Natural Allies
It was high time the dark elf ladies of Handbook-World met one another. I’m sure they’ll get on famously.
More concerning than the imminent violence, however, is Drow Priestess’s utter lack of discretion. I mean, she’s supposed to be a proper drow, isn’t she? I was under the impression they were all trained from birth to despise weakness and trust no one. Those must be some serious murder charges if she’s ready to throw herself on the tender mercies of the first dark elf she happens across. And yet, silly as it is, this is exactly the sort of behavior you’ll see from players time and time again.
I told you about one of these instances way back in “Venial Sins.” My well-meaning players marched right up to that town councilman, laid out their proposed engineering project, and were totally blindsided by his ensuing bastardry. Same deal with judging a dragon’s personality by its RGB values. Or smiting the royal vizier based on facial hair. Or getting taken in by a very-obviously evil monster’s sob story.
I still remember one of my very first gaming experiences. It was a DragonStrike scenario, and my seven-year-old self was going ham with the warrior. The dice were hot, the monsters were exploding left and right, and I was feeling invincible. That’s when the Dragon Master™ plopped a single puny orc down onto the table.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A magic orc.”
And because I was a manic elementary school kid hopped up on bloodlust and good luck, I immediately shouted, “I attack it!”
Of course, as any seasoned adventurers knows, you’re supposed to ask, “What do you mean ‘magic’ orc?” before wading into combat. Had I asked that question, I would have learned that the orc was actually a cursed prince. I might also have learned that killing him would automatically summon the big red dragon that acts as the end boss of every Dragon Strike adventure.
The lesson in all of this is clear: Do your research. Roll a few Insight checks. Ask the serving staff a couple of questions before making friends with Lady Duplicity. And if you still smell a rat despite the results of your Sense Motive roll, feel free to show a little prudence. You aren’t a dirty meta gamer just because you want to display some caution. In the case of Drow Priestess, that might look like a self-serving lie: “That mob will kill any drow they happen across. We must help one another to survive this night!” What I’m saying is to behave like a proper dark elf. Make no assumptions, trust no one, and at the very least, try not to kill any magic orcs.
So how about it, gamers? Have you ever given your unthinking trust to an NPC only to have it thrown back in your face? Or conversely, have you ever charged into a fight with an “evil” creature, only to discover that it was actually a good guy? Tell us your tale of mistaken assumptions and tragic misapprehensions down in the comments!
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Last session I was very reluctant to let the monk and barbarian kill a priestess who had been eavesdropping on us while we planned to break the former king out of semi-prison at an abbey.
This session she killed herself and turned into some kind of crazy hydra that could among other things cast disentegrate.
Well, at least you delayed her death by a bit. I’m sure going straight from eavesdropping to cleric death to disintegrate hydra would have been a clusterfight.
You’d think there’d be enough brooding, dual-wielding fighter/barbarian/rangers out there that drow on the surface would be wary of Salvatore Syndrome.
Handbook-World is a completely original and, more importantly, legally distinct setting from Faerun. Nevermind the identity of Inquisitor’s father.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/family-ties-2
I’ve said this story before, but my overly suspicious/paranoid Kobold Gunslinger had this situation – with one of our allies falling for an evil creature’s trick, and the rest of us seeing through the ruse.
We entered an ominous room behind a magical damaging curtain of electricity, in the middle of which was a chained-up Genasi (CN genie), in the standard damsel in distress role, promising us a wish if we freed them – citing being able to revive a friend that perished earlier with it.
This was IMMEDIATELY suspicious to me and the Bard (me because it was out of place in an otherwise horrifyingly evil temple + her having knowledge of our dead ally, the Bard because she didn’t trust CN creatures in general), but was enough for our Samurai to want to free her.
What proceeded was an awkward interrogation – sense motive (which was high for me) said she seemed trustworthy. Their story matched up, somewhat – we were told of evil wishes being granted to the temple inhabitants, but something still felt off about the situation.
Losing patience with our interrogation, our Samurai starts hacking at her chains, which my Kobold (who was officially the leader of the party) immediately stops with a disarming targeting shot, causing a tense situation, but keeps her from continuing until we finish our interrogation and come to a mutual decision on what to do about her.
