it up ☹.

The music is custom, nothing in its pockets but knives and lint. It’s dungeon synth/ambient created for each environment. This is distinctive because there really isn’t a big gap between the sounds of the environment, the twitchy calls of insect danger (or witches), the wind, the treetops moving in the wind, the echoing of cave noises and whatever the ambient music is for that area.

The Fucking Spiders

Or monsters generally, but most of them are fucking spiders.

None of the spiders are the same, look the same, act the same or interact with the environment and the player in the same way. Some crawl in the undergrowth quietly, some swarm in gangs, some hover and leap, or hang in treetops and drop on you.

The enemy design, movement plans and AI loops are carefully integrated into the environments, the spiders in the trees, the tree-tops slowly waving, the spiders in the waving grass which bob and move in the same rhythm as the grass.

The juddering, weaving repetitive but incoherent attack patterns of the insect enemies exist apparently because they were easy to program - presumably real insects are running something not that much more complex than the systems in a modern computer.

The deep integration with the environments means you spend a lot of time hiding, listening, watching, stalking and paying a huge amount of attention to trees, grass, sounds and movement.

I feel like there are two main ways to run the combat in Northern Journey; Doom Style or Cheese It.

If you have really good twitch sensitivity and aim then you could maybe burst into target-rich environments and race around shooting things while brilliantly swapping weapons for optimal effect. I absolutely could not do this and so most of the time I just cheesed it by save-scumming, creeping forward till I trigger one or two enemies then running like fuck away till they are lined up behind me on an attack run, then turning round and shooting them, save-scumming and doing the same thing again.

The sling was an interesting embodied weapon. You get it for free, it never runs out of ammo.

On pulling out the sling the p.o.v character WHUMPS it round your head, one, two, three, four, five, six times then puts it away. You can trigger a cast at the peak of any of those WHUMPS. If you wait till the 3rd or 4th WHUMP, the damage goes up to 100, which is actually not bad, on par with other weapons, or you can release early for a faster shot with less damage.

This starts as a crap and awkward weapon, but as you get better with it, it becomes quite workable and your skill with its timing helps you upgrade it along with your other stuff so it never quite goes out of fashion.

Oddities drawn from something like a folk tale; a village idiot, a suspicious priest, a fool in the stocks, a policeman in his hut, some mysterious crones with a bubbling pot, a doctor throwing runestones and laughing, a sketchy soothsayer whacked out on fumes, an isolated engineer living in a box held over an abyss; there is literally no-one normal in this village,

Crones - Lots of crones in this one, a large variety of tricky witches doing crazy witchy things, trying to push you off bridges, strand you in infinitely black pools, fly screaming and cackling at you on broomsticks

The Mysterious Flute Player – is he Odin? A wizard? The Gygaxian Game Master? He feels a little like all of these things. He has his own theme and you can hear him noodling on his flute as you enter some levels. At other times a dog or raven will turn up with a rune-stave message.

The Special Missions!

Caving, cave-diving, diving into a haunted, drowned village in a leaky bathysphere, taking a hang-glider through super-mountains, diving into a maelstrom & coming out the other side, slowly scaling and ziplining up a staggered and vast mountain face; the darkness, fear and paranoia was lovely . In particular the bathysphere mission and cave-diving was just utterly rich with darkness and a deep sense of strange otherness. Any Veins of the Earth fans  would enjoy these.

There are parts of the end I love, and which feel a lot like the pure mood of the game and other combat-based parts I don't love anywhere as much.

It feels like a lot of supernatural problems in Norway are solved with a midnight communal village rave to dungeon synth electrobeats. Probably this is just how they do it, who knows. The game nearly ends with what I think should have been the final scene, a game of keep-away with a bunch of crazy villagers dancing in a circle around a cursed dimensional violator while the village idiot keeps trying to grab it and run away, while demonic root monsters run interference. Then there is a tower shooting bit which is less interesting.

Hyperreality

A game about an environment by a guy who lives in that environment. The production loop is a hiking loop - guy goes for a hike or climb in Norway, takes photos, records sounds, observes nature

then comes back to the spider-cellar, makes textures from the plants and rocks, builds the sound of streams from the recordings.

