Annisa doesn't desperately need anything from the alch cabinet but she is glad someone's thinking strategy and his strategic thinking seems fine.

Malak can smell a gathering of competent people from a mile away.

Actually, she's just been watching the doors waiting for a group of misfits (non-anglosphere non-chinese non-enclavers) to get together for a supply run. She's already been for paper and pens (and a couple protractors!) but she might wind up artificing track and getting a chance to grab some well-behaved tools early would be great.

"Hello, I'm Malak, call me Malik if you can't hear the difference between Al and Awl. Are you hitting the workshop?"

"Yep, probably alchemy and then artifice. I'm Dennis. You want in?"

"Yes, please."

"Cool." One more tagalong shouldn't hurt them, not at this stage, and she looks like she's from somewhere else and it'd be good to have some friends in various somewhere elses. He leads the group out to towards the workshops, figuring he can continue this conversation on the way even while he's eyeing EVERY VENT and EVERY CORNER and EVERY LIGHT. "So... Malik, where are you from? Me and Owoye are from Lagos, Ghassan's from Dubai, Annisa's from Surabaya, and Lidetu and Yetnebersh are from Addis Ababa."

He does not really expect her to remember all of that, but the more she remembers the sharper it suggests her memory is.

What a good lookout! Ghassan is incredibly appreciative that someone else is watching for mals. Today's the first day, so it would be particularly embarrassing to be murdered when there should be very few of them still alive and kicking. This- doesn't look like a friendly group, so he'll stick with a neutral expression and try to look useful.

Ideally he can meet an alchemist who can do something with poisons; Ghassan does not want to specialize in something that his affinity gives him a slight edge in at the expense of pursuing something where he has any of the relevant intellectual skills. None of these people seem likely to volunteer information, so best to just make the contact and work on using them as resources later.

"Are you considering artificing, Malak? It seems we have a nice mix."

Over-familiar, could risk implying that he thinks he can rely on them, but he thinks his demeanor will help suggest that he's trying to feel out their capabilities- which is more smart than it is stupid. Hopefully. Ghassan is used to playing signalling games on a stronger shared base of assumptions; Dubai's could be completely incompatible with whatever is going on in Lagos, Surabaya, or Addis Adaba.

"Istanbul, city not enclave."

What in the world does he mean by 'we'? They are a bunch of freshmen doing a supply run on orientation day, not an alliance. Maybe he's... trying to build a sense of group identity? A little rude, but it would be much ruder of anyone else to explicitly correct that point, so he's got everyone giving the appearance of tacit agreement which reinforces that group identity... Well, she's on to him, that is not going to work on her.

(Also, he's doing it when he doesn't know anything about her skills or affinity other than that it might be artificing, which suggests that he's desperate, which suggests that he's got an affinity for basketweaving or something similarly useless inside the school.)

"I am considering artificing, yes." she says, putting that tiny bit of extra emphasis on the singular so that anyone paying attention knows that she knows that this isn't some big happy family. Happy families don't exist, especially in the Scholomance.

Oh, are they doing subtext. Annisa can usually keep up when people are doing subtext but it's harder across cultural lines; she knows how Americans talk, sort of, at least from television, and she thought she knew how British people talked but then Edmund wasn't that, and she isn't sure she's reading Dubai or Istanbul right at all. 

"I'm doing artificing," she says. "My affinity is weapons. If the stockpile has alchemical silver or finishing acid or mercury, I'll swap you for those; I'm not very fussed with alchemy otherwise." In Annie's dialect this conveys 'I'm an independent, but I'll trade on equal terms; I know exactly what I'm doing here'. Hopefully it conveys something similar to everyone else.

Malak doesn't seem interested in solving his problem, which is just fine by him. Nissa...Aninsa...why didn't all of them provide a pronunciation guide so he could remember their names more easily! Dennis and Owoye from Lagos, Ansa from Surabaya, Malak from Istanbul-the-city...Addis Ababa, he hopes he doesn't need those names anytime soon.

Nissa from Surabaya does weapons and sounds competent. Ghassan needs to convince her that he has something to offer and they should get along swimmingly. To that end...well, he has a spell prepared if they run into anything that needs paralyzed.

"I could choose either creative writing or alchemy. My affinity is poisons, but it would have been a waste not to train in writing my own spells with my other talents as they are."

See, that is how you get people to want to be in a group with you, say 'my affinity is weapons'. And have it be true, of course, but nobody is going to be dumb enough to falsely claim they have such a useful affinity when everyone's got years to check it.

