Bone Burning Augurs

I'm about half way through "City of Bones" by Martha Wells.  (Note, there are a couple other books called "City of Bones" I am talking about the Martha Wells one.)  In this world the future is divined by burning the bones of specific people from the setting.  In addition to being a more evocative and sinister flavor of augury, it adds the danger of being jumped and killed not just for your pocket change but for your bones.  Let's blatantly steal for this for our silly elf games.

 Augurs, oracles, and prognosticators are able to read the ripples of fate by burning the bones of elves, wizards, and the magically profane.  The bones are burned in copper braziers and the ashes interpreted against lines inscribed in the dish.

This practice has fueled a cottage industry of bone collectors.  Cut-throats and grave robbers provide a steady supply of bones of dubious origin.  The discerning fortune teller saves the rare genuine elf bone for their own private divination.

A career of burning elven bones exposes the practitioner to enough arcane free radicals to cause dramatic mutations.  It usually starts with shakes and sporadic changes in hair and eye color.  Continued exposure results in a reverse ossification of the reader's own bones; causing slumped posture, bowed limbs, and frequent dislocations.  Skin is known to liquefy and drip from the flesh and web between fingers.  The oldest readers are reduced to hunched gibbering things who are only salient while breathing the profane smoke of burned bone.

Genuinely arcane or not, the frequent inhalation of bone smoke causes a distinctive rasp in one's voice and rattling breath.  This timbre is practiced and put-upon by inexperienced prentices and common swindlers.

The word "bone" has now lost all meaning.