All of the sounds and textures in the game are made by the creator, so those curiously pixelly textured shadows, waving plants, lichen-spotted wood, are all recovered dreams from the real world.

The combination of the tightly-plotted but expansive-feeling level design, the intensity of dealing with the FUCKING SPIDERS and this transposition and concentration of the natural phenomena means with Northern Journey has a kind of Hyperreality, like its NorwayPlus. The same hyperreality you would get from surrealism but driven towards a natural environment, a bit like 19th century romantic paintings of guys staring at the alps where a natural view is intensified, but in this case it’s a game and a process of doing which includes movement, exploration and challenge.

(I am not saying Northern Journey is 'like being there' which I think would be a mediocre aim and which I am unable to confirm anyway, bit it is more like an intense, lucid dream of Norway)

Singularity of Vision

Though original, no single element is absolutely better than the best in other games, though much is very good. Instead we must speak of the combination and synthesis of elements in a manner original, expressive and rare. It would be hard for a large group the make *this particular* game because things were combined and "cooked" very closely and very intuitively.

The textures, plants, sounds, arrangements of form, living entities, (especially the spiders), etc, are all seemingly drawn from life and inscribed directly into the game without much pre-decision or conversation.

For instance; in one level the waving of grass mimics the colour and movement of the resident spider enemy, which skitters and bobs exactly like the movement of the grass in simulated wind. in another, the texture and size of an attacking spider means it blends with and seems to move "under" the textured knee-high foliage. Combined with its silence (which would have no significance if not for the aural tapestry of the levels), this makes it a particular paranoia-inducing threat.

There is a level where, after coming out of a deep dark and claustrophobic mine, you do nothing but climb and zipline up a seemingly endless series of mountain faces, facing a rolling grey sea, it’s wonderful and arguably 'nothing happens'.

These things, if done as part of a group or company, would have taken meeting after meeting and description and argument after description and argument. Here, done by one individual, they are simply created and arranged immediately, intuitively, in a manner which speaks of a coherent world, creates beauty and interest in the eye of the beholder an is 'gamic' or playable, leading to interesting and cohesive play.

The whole game is like this; a collage or weaving together of elements, some drawn from nature, but woven coherently, subtly, to create a kind of hyper-reality. The sensory aspect of a Norwegian wilderness/biome, compressed, transformed and made into something that can be played. Any addition of complexity of the kind a corporation or marketing director would instantiate would disrupts this clear fluidity and directness of approach.

The credits are literally three lines;

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About this game, mature content description.

The developers describe the content like this:

Some blood-effects when monsters are damaged. And a naked witch (a bit cartoony, no genitals visible)

System Requirements

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: Windows 10 (64)
• Processor: 2.4 Ghz
• Memory: 3 GB RAM
• Graphics: GT 640
• Storage: 7 GB available space
• Sound Card: Stereo
• Additional Notes: Game highly optimized. Will run fine even on older hardware.

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The 2024 Great North American Eclipse Five Daily Trivia Questions

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Embark on an astronomical adventure with Journey Joe Mitchell in this captivating episode of "Five Daily Trivia Questions," as we explore the awe-inspiring Great Solar Eclipse of April 8, 2024. Discover the science behind this celestial spectacle, uncover the best viewing locations across North America, and test your knowledge of eclipse history and mythology. From ancient astronomers to modern-day eclipse chasers, we'll delve into the fascinating stories and mind-bending facts that make total solar eclipses one of the most breathtaking phenomena in the universe. Get ready to chase totality and unlock the secrets of the 2024 Great North American Eclipse!

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WWE champions 2024: Who holds every title in WWE, NXT after WrestleMania 40?

The biggest WrestleMania in history brought major change to the WWE championship picture .

In WWE, champions reign supreme, and at WrestleMania 40, six of the main roster's nine titles switched hands at the two-day event in Philadelphia.

There are stars all over the WWE roster, but the ones that are held in the highest regard are the ones that secure titles. Legends like  Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson , Stone Cold Steve Austin and John Cena made names for themselves by capturing championship belts. And while titles have changed design − or even name − in recent years, they still hold high prestige in the wrestling world.

