Tonight was an eventful night in D&D.
My merchant barbarian, while seeking goods to sell in the next city (Baldur's Gate), was approached by an apparent noble to escort his daughter to be married to a suitor in that city. Thinking that, if the job was on the up and up, I stood to make a lot of money, and, if not, I would be in a position to save the poor girl from a terrible fate, I took the job. And so I met the family for dinner in the evening, and I escorted her to the ship our party was taking the next morning.
But this mission would turn out to be a lot more trouble than I expected. From the outset, she was obstinately opposed to the upcoming marriage; to get her to leave the house in the morning, I had to persuade her that the door to her room was only a formality for one such as myself, and she would either come out willingly I would break down the door. Later, aboard the ship, she hit on the party rogue and tried to get him drunk, and later I took up watch outside her quarters to make sure nothing happened between her and the half-elf first mate she had been making eyes with during dinner.
But I was totally taken off guard when, later in the night, after all the headaches she put me through, she called me in to apologize. She offered me some elven wine she had apparently stolen from her father's possession (and earlier tried to get the rogue drunk on), which I originally refused, though I eventually relented to take a sip. Then she told me an unconvincing sob story, and my character explained how things my seem bad from her perspective, but he would kill for his own daughter to be able to live the sort of life she lives (the DM had forgotten that my character has a daughter, and it was just a happy coincidence that things played out the way they did), and a noble such as herself probably wouldn't do so well if she had to deal with the sort of lifestyle he had growing up.
Then, at some point, while my character's back was turned, she hit him over the head and knocked him unconscious. When he came to, she had covered him in booze and was screaming, and my barbarian merchant was facing charges of attempting to drunkenly assault a noble. I was immediately placed in the brig, and later spent time in jail when we got to port in preparation for my trial.
Some curious happenings and revelations also happened when we got to port. She immediately started publicly slandering the name of the patron who gave us the main mission that brought us to Baldur's Gate, even though she hadn't said anything about him when we mentioned him earlier, and when her suitor arrived she embraced him right away. Later, we found out that the noble family this girl was supposedly marrying into holds a lot of power in this city, and our patron is set to take some office of power, which they are very much opposed to, as are the criminal elements of the city. And despite the family being so high-profile, no one had heard anything about an upcoming marriage in the family (I think this came out when I was facing the magistrate, in preparation for my upcoming trial). And no one had heard of the noble family the girl was from, and at some point I realized I hadn't even gotten a letter of introduction from the girl's father.
It may not be much, objectively, but for a group that does mostly hack'n'slash, this was a pretty impressive roleplay session. Mostly I was impressed by the DM, since according to him he was making up this whole subplot as he went along, but it all ties in very nicely with the main mission and provides an emotional tie that had been lacking so far.
I haven't been keeping up with this thread too well lately, so I want to wish a happy belated birthday to Vector.
Also, since I'm here, I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but I registered for an improv class that will be starting near the end of February, which I'm kind of excited about.