Need help coming up with a plot twist

[Tom Clarke]

Hiya Guys. In my current, and first time DMing, campaign the group is trying to free a member of 'the order' from a secure prison in the Western mountains. The group that i play with absolutely loves a plot twist now and then, so i was hoping to add one into this campaign. I've tried, but am really struggling in coming up with one which isn't common and boring. Any help would be great and thanks in advance :D

[MrFahrenheit]

The member is a plant who betrays the party and reveals their hideout to the non-'order' faction?

If that doesn't work, I'm afraid some more back story may be necessary.

[Tom Clarke]

I'm liking that. Only problem is that the Order is well established in the kingdom and there 'hideout' is well known. Sorry, should of put some more backstory in there. thankyou any way though. I do thin the idea of being betrayed by the person they were sent to get.

[Shining Wrath]

The person they are rescuing isn't there; the entity in the cell is a doppelganger. The real victim is somewhere else, and the party won't know they've "rescued" the wrong person until the ambush when the doppelganger fights against them. One of the ambushers will have a letter on them with clues that will lead them toward the correct prison - so long as they kill or capture that person and search them thoroughly.

[smcmike]

More backstory would be helpful:

Who are the Order? What do the players know about them, and how? What do the players know about the prisoner, and how? What do the players know about his captivity, and how?

Maybe the prisoner has been participating in a coup plot within the Order, and the prison is run by a rival faction within the Order trying to stop his evil - the PCs, naturally, would only find out after releasing him.

Maybe the prisoner is exactly who they thought he was, but his cell mate is someone very interesting.

[gfishfunk]

The person that they were looking for IS there, and IS who they thought he/she was, however, this person's nature is different than expected. Here are some possibilities:

1. The person was believed to be human, but turns out to be a dreugar or some traditionally evil race. The character has been hiding his real identity.

2. The person was originally a double agent, but has since given up on being anti-order, and has started being solely order. The person has not revealed to the order that they were a double agent for fear of banishment from the order.

3. The person has been the subject of magical experimentation and torture - and is now some sort of hideous abomination but still in control of his/her faculties.

EDIT: instead of a plot twist, you can showcase its cousin - the stunning revelation that realistically does not change the story in any meaningful way.

[Tom Clarke]

More backstory would be helpful:

Who are the Order? What do the players know about them, and how? What do the players know about the prisoner, and how? What do the players know about his captivity, and how?

Maybe the prisoner has been participating in a coup plot within the Order, and the prison is run by a rival faction within the Order trying to stop his evil - the PCs, naturally, would only find out after releasing him.

Maybe the prisoner is exactly who they thought he was, but his cell mate is someone very interesting.

The Order is a group set up 1000 years or so ago. They have been charged with the protection of magical artefacts throughout the land, and have the role of taking these artefacts from the hands of evil. The party has worked for the order before (cracking the mystery of an ancient temple and unlocking the treasure within, and destroying an evil necromancer who turned a town into undead to do his evil will) and i believe trust them a fair deal. They don't know much about the captive, only where he is and who he is.

[krugaan]

Pull a Metal Gear Solid and have the party accidentally kill the target. Then be branded as traitors and outlaws by the quest giver, who's part of a secret rival faction of the organization making a takeover bid.

[dickerson76]

The captive doesn't trust his rescuers:
After torture at the hands of the enemy, the captive doesn't trust the rescuers - the enemy has already run a fake "rescue" scenario to try and get additional information out of him. If the do manage to get him out of the cell, he tries to escape at every opportunity and runs in the opposite direction, trying to lead the party away from the Order.

[Southpaw]

The Order deals in artifacts you say?

The "person" they are rescuing is actually a sentient staff who has intimate knowledge of an evil plot being fostered by a Lich. Further plot twist could even lead to the sentient item being the Lich's phylactery and The Order was duped into retrieving it by the Lich. The people that were holding the artifact were using it to manipulate the Lich to their own evil schemes.

Now the adventures have two different adversaries ( The group that was previously holding the artifact and the Lich who is now newly freed to follow his own evil whims).

[Kurt Kurageous]

May it amuse Loki...

The request for help was sent hundreds of years ago, but ran into a ripple of the space/time continuum that the party crossed into while they rested. They "wake" in the past, clued in by tons of vague foreshadowing hints (the river is not as deep as you thought, the trees aren't as tall, etc.)

Everyone there acts as if they are alive, but in fact they are all persons out of time. The party does what it does, but when they open the cell to rescue the prisoner, they find themselves surrounded by the ruins of the place as they are brought back to reality. The prisoner was never meant to escape, and their escape would have altered reality.

[LVOD]

Right when they get to the guy, an arrow flys out of the darkness into his head, killing him instantly. Now they have to find the killer to clear their names because everyone thinks they did it.

They are on the run from the order AND the other guys.

[Southpaw]

When they finally release the prisoner they find out the prisoner is actually one of the players. With further inspection they find another version of each of the players held with in this prison. Are they the future versions of the players lost in time? Are they clones? Or are the players themselves the clones? Let them stir that in their noodles for a little while.

[Zman]

The member of the order is ultimately a double agent who become a main antagonist.