From NFL plays to college sports scores, all the top sports news you need to know every day.

There are nine championships on the main roster and there are five more in NXT. Here are all the championship holders in WWE, as well as how long they've held their title:

Undisputed WWE Universal Championship: Cody Rhodes

Cody Rhodes finished the story when he defeated Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 40 on April 7 to captured the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship and end Reigns' time as champion at 1,316 days.

As of April 15, Rhodes has been champion for eight days.

World Heavyweight Championship: Damian Priest

Damian Priest pulled off a stunner at WrestleMania 40 on April 7 when he cashed in his Money in the Bank briefcase and defeated Drew McIntyre, who had just won the World Heavyweight Championship minutes before.

As of April 15, Priest has been champion for eight days.

WWE Women's Championship: Bayley

Bayley won the WWE Women's Championship at WrestleMania 40 on April 7 when she defeated former Damage CTRL partner Iyo Sky. Bayley got the title shot after winning the 2024 women's Royal Rumble .

As of April 15, Bayley has been champion for eight days.

Women's World Championship: Vacant

There is currently no Women's World Champion after Rhea Ripley vacated her title due to an injury . Ripley won

Ripley won the Smackdown Women's Championship at WrestleMania 39 when she defeated  C h arlotte Flair  on April 1, 2023. When Ripley moved to "Raw" after the WWE Draft, the title was rebranded as the Women's World Championship, with a new design. Ripley's reign was 380 days, the longest in the title's history.

Intercontinental Championship: Sami Zayn

Sami Zayn ended the longest Intercontinental Championship reign in WWE history when he defeated Gunther on April 6 at  WrestleMania 40 . It is his fourth time winning the title.

As of April 15, Zayn has been champion for nine days.

United States Championship: Logan Paul

Social media star Logan Paul has impressed during his time in WWE. The United States Championship is his first championship since his in-ring debut in 2022. He won the title at  Crown Jewel  on Nov. 4, 2023, defeating Rey Mysterio.

As of April 15, Paul has been champion for 163 days.

SmackDown Tag Team Championship: Austin Theory and Grayson Waller (A-Town Down Under)

A-Town Down Under won the SmackDown tag team title at  WrestleMania 40  in the six-pack ladder match when it became the first team to grab the titles, ending The Judgment Day's reign as unified tag team champions.

As of April 15, Theory and Waller have been champions for nine days.

Raw Tag Team Championship: R-Truth and The Miz (The Awesome Truth)

The Awesome Truth won the Raw tag team title at  WrestleMania 40  on April 6 in the six-pack ladder match that ended in The Judgment Day losing both the Raw and SmackDown championships.

As of April 15, R-Truth and The Miz have been champions for nine days.

WWE Women's Tag Team Championship: Asuka and Kairi Sane (Kabuki Warriors)

Asuka and Sane won the title on "Smackdown" on Jan. 26, 2024. They defeated Kayden Carter and Katana Chance, who had won the title in December.

As of April 15, Asuka and Sane have been champions for 80 days.

NXT Champions

NXT Championship:  Ilja Dragunov − won on Sept. 30, 2023.

NXT Women's Championship:  Roxanne Perez − won on April 6, 2024.

NXT North American Championship:  Oba Femi − won on Jan. 9, 2024.

NXT Tag Team Championship:  Nathan Frazer and Axiom − won on April 9, 2024.

NXT Heritage Cup Championship:  Charlie Dempsey − won on Feb. 27, 2024.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: WWE champions 2024: Who holds every title in WWE, NXT after WrestleMania 40?

Parish priests are lifeline to church's mission, cardinal says

Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory of Washington was in Rome to receive the Rector's Award at the Pontifical North American College April 11. He sat down with Catholic News Service and talked about the importance of parish priests in the church's synodal journey.

Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory of Washington speaks with Catholic News Service during an interview at the Pontifical North American College in Rome April 10, 2024. (CNS photo/Justin McLellan)

ROME (CNS) -- The success of the Synod of Bishops on synodality will much depend on also including parish priests in the process, said Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory of Washington.