At that point, we pulled out the Banner colored in Truecolor Dye – a magical paint that is seen as red if you’re evil, orange if you’re neutral, and golden if you’re good. The Genasi says it’s red when asked about our banner’s color, ousting them on the spot without even knowing it.
From there, we find ourselves confronted by their true form, as the chains vanish and they drop their disguise – a Glabrezu. A demon whos main gimmick is tricking people into making wishes that are twisted to produce the a horrible/evil outcome (e.g. rezzing our ally as a evil NPC that would proceed to make a difficult battle worse).
Heh. That dye is like paladin in a can!
If this dye became common knowldge, and I were a secret evil creature in a this world, I might start claiming red things are orange wherever I go, just in case.
On the other hand, if I were trying to catch out a secretly evil creature then I might expect them to try this. So I might try waving a mundane red banner at them and asking what colour it is. If they say “orange” then I know they’re secretly Evil and trying to pull a fast one.
But on the other, other hand: if I were the Evil one, I might be expecting people to pull this trick on me… So I have to try to get a read on my interrogator and second-guess whether they’re showing me a Truecolor banner or a plain red one.
So it’s a role reversal, where I have to make a Sense Motive to beat the interrogator’s Bluff rather than the other way around. (Actually, I probably need to do both…)
So, on the other other other hand: if I were the interrogator, then I want to make my banner like one of those colour-blindness tests. Red and orange dots on a Truecolour background, so that Evil people see orange-on-red and can read one number/word, while Neutrals see red-on-orange and read something else. (And similar measures to identify the Goodies, of course.)
The colour-blindness test version would be much harder to bluff.
“Oh yes, I can see some red markings on an orange background. Clear as day. Yup, red on orange.”
“Not orange on red?”
“No, no, definitely not. The background is definitely orange.”
“And what to the red markings look like? Do they spell a word?”
“Oh er… I’m illiterate. Sorry.”
“Illiterate?”
“Yup, took a Flaw for a bonus Feat. Never invested the skill points for reading.”
Wait, wait…
Back on the Evil hand: only Evil people can see the red. So can I spread a rumour that Truecolour Dye appears purple to Evil people? Gold to the Good, orange to the Neutral and purple to the Evil. Who would be able to say it’s not true.
So Good-aligned adventurers will write on the banner in purple and wave it in my face demanding “What does this say?!” and I’ll be able to read it clearly because to me it looks like purple on red.
But they’ll see through that quite quickly. Maintaining the lie will require all Evil people to not only cooperate but to coordinate. If someone else it trying to spread the rumour that Truecolor appears GREEN to Evildoers then that will give the game away.
Even if that idea doesn’t last the fact that only Evil people can see the red can still be exploited. If I’m looking at red (mundane) writing on a red (Truecolor) background then I might still be able to make out the shape of the words as long as they aren’t exactly the same shade of red.
If Truecolor Dye becomes commonplace, maybe train colour awareness?
Back on the Good hand again: Is there a spell that will let me see through an Evil creatures eyes? And if that creatures looks at at Truecolor while I’m spying, do I see red like it does or gold/orange cocording to my own alignment?
Can I use this to colour-match my red ink to my Truecolor Dye?
I could see this comic spawning a continuation where:
a) The guards aren’t looking for Drow Priestess, they’re looking for Fighter.
b) The guards mistake Inquisitor for their charge, which Drow Priestess takes advantage of.
c) It’s Inquisitor that the guards are searching for, following a successful bounty being hunted.
d) Something something Patreon comic.
e) Drow Priestess joins team Bounty Hunter! Much awkwardness is had as Drow Priestess calls the rest of the party slaves/pets.
HANK HILL VOICE: My name is Zarhon, and I sell fanfiction and fanfiction accessories.
It ain’t much, but it’s honest work.
A question not related to today’s commentary, but to that of last week’s comic, ‘Lucky Guess’.
A near-TPK with a Glabrezu as a ‘social encounter’ was mentioned. Could we have the story of that encounter?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/i-wish-for-a-dragon
For all the times my players have fallen for a “Jeepers, mister, you’re strong” trick or waltzed into an otherwise avoidable ambush, there have been times when they surprised me.
A cunning winter wolf who introduced himself as a LG priest from the temple of Roofdrak, Lord of All Canines. “Just fetch that macguffin down for me, please, as I lack opposable thumbs.” 90% of the party wanted to talk it out, despite his equivocation once they cast Zone of Truth. Only the Fighter said “Nope” and declared he was rolling to hit with his big axe. He’d heard enough.
