High Inquisitor, Cardenal of the Church, Protector of Castille; the most powerful man in the realm, and the most courteous. His birthday speech was a masterpiece of velvet threat ("remember you are also observed… I prefer the quiet administration of justice to the clatter of spectacle"), delivered minutes before his own staged assassination winged Crespo exactly as designed.
His public works include a Mass of Thanksgiving with a silver chalice at the offering, eyes on Axel as he drank, and a plaza where six failed assassins died with HERETIC burned into their chests. "There wasn't mercy. There was justice. And I learned a great deal."
The light is patient. The light is kind. But it casts a shadow all the same — and what hides within that shadow shall not remain hidden forever.
The campaign's deepest problem wears his face: at Friedrich's ritual, a Verdugo-shaped figure with mirror eyes and a shadow that moved on its own accepted payment for the trap. Whether the Cardenal is the creature, or merely its favorite suit of clothes, is a question the company has not yet survived answering.