Of the more than 360 bishops, religious and laypeople who participated in the first assembly at the Vatican last October, the small number who were ordained priests "were scholars, missionaries (or) they were engaged in leadership in religious communities," he said.

"Not that those other participants weren't generous and insightful," he said, but in his 40 years as a bishop, his experience has been that "a number of people may know who the bishop is, they all know who the pastor is."

Cardinal Gregory had served as an auxiliary bishop of Chicago before leading the Diocese of Belleville, Illinois, and then the Archdiocese of Atlanta; he was named archbishop of Washington in 2019 and then elevated to the College of Cardinals the next year.

Pope Francis personally invited the 76-year-old native of Chicago to attend the synod on synodality in Rome.

"There was a lack of parish priests present" at the first assembly, Cardinal Gregory said, noting the importance of the upcoming gathering of 300 parish priests from all over the world to make their contribution to the ongoing synod process by sharing their experiences of parish life.

Parish priests are the ones who "serve the folks in the pew, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday," he said. The gathering of parish priests, which will be held April 28-May 2 outside of Rome, was needed "because if the synod is going to be a success, it really needs to keep its roots in the Sunday pew."

The priests, selected by bishops' conferences and Eastern Catholic churches, also will have the chance to dialogue with Pope Francis as part of responding to the first assembly's report requesting more active involvement of deacons, priests and bishops in the synodal process.

Because there will only be one to four priests representing each bishops' conference and Eastern-rite Catholic church, Cardinal Gregory said it would be important for the priest delegates to "use media to pass on what they did, what they heard, what they said."

"After all, 300 priests is a good delegation, but it's a small representation of the total number of priests who are engaged directly in pastoral ministry," he said.

"Long before the synod and in every diocese that I've served in," he said, he has always shared messages and comments he receives complimenting one of his priests for something they did.

"I always send that complimentary letter to the priest himself, along with my letter of thanks to the individual who thought enough of a pastor to say something nice," he said.

"That builds a relationship with the priest and the bishop that says, 'you know, he contacts me not necessarily because I've done something wrong, but because I've done something right.' And that's very important. Our guys need to know that the bishop is grateful," he said.

The success of the synod, Cardinal Gregory said, will be seen with "an increase in the contact that people, ordinary people, the faithful of God, have with their priests," their bishop and with the pope. Success will be recognizing that the pope "is not an individual who governs the church simply from the desk of the papal apartment" and that the bishop and pastor are not leaders who simply manage or direct activities from afar.

"To have a successful synod outcome, it has to tighten the bonds that unite us, even going into those areas where most people had not been before. And unfortunately, sometimes where bishops haven't been before, that is, in the midst of their flock," he said.

"Isn't that one of Pope Francis' favorite early terms, the smell of the sheep?" the cardinal asked. "You've got to have the smell of the sheep."

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Myanmar Priest Shot While Celebrating Mass Amid Violent Conflict

Masked assailants shot Father Paul Khwi Shane Aung as he celebrated Mass at St. Patrick’s Church in the town of Mohnyin in the northern region of Myanmar.

A Myanmar priest was shot this week while celebrating Mass in the state of Kachin, according to media reports, with the assault coming amid ongoing violent conflict between the military junta and resistance forces in the region. 

The priest “was rushed to a hospital in Mohnyin and was later moved to a hospital in Myitkyina,” according to UCA News .

The reason for the attack is unknown and the shooters are reportedly still at large. Aung is listed on the Myitkyina Catholic Diocese’s website as a priest in the Mohnyin Zone. He was ordained in 2013. 

In February, the aid group Christian Solidarity International warned of a rise in violence against the persecuted Christian minority in Myanmar, with an advocate warning that ethnic-minority Christians there “are subjected to cruel ethnic-cleansing campaigns.”

Since a military coup ousted Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, Myanmar has for years been wracked by violent conflict.

Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, president of the Burmese bishops’ conference, in 2021 urged Catholics in Myanmar to share God’s mercy amid the suffering caused by the military coup there.

That year the prelate noted that Myitkyina had been the victim of a “great tragedy” of “killing the innocents in the streets.” 

“We need the light of God’s mercy in Myanmar,” Cardinal Bo said at the time. 

