<Snipped quote by CaptainManbeard>
One way I also imagined it manifesting is that he's got all this blank space to fill up and does so himself. Like, consider that the first (highly expansive) part of the book is dedicated to education and walks you through everything you need to know one chapter at a time, and then when he learns stuff, it's up to him to actually successfully craft the spells and add them to his capabilities in the ever-growing spells section that takes up the rest of the book (and probably just grows new pages when needed). Depending on how intuitive this is, I assume the PCs all get a "starter boost", so he probably has a few spells he already knows right out the gate maybe, but going forward, most of the work is on his shoulders to actually be dedicated to the path of the Wizard. And yeah, with that go ahead, I think I'm definitely going to spread out his abilities to have him use necromancy for healing whenever he isn't poking the secrets to conventional healing magic. :)
Hmmm... To give them a little bit of that "starter boost" you mentioned, I'm thinking maybe we rework the initial origin idea some. Hmmm... Maybe the day before our characters go to Six Flags, they are checking out a mysterious old antique shop and are drawn to the items that become their Soul Conduits. The old shopkeeper is like "interesting that you should choose these items in particular..." That night, they each have a dream of their Soul Conduits' previous owners first learning about their own abilities, though they initially forget this shortly after waking.
Later that day, they are at Six Flags and go on the roller coaster and get Isekai'd like previous discussed. While they are flying through the tunnel of lights, they each notice their Soul Conduit materialize next to them in transit. They crash down onto the beach outside a small fishing village and suddenly recall the dreams they all had the previous night, which gives them a slight bit of knowledge about their new abilities.
In this new origin idea, they start out with no idea how the items got to Earth, but they suspect the shopkeeper must have known more than he let on. Perhaps some of them believe the items marked them for death. With no idea where they are (beyond the information learned from the dreams), they head into the village and try to formulate some kind of plan what to do. Similar to the Wizard of Oz plot, perhaps there is some great wise sage a few towns over who is said to discern peoples' destinies. Perhaps they decide to head there first to see if they can learn more about their situation.
What do you think?