Another mission had the premise that, in theory, the DMs PC/NPC (a half-orc cleric of Hercules) could accomplish the mission solo. A casting of divination, however, had revealed to the PCs’ patron that if he went alone, the mission would fail. The players spent the entire evening second-guessing and analyzing every encounter. Was this the one that the big guy couldn’t handle alone? How could he have screwed this one up? The final (flooded) room required them to seal off the flow of water with a wall of stone, then drain the water using a magic item provided by their employer and drowned the drowned spirit haunting the chamber. The complication was a giant catfish that was trapped in the room, grown too big to swim out again. The cleric of Hercules had a weakness for fighting giant critters to prove his strength, and immediately rushed to fight the creature. My nefarious plan as a DM was that a giant dead fish would make it impossible for the PCs to complete the mission as scripted, and they would be forced to skedaddle with only what treasure they could safely pocket. The party druid, however, won initiative by a landslide through a lucky roll and asked the cleric the crucial question, “How do you know it’s evil or even dangerous?” Most of the PCs had been ready for another big fight, but the right question at the right time set the cleric on a long path of self-reflection and secured the BEST ending for the PCs, who were handsomely rewarded. (Meh, the players fell for my traps the next time.) 🙂
Sorry, destroy the [riverswell spirit: Pathfinder]. You can’t drown what’s already drowned. The big fish, btw, could still breathe, as it had also been hit by the ghost and was continuously drowning. Can’t drown a fish, either. 🙂
Minor trivia: since drowning is technically suffocation by immersion in water, a fish that is unable to get oxygen from the water in which it swims can, in fact, drown. Sharks that must keep swimming to breathe, for example, will technically drown if unable to do so. Plus certain fish, like Betas and some catfish, can survive in stagnant water by gulping air, even though they don’t have lungs per se, and will thus suffocate/drown when unable to use either gills or gulping.
Nice to see giant catfish as a not-quite monster. Given how big they get and how… broad their attempted diets can be (humans are a bit big for them, but catfish aren’t necessarily the brightest of critters), I’m surprised they don’t feature more often in fantasy.
Always a surprise when the PCs actually pause to wonder whether killing the monster is a good idea. Or in visual shorthand:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6a/db/4c/6adb4c3dcfc99178c0e2eb8649a826b6.jpg
You can determine a Drow’s alignment by how they dress. Drow are made out of the sexual-hangups of baby-boomer fantasy writers/artists. As such the most evil Drow all wear spider-themed S&M gear. (“If we’re a matriarchy, why do we dress this way?”) Less evil Drow dress in more practical clothing. Priestess is therefore evil as heck. Vengeance Paladin is Neutral since she has exposed midriff.
(I don’t necessarily agree with the attitudes behind this, it is merely an observation)
…why are you calling Inquisitor “Vengeance Paladin?”
Because concepts exist across multiple editions, and this comic is edition-agnostic. Insisting everything be called by their Mathfinder name is the most tedious sort of edition-warring.
Except that “Inquisitor” is her actual NAME, per the cast page above, not just her CLASS. Just as my username is “Paleomancer,” not “Speaker to Fossils,” and yours is “Gabriel,” not “Fire Sword Archangel.” Nothing to do with “edition warring.” This is true regardless of whether or not one believes Vengeance Paladin is automatically equivalent to Inquisitor.
Also, referring to a game setting you seem to dislike as “Mathfinder” seems the very pinnacle of edition warring.
Ditto.
Eagerly awaiting your name for Street Samurai.
I’m going with “Irritating-cyberpunk-sword-girl”
I think that Street Samurai is treated as the anomaly she is, and gets to keep her name
Well, early in my career as a player, my group and I did spend an entire session working out an elaborate attack plan in which we tricked a local villain into putting himself in the open to fight us and then called in the terrifying Royal Guards to murder him. Unfortunately, when our messenger arrived at the palace we recieved the helpful response of “you do realize that we hired you for a reason, right? Good luck!”
My character was kidnapped and later died.