The shooting of Father Aung comes just weeks after the fatal shooting of a Baptist pastor , also in Kachin, while the pastor worked at his computer shop. 

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Deadwell is the first location in Northern Journey . Your boat is perforated by some sniper hidden in the mountain's crevices which lead you to this isle. It's also home to the major town area for the game.

• 1.1 Red flasks
• 1.2 Orange flask
• 2 Chronology

There are 6 red flasks and 1 orange flask in this location.

Red flasks [ ]

Here is how all of the red flasks can be found:

• Red Flask #1: It can be found in a passage to the left of the witches' hut in the village.
• Red Flask #2: After talking to everyone in the village and checking out the boulder near the church, go through the woodsmen hut and across the bridge on your way to meet the Inventor. The flask is on top of one of the rocks on the left past this bridge. To reach it, jump onto the rocks to your right and then across the gap to where the flask is.
• Red Flask #3: After acquiring a sling from the inventor, go past the woodsmen on your way to the lighthouse. After defeating the spiders, follow the path until you reach an intersection. Go left all the way to find a red flask.
• Red Flask #4: This flask is available after discovering an entrance to Deadwell from Greenslit. Find a shortcut ladder and knock it down, then try to jump to the hill directly ahead. Take a running start and jump from the tip of the rock on the right of the ladder. If you can't make the jump, you can get the flask later, after completing Haunted Glacier, as you will be teleported to that hill. The flask is next to one of the trees.
• Red Flask #5: This flask is only available after getting the Ropewheel key. Acquire a crank from Greenslit, ride down the elevator near the woodsmen shack, and fight the ghost witch. Then, open the door in the witches' hut and proceed to the bridge where the witch-daughter is waiting. Jump to the plank on the left and climb all the way up to find the potion.
• Red Flask #6: Cross the witches' bridge and follow the path until you arrive at the moving platform. Before riding it, climb down the rocks and search for the flask in the grass near the edge.

Orange flask [ ]

Here is how the orange flask can be found:

• Ride the moving platform and then go in the direction of the lighthouse. You will find the orange flask at the end of the cliff.

Chronology [ ]

• Previous location: N/A
• Next location: Forest Path
• 2 Greenslit
• 3 Trilobite Tomb

At 50, I had a flashback to a priest abusing me as a child. Then I decided to confront him

Mary Dispenza spent years as a nun and working in the church before her buried memories rose to the surface. It was the start of her long journey towards justice and peace

M ary Dispenza was almost 50 when she experienced her first flashback. At the time, she was in a workshop entitled Sexual Misconduct on the Part of the Clergy, which she had been asked to attend as part of her job in pastoral support for the Roman Catholic archdiocese in Seattle . To this day, she isn’t sure what words unleashed that memory.

She recalls only how clammy her hands became and how the room suddenly started spinning as she saw her seven-year-old self being lifted on to the lap of a priest in a dark, empty auditorium. She knew in an instant who he was.

Dispenza urgently wanted to leave that workshop, but she sat through to the end. “I didn’t fall apart, I didn’t tell anyone, but it cracked me open and woke me up,” she says. “It was amazing to me that I could really bury that for so long … but that’s what we do to survive.”

Dispenza talks of using two “survival strategies”. At first, she buried the knowledge, hiding it from everyone – including herself – as she built a life at the heart of the Catholic church, even spending 15 years as a nun. She describes it as “splitting” – a dissociation so complete that, even as the horror happened, she could function and move forward without giving it any conscious thought.

After that flashback, Dispenza needed a new strategy. She confronted her abuser, joined a class-action lawsuit against him for damages and has spent decades supporting other victims and campaigning to hold the church accountable for covering up sexual abuse. It is what she calls “a truth telling”, a move into the light.

Dispenza, 84, lives in Washington state, but she grew up in east Los Angeles, where she attended a Catholic school. Her parents weren’t congregants, but they believed it offered their daughter the best education possible. To get her the place, Dispenza’s mother took a job driving the school bus and working in the adjoining rectory.

“The first flashback is a very clear memory,” says Dispenza. “I was seven years old and my mum had driven the bus to school, so I was looking for her at lunchtime. I found her in the lunchroom talking to the lunchroom ladies.” As the women talked, Dispenza grew bored and drifted towards the door, across the hallway and into a dark auditorium where a projector was whirling, emanating a tiny light.

