Four people other than Drizzt cycle out mining the obsidian: Mapicc, Subz, the human teenager with the sky-themed hoodie, and a creature unlike anything Drizzt has ever seen--a creature of huge, pure white floating hands, wearing a periwinkle cloak. It's pretty quiet; they finish before nightfall.

The floating hands are friendly, at least. He wouldn't have expected someone so magical after the lack of wizards he had found here. 

The floating hands, other than being floating hands, don't seem to be doing any magic. They seem to be friends with Mapicc? At the very least, they stay near him, and can be heard giggling with him periodically.

If Drizzt talks to them, he'll learn that (a) the floating hands are named Roshambo, or Ro for short (b) he has a very immature sense of humor (c) he is, in fact, friends with Mapicc, and (d) he's the one that named Medusa and is co-leading the investigation with Mapicc. If Drizzt doesn't initiate a conversation, Ro doesn't either, although he does use one of his hands to wave.

Drizzt is drawn by the giggling and the presence of one person he does know to initiate a conversation. (He has finally got to say words to people who understand them, and the good times cannot last, but he is grabbing the opportunity with both hands.)

Roshambo and Mapicc are definitely friends; every time Roshambo says any variant on "poop", he has to give Mapicc a diamond, and when Mapicc grumbles about wanting to kill Terry for burning down his mansion, Roshambo's the one to talk him down. Both of them, individually, make a deez nuts joke and then crack themselves up over it while Mapicc calls it vile, bro!

They're friendly with Drizzt, too, although they definitely don't know him as well; when Drizzt and Mapicc run out of food, Roshambo shares some golden carrots with them. Roshambo excitedly tells Drizzt a joke, while Mapicc spends the time complaining that Roshambo has told this joke five times in the past three days, come on bro, it's not even that good. They show off their matching shields--Mapicc's is a red T, Roshambo's is a red A, and they explain it stands for Team Awesome. Ro asks if Drizzt has died yet on Lifesteal, is impressed when the answer is no, and then immediately holds Mapicc back from being Drizzt's first murderer.

Their humour is not what he's used to, but it's honestly a major improvement over drow humour. 

Also, fighting but not killing someone is how you show friendship. He has friends! 

...Does he want to fight? If he wants to fight then Mapicc definitely wants to fight. They can set out rules and equal gearsets and everything! Mapicc promises to give the heart back if he wins. 

Oh, he is so on.

"How all-out do you want this to be, what kit do you want? Standard for the server in terms of real fights is nether pot but I don't think I've got two full inventories of potions to spare, and we'd have to be in diamond at the most anyway if we want equal gearsets. I mean, I'd be down to fight you all-out but I don't know if I can make that a fair fight and still have enough to win if I get jumped. Full iron is probably the play, but I dunno if you want cobs, shields, how much food you want..." Mapicc's placed down his ender chest and is setting up a chest next to it; he's fiddling with shulker boxes and his inventory, switching it out for a fight. "Server pearl and gap cap is a stack each right now but I don't actually have a ton of gaps right now, I'm--ooh. I'm actually kind of broke. I should probably fix that soon, huh."

At some point he is going to learn the jargon here. "Iron and shields seems the sensible option."

"Cool. --Hey, Ro, how many carrots can you spare--"

"Duuuuude. Can you at least get more later--"

"I absolutely promise to get more later. It doesn't have to be that many, like, I dunno, 16 each? I'll pay you back a full stack later."

Sigh. "Fine." 32 golden carrots in the chest, then.

"Awesome." Where are his iron blocks--oh, there they are. Crafting bench down. In the chest: Two sets of iron armor, iron sword, iron axe. Two shields. 16 cobwebs each, 16 golden carrots each. No pearls, no totems. That seems fair enough. Now time to put his actual stuff away. Time for shuffling yet more shulker boxes around. Inventory management is a pain. But he gets it set, and then he's squaring up for a fight.

Drizzt is having to borrow a wooden chest from someone who has ever punched a tree in their life, while sorting out his armour. 

Sword and board has never been his style, but he has trained in it. It's going to be exciting seeing how much he remembers.

It's going to be exciting getting to spar with someone. It's been a number of years he doesn't want to count. Sparring isn't the best reason to draw steel, but it's definitely one of the most fun. 

Mapicc: is, in fact, really good at pvp. There are a few players on the server better or equal to him--Clown, Leo, maybe Subz or Parrot--but not many. He's strong and fast and he knows how to time his crits, when to eat, where to place cobwebs; when he breaks Drizzt's shield, he knows how long he has before it's back up. Drizzt is a good fighter, but he's used to different physics than Mapicc is. The fight is very, very close, but Mapicc's winning.

He starts to copy Mapicc, try to figure out what works. 

But he's used to fights where stopping to eat would get you killed, where you can actually just be faster than someone. 

He's a quick learner, but not that quick.

Drizzt respawns a few feet away, on nine hearts rather than ten. He feels a little weaker, and everything in the world feels a little more intense. 

(Mapicc’s collecting the stuff off of Drizzt’s body, putting it back in the chest.)

This is the first time he's died. 

It's also the first time he's got back up again.

He's vibrating out of his skin and he can't tell how much of that was because his heart stopped and how much because that fight was amazing.

Friends!!!

He goes back towards Mapicc with a stupid grin on his face. "Well done."

"You too! GGs." Mapicc also looks pretty happy, although he's not grinning quite as much as Drizzt. He does /withdraw 1, and then he drops the extra heart back to Drizzt. "If you ever want to do that again, just let me know. Although we should probably either grind gear or get a practice server set up if we want to do anything more than iron."

He picks it up. It's a shining star that absorbs itself into him, and he feels more... settled? Alive? Both, at once. 

"It'll be a good incentive to get better gear."

"Yeah, well, don't waste your best gear on sparring. Never know when a real fight will head your way."

"I'll get more than one set, then."

Mapicc does grin at that. "Now you're talking. One of these days we'll have enough stuff for a full nether pot duel. Super wasteful but it'd be fun. Well, wasteful unless it's real. Hopefully it won't be."