a gift from Kojiro (open to all)
Bei Nacht und Nebel, when all through the House, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse, Kojiro left an early Yule present for everyone.
He installed it in the Great Hall, right inside the entrance door, where everyone would be sure to see it.
It was a fortune-telling machine, its slots modified to take generic tokens of any kind -- a coin of small denomination from a far country; an American nickel; a Sickle or a Knut; a rusty old washer. A burlap sack of just such washers rested beside the fortune-telling machine.
It had a name, but no sentience and no soul. Its old gears and cogs had been greased with Kojiro's special blend of oils, and it ran now on a converted magical power of Kojiro's own devision. It would not be broken by student interference.
On the machine, Kojiro had left a note, taped beside the coin slot with Spell-O-Tape (the stuff normally used to fix broken wands and suchlike). The note read:
lol
The machine was there in the morning to greet the earliest of birds.
(( There are several fortune generators online -- note that many require JavaScript to be enabled:
The Wacky Fortune Cookie Generator at blogthings
Random Fortunes at wisdomportal
Misfortune Cookies at fal.net
And, something that's not a generator but is pretty neat: the archive at Weird Fortune Cookies
Of course, if you have some plotty foreshadowing you'd like to accomplish, you can make up your own fortune, along the lines of this one from American Gods...))
He installed it in the Great Hall, right inside the entrance door, where everyone would be sure to see it.
It was a fortune-telling machine, its slots modified to take generic tokens of any kind -- a coin of small denomination from a far country; an American nickel; a Sickle or a Knut; a rusty old washer. A burlap sack of just such washers rested beside the fortune-telling machine.
It had a name, but no sentience and no soul. Its old gears and cogs had been greased with Kojiro's special blend of oils, and it ran now on a converted magical power of Kojiro's own devision. It would not be broken by student interference.
On the machine, Kojiro had left a note, taped beside the coin slot with Spell-O-Tape (the stuff normally used to fix broken wands and suchlike). The note read:
lol
The machine was there in the morning to greet the earliest of birds.
(( There are several fortune generators online -- note that many require JavaScript to be enabled:
The Wacky Fortune Cookie Generator at blogthings
Random Fortunes at wisdomportal
Misfortune Cookies at fal.net
And, something that's not a generator but is pretty neat: the archive at Weird Fortune Cookies
Of course, if you have some plotty foreshadowing you'd like to accomplish, you can make up your own fortune, along the lines of this one from American Gods...))