As she made her way towards it, a tall figure in black robes stepped from the shadows – Father George Neville Rucker, the parish priest. “I knew he was a priest, so he was special,” says Dispenza. At the time, in 1947, Rucker was a young man, newly ordained and in his first post, although there were to be many more in the decades ahead, as allegations and rumours led his diocese to continually move him around.

“He motioned me to sit on his lap and I did,” says Dispenza. He then penetrated her with his fingers, “the same kind of act that I later learned was his modus operandi”.

“I believe that I ‘went away’. It was the beginning of separating my body from myself. After maybe 10 or 15 minutes, he walked me out of the auditorium and left. Imagine being a child alone, not knowing what had just happened. I had enough sense to go and wash myself in a little bathroom.”

This abuse continued, she thinks, for about two years. She has since had other flashbacks, including to Rucker’s bedroom in the rectory where her mother worked. By the time Dispenza was 12, Rucker had moved to another parish.

“People don’t really understand the impact of this on a child,” she says. “I couldn’t focus in class or take in academic information because, in a way, I wasn’t there. The only way I could be there was through activities. I excelled in sport, in school spirit, in leadership, but I couldn’t perform academically.

“The split kept me from being intimate with my friends. I had friends, but I just couldn’t connect in the ways they did, sharing stories about everything. Intimacy and being able to connect with someone in a long, meaningful relationship has been a long-term journey for me. For many years, I never thought I’d have that in my life.”

Secrecy and shame lodged in her “like squatters”, she says, although she didn’t know why. “The truth is that I was so disconnected from what happened that I didn’t know what those feelings were. But they were always somehow in the way, taking up space.”

God and religion became a salvation. “We’d been taught that God knew our secret thoughts, words and deeds and loved us anyway,” she says. “So God was my rock and I never let go. I guess it’s fair to say that, for me, that was a positive outcome.”

When she finished school, her decision to join a convent shocked her parents. When she told her dad in the car, he was so upset that he jumped a red light, then reversed back, crashing into the car behind him. “For my dad, it was a waste of a perfectly good life. For my mum, it was the end of her dream of marriage and grandchildren,” she says. “But I really loved God and I loved the nuns. Now, I lead a support group for people abused by nuns, but I can say that all the nuns in my life were good. I admired them. They served people, they prayed and, for me, they were safe.”

I n the years ahead, the splitting continued. She had relationships with men and with another nun. “I’m not proud of stepping outside my vows – maybe it was very human of me,” she says. “I’m always so grateful no one found out. Being a nun fitted for a while, but then I felt restless, fragmented. It took time and courage to leave.” When she did, at 33, Dispenza continued working within the church, eventually being appointed the director of pastoral life services in Seattle, where she was asked to attend that workshop on sexual misconduct by clergy.

When she got home that evening, she called the sister who had run the workshop and told her what she had remembered. (“She said that she would have to report him. I said: ‘Fine.’”) Her diocese helped Dispenza to access therapy. “A good therapist can help you recover your truth,” she says. “It allowed me to find my voice and power. It also allowed me to confront my abuser.”

With the help of her therapist, Judy, Dispenza wrote to Rucker, setting out in detail the harm he had caused her. She got a brief reply from his solicitor and after several exchanges (including Dispenza threatening to go to the media), Rucker agreed to meet her.

Judy and a nun were there to support her. “I felt nervous,” she says. “He wanted to shake my hands, but I had enough presence not to.” In that meeting, Dispenza was able to tell Rucker what he had taken from her – although his response was disappointing. He claimed that the abuse had happened only once and he said it was because he had been taking hormones. Dispenza, he said, was “in the wrong place at the wrong time”. He even offered to bless her and suggested that it must have happened for her “sanctification”.

“He was totally in denial and probably a very sick man,” says Dispenza. “I didn’t get the answers I wanted, or the missing pieces, but I was proud of myself. I really believe that little Mary got to speak that day.”

