Among Thieves

Follow our detailed walkthrough for 'Among Thieves' in Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. Learn how Nate and Flynn's search for a legendary artifact leads to betrayal and a race against time.

Alright, let's dive into the 'Among Thieves' section of Uncharted 3. This is where things really kick off with a bang, involving a daring museum heist and some serious betrayal. Think of it as the prologue to the main adventure, setting up all the key players and the central mystery.

So, the story kicks off with Nate and Harry Flynn, someone Nate apparently knows from way back, deciding to break into the Istanbul Palace Museum. Their target? A mysterious clay oil lamp that's supposedly linked to Marco Polo. This lamp is the first clue in a much bigger puzzle about Polo's lost fleet.

According to the lore, Polo set sail from China with a massive fleet, but only one ship and a handful of passengers made it back to Persia. The lamp you're looking for apparently holds the key to what happened to the rest of the ships and their treasure. It hints that Polo's fleet ran into a tsunami near Borneo, and the cargo might have ended up in a mythical place called Shambhala. This gets Nate all fired up, thinking the legendary Cintamani Stone might be hidden there.

But here's where it gets messy: Flynn, who you thought was on Nate's side, totally betrays him. Nate ends up captured by the Turkish police and spends about three months in jail. Talk about a rough start!

Luckily, Nate doesn't stay locked up forever. He gets bailed out by none other than Sully and Chloe Frazer, who's an old flame of Nate's. With Flynn now working with a villain named Lazarevic, who's also after this 'Buddhist holy grail' (which turns out to be a massive sapphire worth a fortune), the race is on. Nate and his crew have to follow the clues to find this treasure before Flynn and Lazarevic do. This trail eventually leads Nate to the Tibetan mountains and a monastery, where he hopes to find the entrance to Shambhala.

Once they get into Shambhala, it's not quite what they expected. The place is overgrown and guarded by some serious attackers. Nate manages to escape them and makes his way into a big temple. Inside, he finds what he thinks is the Cintamani Stone, but it turns out to be something else entirely – it's amber from the sap of the massive Tree of Life that's growing in the city. So, the real treasure isn't a gem, but this mystical tree.

The climax happens at the base of this Tree of Life. Nate has a final showdown with Lazarevic. It turns out the tree's sap has some kind of explosive power. Nate uses this to his advantage, damaging Lazarevic and ultimately winning the fight. As the Tree of Life starts to die, Nate and the others make their escape. It's a pretty wild ride from a museum heist to a mythical city and a showdown with a supervillain!