Never rely in the gumball guardians. They’re just for show.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/adventuretimewithfinnandjake/images/4/43/S1e1_trial_by_fire.png/revision/latest/top-crop/width/220/height/220?cb=20120720113741
Lets be honest have Drow Priestess be a good drow she wouldn’t have been caught 🙂
As for blind trust in NPC that is one of the good things of playing Vampire: The Masquerade you learn to don’t trust anyone. As i have seen write in several places: Don’t trust anyone, to be sure expect everyone to be plotting your demise. They probably are anyway 😛
By the way. Isn’t inquisitor the last kind of person DP would want to go near? Or to confess several murders to? Surely Inquisitor will have Mercy on her 😀
It pleases me no end that multiple people still remember Inquisitor’s halberd’s name.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/tools
XD
Happy it pleases you my knowledge of your work 😀
In the Eberron campaign I’m running, the party are all investigators in the town guard. Solving mysteries and such. In their second case, while they were stumped, a gnomish news reporter approached and offered to help. They’ve come to trust this news reporter who came out of nowhere, despite the newspaper she’s said to work for not existing. One of the party members (a gnome herself) has begun to date her.
She is, of course, the half-dragon succubus BBEG using shapeshifting to appear as the gnome to gather information on the party that keeps thwarting her attempts to break the seal on her father’s magic prison so she can spend time with her dragon dad – something that’s been hinted at in dialogue but never outright spelled out.
It’s stereotypical, but it should still be good.
Sounds to me like they are “investigators,” with an emphasis on the air quotes.
Certainly. As long as they’ve got Adventurer classes, they’re gonna act like Adventurers…
This sort of double cross is always tough to pull off, and that’s because foreshadowing is hard to do. One person’s enormous red flags can just as easily be throwaway details to the rest of the group. In my mind, the goal is the big reaction: “You’re what!? I should have known all along! It was so obvious!” But if you play too close to the vest, the big reveal might just be a shrug and an anticlimax: “OK. Cool I guess. There was no way I could have known, so whatevs. Do we just fight now?”
Now obviously, I have no idea what kinds of clues you’ve left out for the party to find, or to what extent the “nonexistent newspaper” was glossed over. So help me out here: When you’re preparing to make the big reveal, how do you picture setting it up in terms of foreshadowing?
They know there’s a “mole”, they’re just not sure who.
Ideally, the foreshadowing’s been a part of the whole game. And, of course, having the villain monologue all their previous interactions and how they’ve lead up to the final confrontation. The villain will go through all the forms they’ve taken (the former police chief that was outed mysteriously before the game began, the newspaper reporter, and the chaos-causing freedom fighter) as they speak – and allow the players to ask questions as I go. Thankfully the players are just as invested and interested as I am.
Sounds like you set it up right. Just remember that monologuing rounds spent monologuing don’t count towards spell duration:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/villainous-monologue
Good luck with the big reveal! Let me know how it goes. 🙂
Well, I see this installment as a huge opportunity for Inquisitor. ^^
Once she’s over her bout of “Stranger danger!” and processes what Drow Priestess just said, all she has to do is say: “Sure, I’ve got just the plan. Close your eyes so I can summon my secret ally.” Or she could say: “There’s a secret passage hidden in the wall behind you.”
Either way, next thing she draws Mercy and either whacks Drow Priestess over the head with the flat or chops her head off, and then she can turn her in for a juicy bounty. (You can’t tell me folks aren’t advertising for Drow Priestess dead or alive).
Apart from the bounty, Inquisitor will have something to talk about with her Dad the next time she sees him. I bet he’ll be enormously proud of her. ^^
Surely being in Wizard’s entourage counts for something. She’s an ambassador and whatnot!
https://64.media.tumblr.com/6d442a5011970a3c7c57266ffd3eca46/tumblr_p000k8HKdG1uphxvgo1_500.gifv
Sure it does! Drow Priestess can be a sacrificial pawn whenever the Party makes a social gaffe! I’m sure she’ll be honored. 😀
Besides which, as far as I know there’s still a bounty on the Adventurer Party (though Wizard’s transformation may make her unrecognizable to the folks who drew the wanted posters), and not every nation needs to recognize the Heart Grove as a sovereign nation. Who says the Bounty Hunter Party has ever stopped hunting this quarry – even if they WERE invited to the wedding?
Loopholes are a bounty hunter’s friend. 😉
Fine. I’ll make a comic about it.
