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People cheered when the Cardinal came to town. Surely, they said, our prayers have been answered. It didn't take very long for them to discover that his was not a mission of mercy. His was a mission of grief and toil. A mission of destruction and ruin, rage and misery.
Whole villages fell within days of the Cardinal's arrival. People died in brutal and mysterious ways, often with blackened eyes strangely resembling his and there were never, ever any survivors left to sound the alarm.
Those few who saw the Cardinal pass by on his way to the next village, but not comprehending the danger of doing so, told strange tales. Tales of how he did not travel alone, but with beings with strange silver faces that seemed to dance and twist as they faded in and out of sight. Beings that seemed to command and poison the very air, water, and land. What the Cardinal did not destroy, these beings joyfully did. Even fires seemed bent on destroying all that they touched. In the end, so complete was the devastation that even Nylarhotep, the crawling Chaos, could not find purchase in the land and moved on to easier prey.
In the weeks and months after, as if the sickness, death and destruction were not enough, the evidence of human sacrifices were found in the woods outside the villages. Some said it was in effort to summon Satan, but those who actually saw them thought otherwise. These deaths were too gruesome, too violent for even Satan, so they were left wondering what eldritch horrors had been summoned.