I'm reluctant to tell stories about my players, but I'll give a brief summary of one of those times my players were awesome, though it's going to take some backstory.
The set up is that the party is on a long ocean voyage. They've boarded a privateer as passengers and part owners. Essentially, it's a pirate ship, but it's a respectable pirate ship. The party is being feted on the first day of the voyage with elaborate multicourse meal in which they are introduced to the ship's officers. The party has brought considerable baggage on with them, one item of which is a barrel of pickled eels.
Now the barrel of pickled eels has a backstory as well. In a previous adventure, the party rescued a town from a curse, and after having done so, one of the members of the party demanded from the town payment for their act of gallantry. The town mayor protested that they were a poor town that had suffered horribly, and they had no coin to spare for the heroes, but when the party members insisted and insulted the gratitude and hospitality of the town, the local Squire and landowner offered to take up a donation for the party. When donation arrived it consisted of homespun crafts, some young hunting dogs, food, barrels of beer, and other sundry items produced by the town. The party, even greediest of them, were delighted with this strange treasure. One of the items was a barrel of pickled eels - not something that the inland community would actually produce. What the party didn't know is that also in the town as part of a long running subplot, was a pair of Malenti assassins from the local version of 'Innsmouth' who were there on behalf of Nauti the Storm Lord to assassinate the party cleric. Having failed in this mission, the barrel of pickled eels tainted with blowfish poison was a parting shot at the PCs. The barrel stayed in the PC's supplies for months of game time and years of play time, until the party brought it aboard the ship and had it stowed away - only to be served up as a course in the very feast they were eating.
Also aboard the same ship was a Malenti high priest of Nauti, pretending to be a simple sailor. The priests mission aboard the ship was to turn some members of the crew to the worship of Nauti, and then acting with them consecrate one of the ship's bilge stones as an altar to Nauti, thus turning the ship into one of Nauti's temples - at which point Nauti would be free to directly intervene (and I mean directly) aboard the ship without fear of interference by other deities. The ship would effectively become his desmanse. Consecrating an alter to Nauti involves sacrificing the kidneys of a murdered man and ideally involves a congregation. So the mission essentially was spread dissent in the crew, and then murder some sailors and get away with it. Along the way, Nauti would send sea serpents, storms, and sauhaghin servants to assist. The plan seemed almost foolproof, and things got off to a great start.
The ship's cook rather innocently found the eels, and made a dish of them, resulting in poisoning all the PC's and officers. The PC's barely managed to save the lives of the officers and themselves, but even so most of them were incapacitated from the poison. The captain was embarrassed and furious. Someone had nearly murdered his guests and all his closest and dearest friends. He determined to make an example of someone, and the only one that could bare his rage was the hapless cook. Now everyone knew the cook was innocent, and the high priest was busy poisoning the minds of the crew by saying this sort of bad luck was a sure sign that they'd lost the favor of Nauti, and that the Captain was being a jerk (he was), and that this ill-advised voyage in hurricane season against the wind was sure to come to ruin.
Most of my players knew this was unjust but they figured there wasn't much they could do about it, and probably it would be best to just keep out of it. After all, they didn't want to turn any attention to themselves for their role in this. My paladin player saw injustice and decided that this couldn't stand. He had no idea what he was going to do to stop it, and he had no idea what was going on or that any of this had repercussions, but by golly he wasn't going to stand aside and let injustice be done. He wasn't even considering his oath to protect the innocent and give aid to travellers. That's just the way this guy thinks. So after an IC argument and a failed diplomacy check, the player just says, "Fine. If someone needs to be whipped, whip me. We brought the poison aboard, however unknowingly. We are to blame more than the cook. Whip me." And that's what happened. And the ship's crew were like, "Dude. That guys is basically Aravar the Traveller. Aravar the Traveller is watching out for us."
And the whole voyage, all 30 something days of it, across multiple sessions was basically like that. Every time there was a plot afoot, with no idea what sort of plot was afoot, the player acting on his own sense of justice, just intervened all the freaking time to the extent that it practically seemed supernatural. The player could well have been reading my mind. He never really figured out any of the clues as to what was going on in the background, but every single one of the dozens of things that Malenti priest tried to get support from the crew or quietly murder someone just failed. Surprise attack by Sahuaghin as cover for the Malenti priest getting his kidneys? Thwarted because the Paladin decided that night he needed to help stand watch with an NPC he felt compassion for. Not a single sailor died through all the plots and stratagems. No dead sailors, no harvestable kidneys. No harvestable kidneys, no consecrated alter to Nauti. The crew effectively had a guardian angel on full time service and he never knew it. Nauti did eventually show up in physical form and raised a hurricane against the ship, but he had no right to directly touch it. So the ship survived (with a small bit of divine aid from the good guys).
That's just typical of this player and his Paladin. He just does the right thing. He's frequently lawful stupid, often way more than he needs to be. But when he's in form, it's pretty awesome.
