Chapter 3
Episode 3 of Tribes Of Europa begins with Elja and Moses discussing Black December. It turns out Moses was there when everything ended. A global blackout ensued, which Moses believes was caused by the Atlantians. As the legend goes, no one knows who the Atlantians are or quite where they’ve come from. One thing’s for sure though – everyone is trying to reach the Lost Ark and that cube seems to hold the clue. Eventually Moses and Elja make it to a brilliant engineer named Amena. She agrees to help fix the cube in exchange for 10% of the profits. Well, Amena manages to change the fusion core of the cube, which causes it to begin pulsing with blue light. When Elja touches it, it seems to sparkle into life and shows visions of the past. Unfortunately this soon short-circuits and leaves them back to square one. Meanwhile, Liv heads out into the forest and thinks painfully back to the slaughter her people suffered at the hands of the Crows. David arrives and offers a sympathetic ear, promising to help get information from Grieta. Liv heads down to see their captive Crow in the cell, learning fragments of information about Brahtok. It’s not enough to break in though. Instead, Liv decides to concoct a fake escape to gain Grieta’s trust and pretend she’s switching sides to join Grieta. David is weary about this plan. However, the camp is interrupted by Crimson soldiers showing up with the dead body of the Atlantian pilot. Time is running out and with the cube nowhere to be found, David urges Liv to try and make Grieta talk. Unfortunately she pushes too far and Grieta calls Liv out for being a Crimson, telling her to leave. With David finally onboard to her plan, Liv snatches up his gun and frees Grieta from her cage. With the Crow held up at gunpoint, Liv concocts her plan and breaks out with her. Grieta is impressed, and propositions Liv with staying with her family in the slave camp. She initially refuses but Grieta allows her time to think. Well, that thinking results in her setting a flare off after Grieta divulges the information needed to break into Brahtok. David and his men show up, capturing the Crow and letting Liv go free. In Brahtok, Kiano is introduced to Linus who shows him around the hostile environment they’re all working in. It seems like there’s no way out but Kiano remains determined to try and find one. Eventually he learns of a freedom fight known as a Boj, which sees two people fight to the death. The winner then becomes a Crow. Thank to an incident involving one of the guards, Kiano manages to convince Linus to bag him a meeting with Lord Varvara. Alone, he heads down to the depths but unfortunately Linus tricks him. With a legion of his buddies, they start attacking him. Kiano manages to best his foe, just as Crow guards show up and drag him away. They drag him straight to Varvara, where Kiano admits that he saw a security guard smuggling in the group cell. He points out Gregor, the man behind him, as Varvara sentences Kiano to death by the wire.
The Episode Review
As we reach the halfway point of this series, it’s difficult to see exactly how this is going to be wrapped up in 3 more episodes. There’s so much going on and lots of integral plot points that hinder on the cube and what purpose it has in the grand scheme of things. We haven’t seen the Atlantians at all beyond their inclusion with the pilot early on, while the two dominant storylines see Liv teaming up with the crimson guards while Kiano fights for his life inside Brahtok. Ironically, these two storylines seem far less important than the one involving the cube. There’s light characterization for a lot of these characters too, who really struggle to stand out against such a rich and fascinating backdrop of this fractured world. This series has a lot of similarities to See, especially in terms of worldbuilding, but there’s enough originality with this to stick with for the time being.
