During the Clan War, the Great Houses of the Inner Sphere pledged to support each other with exchanges of technical information as well as with troops and munitions. As part of that agreement, the Federated Commonwealth manufacturer Coventry Metal Works gave its Draconis Combine counterpart, Luthien Armor Works, a license and the manufacturing specifications to produce the Firestarter. The fact that Coventry chose such an over-specialized ’Mech to exchange when it could have provided much more viable designs spoke volumes about the depth of the Inner Sphere’s grudging alliance.
       The executives at Luthien Armor Works thanked Coventry for their support and filed away the next-to-useless Firestarter designs. When the Combine’s turn came to reciprocate, they sent Coventry the slightly modified FS9-0 Firestarter rather than specifications for the original-design Combine OmniMechs such as the Avatar or the Sunder. The rationale for this choice provided by Luthien Armor Works stated that Coventry’s production line was already set up to manufacture the Firestarter, and modifying that line would require less time than starting up a new production line. The Federated Commonwealth officially accepted this explanation, and used the design as it deserved.
         During the Jihad, the loss of high technology forced the Combine to redesign their OmniMechs with less advanced technologies, and the Firestarter Omni was used as a testbed to see if they could do so effectively. While it lost half its pod space in the conversion, the new Firestarter III Omni was effective enough for the Combine to place it into production and use it against the Word of Blake. It has never been a true favorite of the Combine though, given its Lyran origin, and thus it has rarely been granted a starring role in the DCMS.

         The Star Slab Glaze seen on other Combine OmniMechs first found its use on this design. While it had been in testing and limited-run use in the Combine for over a decade, the Firestarter III was the first mass produced design to use it. The first runs proved faulty, the lines incapable of matching demand at the quality level required. The armor proved extremely fragile when hit by physical weapons, taking roughly double damage from such weapons, and a kick or punch has been known to completely shatter any armor it hits. Coordinator Ricol was not amused by the difficulties with the design, and ordered the construction of an entirely new, underground facility to build the armor at the required rate. The Star Slab Glaze now used is far more effective, though it is still vulnerable to being crushed in physical combat. Firestarter III MechWarriors, like the MechWarriors of other Combine OmniMechs, are encouraged not to get into such ranges with the enemy.
       The Firestarter III accepts any standard modular weapon system from any of the manufacturers in the Combine, though it retains fixed forward- and rear-firing Dragon's Breath flamers. Its primary configuration is equipped with two medium lasers, a small laser, two machine guns, and two additional flamers, raising the number of flamers to four. This configuration closely matches the standard Firestarter weapons mix, allowing a MechWarrior to easily upgrade to the Firestarter III from a standard Firestarter.
       The other known configurations show the standard situation-dependent mix of weapons. Large lasers, a range of particle cannons, LRMs, and even MRMs allow the Firestarter III to damage its enemies at any range and with almost any weapon.

         The Firestarter III was only deployed to units loyal to Coordinator Ricol, though few such units found any pride in receiving the design. A lance of Firestarter IIIs is still attached to every major Combine unit to this day, but beyond that requirement, no major military unit looks forward to using the design. Militia units throughout the Combine however have taken advantage of this lack of demand and have placed a constant stream of orders for it in the decades since. Any assault on any Combine planet, and many non-aligned worlds surrounding it, can expect to run into this versatile, if unimpressive, design. Ironically, the "hot-headed" Rurik Drascir of LAW still maintains a full company of these OmniMechs, reserving them for the defense of LAW facilities where he has led them into numerous battles over the years.