As for Drow Priestess acting in an uncharacteristic way for an evil, treacherous Drow, consider her circumstances: she got shanghaied by the main adventurer party, who treat her as a hireling instead of the authority figure she knows herself to be, has been forced to stay on the surface with its bright light and “prejudice” against her religious beliefs, and there doesn’t seem to be a way back home in sight.
She is WAY out of her comfort zone, is getting disrespected everywhere she goes, and worst of all, has been stuck playing second fiddle to the main adventurer party. It’s no wonder she’d leap at anything or anyone to remind her of home. She’s Chaotic Evil, not made of stone.
Poor thing really needs to get hired on by BBEG or the Evil Party or something.
I don’t think Drow Priestess would fit in with the Evil Party. Not only would they also treat her as a hireling, but one little stabbing and they’d turn on her. =p
As for BBEG, I’d love to see her join his side. Gestalt could – and would – slap her around every time she gets uppity! 😀
Asking “Wait, how do I know it’s magic?” might have been helpful too. Though for all the flaws of the Leeroy Jenkins approach, you have to admit that adventurers who use it finish their campaigns a lot faster.
As a rule, my gaming group doesn’t trust NPCs enough to be betrayed by them, which means that the DMs don’t generally set up NPC betrayals, which often makes the PCs look like paranoid meanies. Such is life, I guess.
I believe the scenario states that if the players ask ANY questions, they get the lowdown. I was a swords first, questions later type of lad though.
One of the players in my group was kinda a secondary GM. So he had access to various plot points the rest of us didn’t. And he had multiple characters that he could play. One of them was a Swashbuckler that adventured with us for quite a while before revealing that he’s a red dragon in disguise, working for the Ancient Dragons that wanted to destroy the city. Sadly, I missed the reveal because it was done in a mid-week session that I couldn’t attend. But Fighter kept talking about it for a long time afterwards. Particularly about how he was stabbed in the side, the back, and twice in the front.
Wait a minute… Fighter has been seeing another adventuring party on the side? That hussy!
…
Did he say anything about me?
You know…. Fighter did have fur for a time. And our Fighter SAID he was bearkin…. Gasp! That hussy!
Ooooh boy. So many times. Turns out I’m a bit of a sucker in these games. If an NPC isn’t openly hostile and/or obviously evil (and sometimes not even then), I tend to trust and accept what they’re saying at face value. I’ve gotten a bit better about it fortunately for myself and for my friends at the table.
What’s different in those cases where you manage to avoid getting suckered in? Is it something the NPC does, or is it just that you remember to roll Sense Motive?
I think it’s just that they come across strangely or the situation is suspicious. Like we find a little old lady in the middle of a haunted castle, it’s gonna be suspicious. A lot of times I just forget to roll sense motive though.
We had decided to take a break from our regular campaign, where the PCs and other “good guys” (in the sense of “our enemies are so much worse than us!”) were a crew of steampunk-flavored mad scientists, to play in another of the same GM’s homebrew settings, this one closer to a standard elves-and-orcs-and-wizards fantasy world. So when our team ran across a nerdy, stuttering, goggles-wearing alchemist NPC, we instantly took a liking to the character; it was like seeing an old friend from an alterate universe.
The town where he lived was under seige by the undead, and he warned us about an orcish priestess who had been spotted in the graveyard, wearing the insignia of a vile death god. That she was the villain behind the town’s woes was clear to us all…except for Churrik, my naive ratfolk entrepreneur, who was thinking “That poor woman! Doesn’t she know there are ZOMBIES in the graveyard? We must warn her!”
Which is exactly what he later proceeded to do, giving up a perfect chance to ambush the priestess in favor of parleying with her instead. I thought I was doing the foolish but true-to-character thing, like Magus with her laser pointer or ugly Yule sweater…but as it turned out, Churrik was absolutely right. The orc was indeed a priestess of a death god, but she served one of those stern psychopomp deities who despise necromancers…such as our nerdy alchemist buddy, the actual source of all those zombies.
That became a catchphrase for the rest of that campaign and beyond. “How could he possibly be evil? HE HAS GOGGLES!”
Seems to me you’ve just invented an order of nerdy science paladins.
Which would make a decent name for a rock band…
Stranger danger indeed. Watch your hand placement, Drow Priestess.
classical supplication is weird
Now all we need is some fainting into skirts 😉
Most people think this comic is based on TTRPGs. It’s actually based on r/AccidentalRenaissance.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AccidentalRenaissance/
Economy comic when?
