Hey hey. Pretty new to Blaseball. I picked the Georgias off the bat (ha.) and scooped Hercules as my idol right after just because I liked his name. Herc's my boy, and I have some ideas for backstory. Would love to get some working ideas into the fandom.
I put up a rookie card I drew a bit ago here.
Lore ideas are as follows.
Hercules Alighieri was once a sailor for hire in ancient times before picking up his first blaseball bat. On a voyage along well-known trade routes, Alighieri met a handsome Merman who was “not from around here” and fell promptly and irretrievably in love. Alighieri, following his heart, led his ship into uncharted and dangerous waters. The ship and its crew were lost at sea. Stories of sea monsters persist.
Alighieri awoke many years later in the lost city of Atlantis, and describes himself now as “a kind of shade,” not a ghost exactly, but neither to be counted among the living. Time, he says, has had little meaning since his shipwreck. Most of the time he appears entirely as he did in life, a human man used to life at sea, but from certain angles he is obscured by strange geometry, a sort of silenced light. This energy, whatever it is, roils most violently when Alighieri steps up to the plate. When he cracks a home run, it seems as if he’s possessed. Some have claimed to see the ghosts of dead grouper, chum and mackerel swirl about him, but this is likely just a fish tale.
In Atlantis, Alighieri was recruited to play blaseball, not just for his trainable athleticism, but his understanding of “the rhythm of the game” Human--or human-adjacent—players weren’t commonly thought to understand a nuanced concept of tides. Alighieri was almost immediately committed to practice, and his good nature kept the nascent Georgias in good spirits. He did, however, almost without fail, skip leg day.
Alighieri refuses to wear a shirt. Even his league supplied jersey remains in the Georgias locker room collecting dust. This trait is presented as merely a matter of course and has never been commented on by Alighieri. Receiving no answer vis a vis his shirtlessness, some reporters switched gears to ball player’s many amateurly rendered tattoos, to which Alighieri responded, “Well, we all make mistakes.”
Perhaps curious to some fans, Hercules Alighieri has written several collections of poetry and is widely regarded as a respected talent. His book Breathing Underrated won the Plulitzer Prize in [redacted]. In the dugout, Alighieri is often reciting lines from long-forgotten poets and asking his teammates if they know who wrote them. No one ever does.
Alighieri is known to be a flirt, but an accomplished one. During Party Time, Alighieri’s bar tab is long and few men find themselves able to resist him. “I mean, he’s a himbo,” says one shortstop, “and his blood is probably 80% rum, but heck all if he ain’t charming.”
