Here's one of my favorite Mount & Blade stories, because it's so much awesome that happened without any sort of predetermined story scripting.
My dude starts out as pretty much a nobody. I think he was generated to where his family was once low-level nobility, but he doesn't have any land, money, or fame to his name. The first thing I did is start hitting up the town arenas to participate in the open melees to get some quick and easy cash. I eventually built up a reputation as a minor but skilled prize fighter who consistently wins these melees. WIth the money from these events, I eventually start building up a small but effective group of soldiers to go out and hunt bandits and stuff (that way I could finish the little bit of scripted plot stuff the game gives you at the beginning). Managing an ever growing mercenary band started to require a little more funding than my small scale prize fighting went, so I started to participate in actual tournaments. The kind that lords and ladies actually attended. The kind that pays out *really* good. Eventually, I start pulling in even more money and really built up a reputation. People started actually noticing me.
So I'm out patrolling for bandits when I get approached by a dude leading a *really* impressive army. I've still not quite taken much of a look at the list of lords in the country, having spent most of my time being a prize fighter and bandit hunter, so I don't recognize him as any of the lords I've dealt with thus far. He offers me a few easy jobs requiring my skills and those of my mercenary group. So I do them, thinking that getting in with a lord with that impressive of an army might open up some good opportunities. I do a few more jobs for him, and he rewards me with money and favor.
Then the game makes an announcement It turns out this lord is crazy prominent in the kingdom and has just been named the grand marshal of the kingdom. In Game of Thrones terms, this guy is the hand of the king. He's the second most powerful person in the entire kingdom, and I'm really building up favor with this dude. To the point to where he even starts to request I do official business for him regarding the king. This, of course, in turn, puts me into the attention of the king, though that will become important later.
So I'm pretty much the grand marshal's go to guy for almost anything. He has a village that's not paying taxes? I'm the guy he sends to collect. An uppity lord is starting to challenge him and threaten the stability of the kingdom? I'm both the guy sent to start rumors and then champion for him in duels when the guy challenges him.
Obviously, I'm doing a lot of his dirty work, but he also has me doing some pretty awesome stuff, too. In one of my favorite bits of this game being pure unscripted sandbox awesome, the marshal's brother gets caught during a battle in the middle of a brutal war with our neighboring kingdom. The enemies recognize that he's the younger brother of the grand marshal and thus immediately sneak him away to a dungeon deep within their territory and demand a huge ransom. The marshal's estate was obviously rich, but paying the ransom was out of the question. Dude needed to be rescued. Who does the marshal trust to sort out this situation?
This guy.
So I'm selected to mount a small guerrilla force deep into enemy territory in the middle of a brutal war where they are on high alert, sneak into the prison, extract the dude's brother, and get him back to safety. Getting there was easy enough. Getting him out was easy enough. Getting him back, however, was an absolute mad dash for the border, as the rescue force was being chased by multiple large armies of dudes trying to recover this one lordling. Either way, we made it back and the marshal's brother was back with his family.
So obviously the marshal totally owes the hell out of me. I get money and fame from him, but I want more. I want land. I want power. I have power by proxy, but power by proxy isn't good enough. I want to build a name for myself. So I start requesting land and shit from whenever I help him win battles and territory. I always get passed over. I ask for him to put in a good word for me with the king (who is already getting pretty fond of my dude, which, again, becomes important later). He always promotes other lords and shit for stuff. I'm getting a bit annoyed.
And then the bigger insult started. The marshal's daughter had been pretty lovey-dovey towards me and I was pretty accepting of her advances. We actually spend a lot of time courting each other. I even learn a bunch of poetry just to please her. And that shit is expensive. Of course, the marshal kept refusing to accept the possibility of his daughter and me getting together. The final straw came when he announced that she would be wedded off to this random lord of his who happened to come from a rich and prominent family. Oh, and this happened almost immediately after the badass rescue of his brother from deep within enemy territory.
Fuck that.
So remember how one of the things he had me do was spread rumors and shit about rival lords? While most of those guys were legitimate threats to the kingdom's stability, it turns out that one of them was actually his biggest political rival who really wasn't threatening the kingdom in any way. Soooo I went back to that guy and started to work for him behind my lord's back. Seeing as how he wasn't quite in as prominent of a position as my good lord marshal, he was a little more willing to grant me the kind of power that I wanted after I had supported him long enough. We decided to turn the tables on the marshal by starting rumors and shit about him. Amusingly enough, the marshal came to me to champion for him when he tried to challenge the dude for starting rumors against him, but I was "conveniently" busy fighting a battle by request of the king. This also extended to other request. Hey, we were at war. Chances are I did have more important things to do than be his dog.
Oh, so, remember how I've been mentioning that I've been getting some attention from the king? Well, part of what I was doing now that I had his attention was to start suggesting who he should support and not. Originally, I was all about "yo, you should support the standing marshal on shit. He's cool." but now I was not so inclined to do so. Instead, I started suggesting he should perhaps listen to the marshal's rival (re: the guy I was secretly working for now).
Eventually, the rival starts to gain more favor with the king (I'm not saying that I'm fully responsible for this, but it certainly helped) and the marshal starts to go through some blunders (again, I'm not saying this was all me, but....). The king decides we need some changes, and the rival is named the new marshal. Obviously this meant that the new marshal would probably become like the old one in how he would probably be more careful about who gets his favor and shit...except I had already wormed my way into marrying his daughter. I was family now and basically his heir. SCORE.
So I start getting land, wealth, and power pretty regularly. And the best part? Most of the land I got was from land won back from the neighboring enemy kingdom that had captured it in prior months. And who was the original owner of all those territories? Why it was the old marshal! Who, by the way, was now pretty much out of our kingdom's political process and struggling to retain any sense of influence over his own land.
None of this was scripted.
I fucking love Mount & Blade.