Economy what now?
Not sure where you’re coming from.
My players are usually a fairly skeptical lot. I suppose there was in my first campaign the captured drow cannibal lunatic they hauled around (hog-tied) for a while. They normally didn’t trust her any further than they could throw her (which was ~10 feet – they checked), but they did eventually untie her so she could undo some magic locks for them. That would have worked out fine (they were keeping a very close eye on her) if the mutant minotaur had not popped up, causing the drow to cast Darkness and book it up a ladder while the darkvisonless PCs had to deal with that darkvision’d minotaur. That drow and the PCs would irritate each other over the course of three more encounters in the campaign before they killed her for the second time, which stuck.
In more classical “should you trust this person?” stuff, my intrigue campaign (obviously) has the PCs get betrayed by almost everyone at some point. The most overt example was when they defeated a mad scientist and the cultists he was working with, got into his lab and found a half-elf woman strapped to a table. She sounded scared and told them that she was a member of the anti-government resistance, but that her cell was kidnapped and everyone else was killed in experiments or sacrifices. The PCs believed this, which was not unreasonable, but they didn’t see any direct evidence of it. (My original thought was that she would be in a prison area that the PCs had passed earlier and claim she was unconscious under a blanket, which is why they didn’t see her before, but I decided the laboratory table worked better.) The girl told the PCs that she knew where the government official they really hate does her secret evil deeds, and she got the party to raid it. Sure enough, there was some sketchy stuff down there. But then the king’s son arrived, muttering something about his god telling him they’d be there. They fought and the PCs, being who they are, killed the prince. The half-elf then blew up the not-quite-nuclear reactor powering the place, burning it down and incinerating the prince’s body, as well as revealing her true form – one of the shapeshifting blob creatures that fought alongside the scientist and cultists. The PCs ran away and discover the next day that the king had learned that they permanently killed his son and declared them public enemies to be hunted down – exactly as the cultists’ god (who needed to divert the government’s resources away from his operations) planned.
Those PCs also teamed up with a woman to find a missing kid in the sewers, and they sort of trust her despite all three of her spells cast hurting them in some way (her nat 1 attack roll to hit a spider on a PC’s face hit him instead, her AoE control spell also hit a PC, and her damage spell on the monster engulfing two PCs hurt them as well). She did give them intel on her own faction when they were planning to go kill everyone there (in exchange for not hurting her or her boyfriend), so that’s a point in her favor. They very much have not figured out that she was the solo cultist who set up a house of horrors they fought through early in the campaign, but they probably will at the end of the impending elaborate series of ambushes she is about to lure them into (including one using her cover identity as a hostage).
Lastly in that campaign there is Manticce, the tiefling Oracle one player once described as “that lady who always screws us over but we still like her somehow.” She doesn’t particularly have anything against the PCs (she’s helped them out a few times of her own volition), but her job is renting binded devils to people, and the PCs’ enemies are often quite desperate for additional firepower. So basically she’s a neutral character who likes the PCs but also openly sells weapons to all their enemies. (She does occasionally gift the PCs a “commission” though.)
In my other campaign, the players have been extremely suspicious of every single secret Elf Illuminati agent they’ve encountered, even though they aren’t enemies yet and don’t know about the Elf Illuminati. In fact, I fear the PCs might just be developing overt racism towards all elves in general! (I suppose the fact that they know that the ancient aliens were in contact with elves justifies a LITTLE bit of this. But not all of it.)
Deep down, I think we all suspect the Elf Illuminati is out there.
xfiles theme plays
Derrik Darkluster, Gentleman Adventurer, very nearly missed his opportunity for revival due to his fellow players’ blind trust that the recently joined Paladin of Tiamat would be perfectly fine left alone with all the party assets while they helped some rando fix his cart.
Apparently the idea that a Player could betray his fellow players, who were completely ignoring him playing a Paladin known by everyone at the table to worship an Evil Self0serving Dragon, was just outside of their scope.
To be fair, I had also misread the room a tad, but fortunately by character was the dead one so I had no means to express my opinion and reveal that I had similarly been hoodwinked.
Out of character, I thoroughly denied having been fooled; alas that I was dead and couldn’t recommend an alternative course of action to my fellow players. ‘Twould have been gaming the meta, an unforgivable sin!