The Dante Leverian was the 11th exhibit to be released, and was unveiled with the debut of Dante himself.
Due to the lore discussed in his tale, access to Dante's Leverian gallery is contingent upon the completion of the Deadlock Protocol and Whispers in the Walls quests. Once this is accomplished, the Tenno will receive an inbox message from Drusus Leverian.
Inbox message:
I have made a tremendous mistake…Drusus (video message): "Oh. The Leverian… it was floundering, you understand? Going under! All that work I put into it, and so few visited, let alone donated. Oh, I don't mean you, of course. I know you're a friend to the Leverian. It just… wasn't enough. So when Parvos made me an offer… I thought, why not? Just… let it go. Let it all go. I took the deal, Tenno. I shouldn't have, but I did. Oh, if only Dante were still around. Please, you must come see me."
Tenno. Please. The Leverian desperately needs your help. Come see me in DANTE'S LEVERIAN, as soon as possible.
—Drusus
The inbox message will also have a link to instantly load into Dante's gallery. Uniquely, when the Tenno enters Dante's gallery, Drusus has a dialogue line which overrides the random dialogue lines that typically play when entering a gallery.
Drusus Leverian: "Ah. Hello, friend. You find me now amidst the bones of all I am. Of the thing that mattered most to me, in my too-long life. You know, I wasn't sure it was possible to be less than a man, for I was a man, once. This room was to be a shrine to one of my dearest friends, but now that shall never come to pass. Look around and I will recount what was meant to be."
Unlike other Leverian galleries, Dante's gallery is completely bare, with no displayed items or artwork. Instead, empty boxes and crates can be seen near the displays, each of which has an empty plinth. White dust, or ashes, or snow, can be seen on the floor and piling up near the displays.
[Unfinished Shrine]
Drusus Leverian: "I've made such a terrible mistake, you see. In a universe at its own throat, where every living thing works daily to keep body and soul together, there's not much appetite for history. For stories.
"The Leverian may not be a real place – a place you can reach out and touch – but to reality it was anchored. And reality demands a tithe. It takes coin to keep this place rezzed. This shrine to memory. And… a savvy businessman I was not.
"To be less than a man is to be a fool. And fool I was."
[Loss]
Drusus Leverian: "Did I never tell you of Dante? No. I suppose I didn't. I suppose I hadn't the fortitude. The entirety of the Leverian is shaped by the lack of him – though perhaps only in ways that I can see.
"Though by definition a weapon of war, Dante was, first and foremost, a student of history. And, he was my friend.
"Truthfully, much of the Leverian would not exist were it not for that bold, two-fisted academician's devotion to both myself and the cause of better understanding our history, and ourselves.
"It shames me to think of what he would have to say about what I have done. To our shared endeavour."
[Folly]
Drusus Leverian: "Parvos Granum. You know the name. He of the gilded hand, and gilded tongue. For an age he has sought what Dante and I had gathered together. Our collected treasures. For one such as Granum, there is no such thing as 'enough'.
"In an age with no appetite for memory, maintaining a shrine to our shared history seemed folly. And so, in a low moment, I signed it all away."
[Regret]
Drusus Leverian: "I do not know what possessed me, in that moment. I have no need for money, or food, or shelter, or care. Perhaps I merely felt my time was done, that the past had served its use, and me along with it.
"Whatever the reason, I allowed myself an instant to feel my misery to be greater than my life's purpose. A momentary indulgence that may be paid by every future generation until the sun goes dark."
[Friendship]
Drusus Leverian: "I would give much for my friend to have been here. Dante and I, we tempered each other's unique compulsions.
"You would have liked Dante, I feel. His end began, as it did for so many souls, with the Entrati family. The patriarch of that benighted family had fallen into decadence and disrepute, his name sullied by controversy and implications of madness.
"Then an erstwhile associate of mine – a gentleman by the name of Loid, and Master Entrati's man for more than a lifetime – well, vanished. Loid, his Master, and his entire lineage. Just… gone."
[Failing]
Drusus Leverian: "There were rumours, of course. Master Entrati was known at that time for outlandish claims and questionable science relating to… voices he was hearing, I believe. Gods from beyond the veil and whatnot.
