Terrigen Clouds and Missing Witnesses. Is there damage without movement first?

[Ludo Chose]

"Each player places all Witness/Mist Clouds tokens secured by their opponent within range 2 of their current position. Each token may be placed in this way only once per round. Then each character within range 1 or a Witness/Mist Clouds suffers 1 damage and gains the Stun/Poison special condition."

Does the place need to happen first for the damage and condition to occur or are both instances independant from one another? For exemple : If two healty characters, one allied and one enemy, are contesting the objective token, no one is securing it, so the token wouldn't be placed. Since the two characters are still within range 1 of it, do they take the 1 damage and the condition or did the token needed to move first to trigger those effects?

[Negoldar]

In order for the damage and special condition to be applied all steps must be followed (this is from the Multiple Things FAQ entry).

The cloud/witness must be secured by a player for anything else to happen. It then moves (including staying where it is if the player resolving the movement decides to leave it there). Finally, the damage and special condition apply to characters within range 1 of it. 

In your example the token in question isn’t secured so the rest of the rule will not apply.