The novel alternates between two settings. The first is Moscow during the 1930s, where Satan appears at Patriarch's Ponds in the guise of "Professor Woland", a mysterious gentleman and "magician" of uncertain origin. He arrives with a retinue that includes the grotesquely dressed valet Koroviev; the mischievous, trigger-happy, fast-talking black cat Behemoth; the fanged hitman Azazello; and the female vampire Hella. They wreak havoc by targeting the literary elite and their trade union MASSOLIT.[note 1] Its privileged HQ is Griboyedov House. The association is made up of corrupt social climbers and their women (wives and mistresses alike), bureaucrats, profiteers, and, more generally, skeptics of the human spirit.