The Phantom of Skulls is a solemn poetic form intended to satirize suicide originally devised by the elf Tipi Lessontufts. The rules of the form are applied by poets to produce individual poems which can be recited. The poem is a single quatrain. A form of parallelism is common throughout the poem, in that certain lines often share an underlying meaning. Each line has eight syllables. The fourth line must make use of simile.