"Weapons is handy. Mine is stealth. I would probably be languages track but it turns out all the good spells for hiding things were written by people good at magically hiding things. At this point I'm mostly looking to grab tools from the workshop. I expect to work mostly in wood and fabric, if anyone finds some wenge come find me and we'll work out a fair trade."

Annisa should definitely be writing this all down but not in front of everyone. She'll just have to wait until she gets back to the cafeteria and then write it all down. Ghassan, Dubai, poisons, Malak, Istanbul (city), stealth, wood and fabric esp wenge. Dennis, Lagos - shoot, did he mention his affinity -

"Anything very fast-acting that works on mals, Ghassan?" Do you have useful skills in here or just sketchy skills that will make it hard for enclaves to accept you for fear of their reputations?

(Malak has noticed that all the most impressive people she's met so far are girls. She has no idea why this might be, but it's certainly going to make it easier to never be alone with a boy if she never has reason to associate with one.)

"I have a poison that paralyzes some mals."

Out of five kinds that he's tested on. Honesty isn't the winning strategy, though.

"I have one that could be fatal, which I developed later, but I would rather have Orion Lake test it, first."

Who is that and why does he seem to think she should already know?

"Uh huh."

"How about something you can use like a ward, smear it under your door so they go around."

"I have one paralytic, one that affects the blood, in animals- no idea what it would do to mals. I could use an alchemist to help me refine them. My strength is creative writing, and I would not want to waste my talents if I can collaborate instead."

That's probably not too pointed or too wide-eyed and optimistic. Ghassan hopes so, anyway; otherwise, he's lost a chance at collaborating with Nissa (?) from Surabaya, who seems like she could be good source of tools to trap his room with. Mal-specific poisons, ideally, though he wouldn't mind something nasty happening to would-be thieves.

"Well, if you come up with an alchemical ward I'd be in the market for that."

Dennis is picking up everybody's names and affinities and cities without really trying, which is partly because he's had one-on-one conversations with everyone except Malak and partly because he's got a good memory, it's one of the things that his parents said would serve him well in here.

"I'd be interested for looking into something like that, I'm gonna do alchemy. Though why not do both, if you're good at both?"

Because not everyone is a genius, Dennis.

He doesn't say that. Can't really think of a lot of things to say. He should think of something.

Malak can do non-alchemical wards to simply hide a room. She does not mention this since their efficacy is directly proportional to their rarity and she doesn't necessarily want to hand them out to everyone here. She can always talk to Annisa later in private. That reminds her, though -

"Oh, I also can do some work with, ah, animal products. I don't plan to use that much since I think the school won't be very forthcoming with supplies, but if anyone finds a vat of lamb's blood - " or a stack of human faces but she's pretty sure if she says 'I could really use a stack of human faces' it will send the wrong message " - or such in the alchemy lab I would trade for that too." Even though she'd probably have to bribe a senior a ridiculous amount for a freezer or something, because a vat of lamb's blood is NOT going to keep.

"What do you use them for?" 

There, at least he's said something and it wasn't something idiotic.

"Oh, nothing in particular? Just some of the things I've looked at before I came here were older spells from when animal sacrifice was more common? Like priest-wizards would sacrifice a pure white bull for malia and then use the hide or bones in a protective vest or rod or something, because they've got a bunch of ritually-charged animal parts just sitting there. The malia part's not actually necessary, we know that now, but a lot of the old books have a ton of patterns for artifacts made from the thigh-bone of a pure white calf that has never seen moonlight or something like that, which happen to work nearly as well if you just use a perfectly normal animal thigh bone."

While this is technically true she has no intentions of wasting time on a thigh-bone protective rod. She has a very particular use in mind for lamb's blood, and could probably make reasonably good decoys out of other animal parts, but if she spells it out for them she can't use their ability to figure it out as a test and it will be harder to identify which if any of the others might be clever enough to collaborate with.

"Huh. Okay, I'll be on the lookout for animal parts."

He keeps considering bringing up his affinity, since everyone else is doing it, but wind is kind of a stupid affinity unless you happen to be friends with Dennis, who is really into the idea of air-tight containers that prevent mals from getting in by preventing everything else from getting in, too. Which, like, cool that Dennis thinks he's cool, but nobody else is Dennis. So he's just gonna shut up.

What do you need lamb's blood for. She's heard of it. Where did she hear of it.

...what if she raises an eyebrow knowingly at Malak despite not knowing where she heard of it.

Then Malak will give her a small smile and raise an eyebrow back.

(Whether Annisa has actually figured it out or is just pretending doesn't matter that much, she'll figure it out later. And she was planning to trade with Annisa anyways, this test is really for everyone else.)