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Life continued towards the light. “I was facing difficult truths – and once you start, you don’t want to stop,” she says. Initially, during therapy, Dispenza had refused to talk about her sexuality. “One day, Judy said: ‘Mary, if you don’t talk about it, you’ll never know intimacy – and that’s the one thing we all want.’ I went home and thought about it. I knew in my heart that I was comfortable with women. That was where love could be.”

Dispenza didn’t come out quietly. She read books, enrolled in university classes on lesbian and gay studies and signed up for a coming out celebration event, at which she stood on stage and announced: “I’m Mary Dispenza and I’m a lesbian.” “They clapped,” she says. “I always remember that as a beautiful, affirming moment.”

She also gave an interview to the Seattle Times headlined “Ex-Nun Comes Out Of The Closet”. Shortly after, she was fired by her archbishop for “breaking allegiance” with the church. “I was devastated; I’d lost the framework of my life,” she says. “But I did face that courageously. No one was going to stop me from telling the truth.”

A decade later, in 2002, Dispenza learned that Rucker had been removed from duty and was under police investigation, initially for charges involving 16 girls . Rucker was moved to a retirement facility and stripped of all assignments. The earliest case that was reported contemporaneously dated to 1967, when he was accused of molesting two nine-year-old girls. At the time, the police found insufficient evidence and Rucker was swiftly moved to another parish.

It is now believed there were more than 30 victims . The files on Rucker released by the archdiocese of Los Angeles make for extremely grim reading. One victim remembers that when Rucker appeared in the playground, children would scream: “It’s Father Rucker, run for your life!” The report states: “The children had turned this awful situation into a game to avoid dealing with the emotional horror of being chased like a school of fish by a shark, all the time wondering who was going to be the next victim.”

Although statute of limitation laws meant that there was no criminal trial, a civil case was brought against Rucker and the church in 2006. The hearing took place in the ballroom of the Los Angeles Sheraton. Dispenza attended. Rucker was 86.

“He walked in, surrounded by attorneys, who were being paid hundreds of dollars an hour by the Catholic church,” says Dispenza. “He looked small, to tell you the truth. He’d lost all his power, in my mind.” Rucker declined to answer questions throughout, asserting his “right to remain silent”. Months later, the case was settled. The Los Angeles archdiocese agreed to pay $60m to 44 victims. Rucker died in 2014.

It led Dispenza to become an active member of Snap ( Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests ). “It’s about supporting survivors, protecting children and holding abusers accountable,” she says. “If there was a priest that needed to be outed, we’d stand outside their church with posters, we’d insist on archdioceses releasing the records.”

She is involved in a campaign to break the “seal of confession” , which can prevent a priest from reporting abuse disclosed during confession. Dispenza also runs a Snap support group for survivors of abuse by nuns. Members meet via video call from all over the world. “It has helped me, too, because there is nothing so healing as hearing somebody’s story,” she says. “In each one, we see bravery, courage and how they were able to go through this and come out. Every story I’ve listened to has given me something.”

She never returned to Catholicism . “It made no sense,” she says. “First, there was no room for me as a lesbian. After all those years, it broke my heart not to be wanted. The other reason is the way they were handling, or not handling, clergy abuse.” God is still very much in her life, though. “I talk to God; God is my lifelong companion and friend,” she says. “That’s different to ‘religion’, ‘church’ and all the rest.”

Dispenza is happily married to Mary Ann, whom she met at a retreat not long after coming out. “We’ve known each other 31 years and been married for 11, since the law changed in Washington,” she says. “We had a great wedding. All our friends came. Mary Ann’s grandchildren and my grandniece and grandnephew carried baskets of flowers. Our entrance song was That’s Amore.” The couple live on the shore of Lake Washington. “I walk, I dance, I paint, I have a wonderful spouse and companion and meaningful work with Snap,” she says.

There are no regrets about her years of silence, or time wasted. “All the pieces of my life have led me here, like pieces of a puzzle,” she says. “I like who I am. I like where I am, how I love, what I do in the world. I buried it until I was able to deal with it – and I love where life has brought me.”

In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111 and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood ( Napac ) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831. Adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International

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• How we survive
• Rape and sexual assault
• Catholicism
• Christianity

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