"After the disappearances, Dante, never one to let a good mystery go, insisted on infiltrating the Entrati manse and learning the truth for himself. I, however, being more familiar with the, uh, confidential details of Master Entrati's… interests… urged him otherwise. I suppose you wonder why I would do such a thing, if I believed Master Entrati to be fit for little more than the asylum.
"Loid was, as I said, a dear friend. We spoke often. His last missive to me was a simple one.
"'We end as we began.'
"As a student of history and its occult apocrypha, I know the terrible import of those words. And so I cautioned Dante to remain by my side. He promised to do so, then did otherwise. And I never saw him again.
"Perhaps I was not so deft at tempering him, as he was of me. And that, I suppose, was my first great failing. The parent of this second, and most final, one."
[Dante]
Drusus Leverian: "I imagine you've surmised why I have summoned you here. To ask that, in the name of whatever friendship we share, to lend your aid to my impossible predicament. To help preserve not me, not this shadow of a man I once was, but to keep this monument to history alive – so that future generations may learn from it, and never repeat our most shameful mistakes.
"Granum's obsession with that bygone age demands pieces of such. Ironic, really, that one man's interest in history serves only to strip an edifice whose singular purpose was to protect it. But there remains one slim hope: the sourcing of artefacts from places other than the Leverian.
"Sourced by you, at my direction. Help me, friend. Help me, that my one, great and final, mistake not be the error that turns our collective history and the work of lifetimes to a single, miserable use: making a rich man richer."
After the Tenno has explored Dante's Leverian for the first time, they will receive an inbox message from Loid upon returning to the Orbiter.
Inbox message:
Helping DrususTenno,
I have only just now learned of my old friend Drusus Leverian's predicament. I believe I can help you help him. Albrecht's old Conduit network has everything Drusus will need.
Access the Conduits in the ARMATUS node of Deimos or through the Sanctum Anatomica.
Come see me afterward. I may even be able to help you recover his trusted colleague, the warframe Dante.
—Loid
[Dante, unbound]
Once the Tenno has found Dante's Prex card within the gallery (which requires the Tenno to own the Dante warframe at Rank 30), the final Dante exhibit will have different text about Dante's demise, though the plinth will still be empty.
Drusus Leverian: "You… found him, Friend. And Dante's tale deserves to be known. So… allow me to relate it, as he passes it to me.
[deep breath]
(spoken with pauses, as if reading aloud) "Dante… ventured… to the… deafeningly… silenced halls of the… doomed… Entrati lineage, encountering… automated defences, gone senile and violent, chanting in an… unright dialect that slurred thought and… annihilated… hope. That wrongtongued language invaded Dante's mind – infecting it with the one thing he was defenceless against: the promise of knowledge. [mournful sigh]
"It may be said that a parasite is life from without the body, fighting to exist within the body, despite the body, even as it risks the body. What, then, do we call knowledge from beyond our reality demanding to be let in?
"Poor Dante. If only he had recited to me sooner the wrongtongued words he had heard. I could have told him, you know, that I had heard that language before. Once. Long ago. From the lips of Parvos Granum.
"Dante found it, you see. Dante found The Book.
"The Dante I knew was many things, but he was not weak. He struggled, fought, refused its knowledge. There was a moment, I knew, when that chill Indifference felt it had won. In those moments I was with him, wrestling the foul thing he had unlocked. Impossibly, though it cost him dearly, he was winning. But, miserably, I knew the equation was not so simple as that.
"I told him: Dante, what you have found can never be brought forth. Parvos must never know of this.
"I felt the chill, the awful loneliness, of understanding wash through him.
"I sensed the moment he chose, and I felt Dante give up. When he died, I almost died with him.
"But the Book, the word, did not permit Dante to die. The violent diplomacy which ensued rewrit the very fabric of who he was. I understood things, learned things, on that journey with my old friend, from night to day. Things which could not survive in this world, but have forever made a lie, to me, of science.
"What became of him, and what stars he may have travelled to, is unknown to me. What that wrongtongued Voice may murmur in his mind, on long nights, I'm not sure I would want to know. But I know it teaches. It teaches because it longs to be known, and in being known it exists. And in existing, it survives."
The details of Drusus' contract with Parvos Granum are explored more during Deimos Disruption missions.
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