A witch learning from scrimshaw whale skull

[Sensten]

I'm new to witches and prepared casters in general so bear with me please.

We've just picked up a whale skull with carvings equivalent to seven scrolls. I have a couple questions about this.

First, how would a witch go about learning these spells? Normally, I'd burn the scroll in a special ritual and feed the ashes to my familiar. That doesn't seem to be an option here.

Second, supposing there isn't a good option for me to do it on my own, what other options are there? Could I pay a wizard to copy the spells over to scrolls? How much would this cost? Would there be a way to bargain with a wizard to include the transcribing as part of a finders fee for selling him the skull?

Third, because I wonder how often I'm going to have difficulty with this idea: what's the cheapest way to learn new spells? Is there any item/feat/etc that would make the process easier/cheaper/quicker? If I use blood transcription, can I cast it multiple times to learn multiple spells from the same dead caster (about 10 pints of blood in a body...)?

Is there anything else I should know about witches, spells, witches casting/learning spells, or any combination thereof that you'd guess I don't know based on the little bit I've said here?

Thanks for any help you can give.

[Shaun]

I'm going to run into this exact problem as a DM. I think that I'd rule you could break off that relevant part of the skull and grind it into bits and feed it to the familiar. It's just 7 scrolls on a different medium, so why not? Keep in mind that's not a rules answer, just my work around.

[Thanis Kartaleon]

Yep, time to break out the mortar and pestle.

[Dazz]

I second (third?) the idea of a good bone soup. Other than that, yes you could get a wizard to transcribe it to scroll form for you--by strictest rules you would sell him the skull for half price of what the scrolls would be worth (if I remember the skull isn't given a price on its own) and buy the scrolls for full price, making it cost half the price of the scrolls to get it--assuming you want all of the spells on the skull. Your GM may rule that the wizard would be willing to do it for less, especially if he doesn't have one or two of those spells himself.

By strict rules yes you could learn multiple spells through blood transcription, up to the amount of blood you could extract from the body (GM ruling, perhaps 5 pints, as it would be extremely difficult to get out every drop), but it would mean you would have to prepare that many castings of the spell, which would all have to be used within 24 hours of the caster's death.

I don't know of any way to make learning spells any cheaper or easier other than what you've already said, past the 2 spells you gain automatically per level.

[Sensten]

Thanks all :)

[Dragonchess Player]

Rats.

From the title I thought that this was about a gravewalker witch that had a skull acting as a "Spell Poppet," which makes an awesome concept...

[Story Archer]

Ah, I remember that skull well... seems so long ago. My party used its sale in Bloodcove - along with other assorted sundries - to get their ship properly outfitted for the first time.

Good times.

[Jarleth]

Bones can be burned just like a paper scroll so I don't see why the standard method doesn't work except for possibly not needing to learn all 7 spells. So I would just cut out the parts with the spells your interested in and feed them to your familiar.