Skull & Bones

Motto

**Skull & Bones** is one of the Ancient Eight secret societies in Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House. Founded in 1832, it is the oldest House of the Veil. Its members are colloquially called the Bonesmen. Their specialization in divination through prognostication rituals make the society particularly influential, with Bonesmen alumni including former presidents, diplomats, at least one director of the CIA.

## Book Information

The following is information found in the final pages of Ninth House provided by Leigh Bardugo on the Houses of the Veil.

* *Motto*: Rich or poor, all are equal in death.
* *Teachings*: Practices extispicy and splanchomancy, divination using human and animal entrails.
* *Famous Alumni*: William Howard Taft, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, John Kerry.

### Magic

Skull and Bones practice extispicy and splanchomancy. Extispicy is the practice of using anomalies in animal entrails to predict or divine future events. Splanchomancy is the term used for human prognostications. Organs inspected include the liver, intestines, and lungs. These two practices can be used to predict anything from trends in the stock market, to results of sports games. In terms of magic, the reading of entrails is not so dissimilar to reading the future in the cards of a tarot deck or a handful of animal bones.

### Tomb

Skull and Bones' tomb is a grand red brick building in close proximity to New Haven General. It is within their tomb and the nearby Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall that the Bonesmen perform their rituals. Within SSS Hall, the Bonesmen operate in a windowless chamber only accessible through a barely visibly notch in the paneling that allowed the disguised door to swing open.

### Prognostication Ritual

The society conducts their prognostication rituals 4 times a year, at the start of every fiscal quarter. This information would be passed on to hedge-fund managers and private investors. This rite would be performed in SSS Hall where Bonesmen dress in their robes and hoods.

High level prognostications are performed by a Haruspex. The Haruspex, adorned in a surgical gown and mask, would read the entrails of the *victima.* From the entrails, the Haruspex would call out predictions regarding the stock market, often ordering specific actions, along with stock names and share prices for companies traded publicly on the New York Stock Exchange, the NASDAQ, Euronext, and the Asian markets. This was all done in Dutch, known as the language of Commerce, and the official language of the Bonesmen.

Skull and Bones acquire mentally-ill patients from the local hospital to be the *victima* of the rite. The society prefers to dissect and read the entrails of the mentally-ill, such as schizophrenics, believing this type of *victima* results in more accurate predictions. The society pays off a nurse to feed the patient dove’s heart, geranium root, a dish of bitter herbs, such as parsley. The nurse is kept unaware of the specifics, including who she is working for.

### Administration

LIke the other societies, Skull and Bones are managed by Bonesmen alumni and the society's Board of Trustees. Important members within the society's hierarchy is the Haruspex.

The Haruspex is a Bonesman alum who travels to the University in order to conduct high level prognostication rituals. The undergrad Scribe takes down the predictions and many other lower-rank Bonesmen cater to the needs of the Haruspex. The Haruspex's authority and power is venerated within the delegation, and thus has his pick of undergrads to 'attend' to him.

### Lethe House

The Bonesmen's widespread and powerful influence outside of Yale causes what has been described as an inflated sense of ego, which often results in Bonesmen expecting deference from Lethe delegates. Indeed as a powerful major House, Lethe House depends on the Bonesmen for funding.

However, like all Houses of the Veil, all instances of ritual magics from Skull and Bones must be sanctioned by Lethe House and as a society, they are subject to the authority of the Ninth House.  During the Skull and Bones' prognostications, Lethe delegates are expected to arrive early to ensure the chalk signs of protection were correct and that the circle perimeter was secure.

## History

### 1800's

Skull and Bones was founded in 1832. Their tomb would not be built until twenty-five years later in 1854, making it the first landed society of Yale. The Russell Trust Association paid for the construction of their tomb on High Street, New Haven due to the presence of a nexus. This nexus was the result of Gladys O'Donaghue's soul being consumed, the inherent violence in the act causing a nexus to form.

At the time of the society's founding, too many students knew Greek and Latin as was customary of collegiate students. Since the results of their prognostications needed to be kept secret, the Bonesmen adopted Dutch as the official language of the society.

Before Lethe's founding in 1898 to monitor the societies, there had been regular instances of casualties resulting from Skull and Bones prognostications. These deaths from stray magic and botched rites lead to Lethe delegates' rather crude, but strictly applied policy of NMDH (*No more dead hobos*).

### 1900's

After Lethe was founded, Skull and Bones would only have one casualty following a prognostication ritual. In 1929, after the stock-market had crashed, a group of Bonesmen accidentally killed an unhoused person during a hastily-planned ritual. Prognostication rites had been banned for the next four years, and Skull and Bones had been threatened by Lethe House with the loss of its tomb on High Street.

In 1932, the managers of the trust that funded Skull and Bones poured money into sealing off the entrance to the operating theater in SSS Hall by disguising it with new paneling—essentially creating a secret door. The room itself was a windowless chamber, sandwiched between the lecture hall and a classroom. It was a forgotten remnant of the old medical school, which had held its classes here in SSS before it moved to its own buildings..

At some point, an unsanctioned Skull and Bones ritual would lead to stray magic escaping, causing half the Yale Precision Marching Band to suddenly display bizarre behavior and to have seizures during a football game with Dartmouth. Schwarzman, a Bonesmen from the class of 1969, would donate the Commons (officially called the Schwarzman Center) to Yale University as a 150-million-dollar apology for the public incident.

### 2000's

The heirs of Geronimo (a famous Apache warrior) sued Skull and Bones in 2009, charging that its members robbed his grave in 1918 and have kept his skull in a glass case ever since. Alex would recount to Abel Turner that the Bonesmen didn't have Geronimo's skull but did have his liver and small intestine in a jar.

### Ninth House

Darlington and Alex attended a prognostication in the fall quarter. Alex would remember desperately trying to focus on the taste of the ginger candy in her mouth in an effort not to throw up at the amount of blood and gore.

Alex would attend another prognostication in the winter, this time alone. Arriving late, Alex passed Bonesmen Tripp Helmuth at the door as she slipped inside the hidden operating theater in SSS Hall. There, the Haruspex was operating on Michael Reyes, a 48-yr old schizophrenic patient from the public beds of Yale New Haven Hospital. Jean Gatdula, was the nurse on the Skull and Bones' payroll, who would work three nights in a row to care solely for Reyes, feeding him the necessary diet of all victimas: dove's heart, geranium root, and a dish of bitter herbs. The glamor magic of the obfuscation veils are not very effective, having been made by Skull and Bones. The magic binding the veils would wobble with every bump, the gurney coming into and out of focus, the blips and bleeps from the medical equipment and the ventilator still audible.

## Magical Repertoire

* obfuscation veils - enchanted object used by Skull and Bones to glamor their victima to look like AV equipment piled beneath protective plastic sheeting while transporting them to the hospital. The enchantment is not well-done, as Skull and Bones only specialize in prognostications.

## Known members

* Tripp Helmuth
* William Payne Whitney, founder of Lethe.
* Miranda
* Schwarzman

## Trivia

* In the same 1932 renovations that sealed Bone's operating theater, Aurelian's rooms in SSS Hall were also consecrated.

## Gallery

The emblem of Skull and BonesSkull and Bones tomb, circa 1879, before expansion

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 *Ninth House* Chapter 1 (Winter)
2. ↑ *Ninth House* Prologue (Early Spring)
3. ↑ *Ninth House* Chapter 29 (Early Spring)
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 *Ninth House* Chapter 3 (Winter)
5. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/us/20geronimo.html
6. ↑ *Ninth House* Chapter 18 (Last Fall)
 Skull & Bones on Wikipedia