Large update to combs's page discussing experience with the Core Mechanics. Discusses their arc with the Mechs, airship time, friendship with Cannonball Sports as well as their alternation and the arrival of alternate combs into the Core. It also talks about Combs getting redacted.
Life in the Core
Combs Feedbacked for unofficial Mechanics pseudo-captain Lady Matsuyama in Season 17. At the time, the Mechanics had become fairly settled as a team with the notable exception of Zoey Kirchner going to Dallas in exchange for the recently alternated PolkaDot Patterson. Combs initially struggled to find a niche in the Core which, while welcoming, was very different to Hawai’i and many of the Mechanics were rattled by the absence of both Matsuyama and Kirchner.
The lack of ocean access and the impracticality of going on sailing trips hit Combs fairly hard and they even hung up their captain hat for a time.
It was only after the Core decided to adopt an attitude of relentless optimism in the face of their devastatingly bad Season 17 performance and decided to build a literal Party Tank that Combs really began engaging with the team. They used their prior robotics experience to help with the mechanisms of the Tank and their appreciation of puns to encourage the team to put a literal fishtank in the Tank. This collaboration brought Combs and Bottles Suljak, partner of Matsuyama, together and Suljak’s decision to wholeheartedly accept Combs helped them find a place in general team culture.
Combs also spent time in the Secret Base teashop and cafe in the company of fellow immortal Kofi Gildehaus. While Gildehaus initially was unnerved by Combs’s Fireeater modification, they seemed to warm up to them fairly quickly. Eventually Combs managed to get them to admit that they took comfort from the knowledge that they’d never have to call the Wild Hunt to chase Combs’s soul to the Trench. Combs seemed to find this declaration odd but overall took it in a spirit of friendship.
In Season 18, Cannonball Sports Feedbacked to the Mechanics. Remembering their own rocky introduction to Core society, Combs quickly approached and befriended Sports and invited her to live in their spare room until she found her own place. Sports would wind up becoming Combs’s flatmate when both of them realized that they had no desire to live alone.
Over the next few years, the pair would work on making Combs’s dream of an airship a reality. They found a series of interconnected vast open spaces outside of DownTown around one of the Pillars. Using the plans Combs had developed before with modifications and help from Mechanics including an eager-to-help Suljak, the pair constructed a viable airship. While it was designed for a crew of two, Combs reclaimed the role of captain - or cap’n, as they were often referred to by the other Mechanics - with Sports serving as First Mate. They’d frequently take researchers from C.E.N.T.E.R. and other Core Organizations out on trips as well as just going out exploring with their friends. Gildehaus and Suljak were both common passengers.
Alternate
The Original
At the end of Season 21, Combs’s Alternate was called in the dimensional shakeup which rippled through the Core. Combs, who was in the Secret Base Teashop and Cafe, slipped through the weaker reality there into a different version of the Core where they were the Captain of the Core Space Station, a community in deep space at the heart of the Pillars of Creation. In slipping through they pulled the Combs of that reality into the Secret Base Teashop and Cafe. While Combs, in collaboration with the Sports and Gildehaus of that reality, managed to establish a video calling link with the Core they had been pulled away from, they have yet to find a way to actually travel back.
They have been serving as Captain for the Station, though their identity as an alternate-universe version of the original Captain has been broadly kept secret from the rest of the crew. Nevertheless, they have managed to build camaraderie with the alternate Mechanics while remaining in regular contact with their old friends. They have been working on building a space ship - a ship which can sail in space. Thus far they’ve met with limited success, but believe they have nearly cracked it.
The Alternate
Combs served as Captain of the Core for centuries. The Mechanics had left their home planet millenia ago, for reasons that had long been forgotten when they encountered him. Super light speed travel had not been invented at that point and so the Mechanics were on a journey which would take countless generations. As such, the majority of them were in stasis aside from a small crew whose ancestors had already been managing the ship for 350 years when they encountered Combs in his junker.
He volunteered to keep watch over them while they went into stasis with the rest of the Mechanics. As he would not age or die, and could simply photosynthesize whenever they passed stars, he would be a far more energy efficient guardian. He spent thousands of years with only the ships ever-iterating A.I. - an alternate version of Gia Holbrook - for company before stumbling on the Core Space Station which, while seemingly abandoned, was still capable of supporting life with functioning hydroponics and energy harvesting from the Pillars.
He continued to serve as a captain and guardian figure to the Mechanics who he’d watched over for countless ages, helping them begin a new life on the Station. As such, being switched into another reality where he was a Blaseball player hit him hard. He found himself faced with strange versions of his crew in a world where they had an incredibly different relationship with them. He was no longer the captain or the ancient protector, instead he was a relative newcomer to a team who missed their friend and expected him to play ball.
Late Expansion
While Sports initially struggled to get close to Combs following his alternating, the pair did reconnect somewhat though they were never as close as they were before. She reintroduced him to their airship as well as giving him batting coaching and trying to familiarize him with playing splorts. She also encouraged him to make friends with Patterson who had been through something similar.
In Season 24, the Mechanics played the pies and Niq Nyong'o hit Combs with a pitch. It's said that Sports, seeing the pitch coming, tried to get inbetween Combs and the mound but wasn't fast enough.
The Mechanics had always enjoyed Coffee weather and so, entirely predictably, the next games were Coffee. It’s said that partway through Day 26, Combs stood and walked to the Secret Base and climbed inside despite pleas from his teammates to stop.
He hasn’t been seen since.
Apparently after the game most of the team had dozens of missed calls from the original Combs, who later told them that they’d felt something disconnect. They seemed well enough and continued to call regularly, though the quality of the signal had notably decreased and at times seemed to struggle to even get through.
