Nora Perez/Rumor Registry
Rumors
Nora Perez has 5 Rumors written about so far.
Nora Perez/IF-10.773
Before Blaseball
Nora Perez moved to Baltimore as a graduate student studying marine biology, and was drawn to Baltimore specifically because of its history with Carcinization as well the recent outcome of the Reckoning that took place, and the rumoured death of the Olde One. While she was not present for any of those events, she was able to pick up bits and pieces of the story as she settled into the city, and took great joy in learning about the history of Baltimore from anyone she could talk to about the subject.
In order to cover her tuition Nora Perez’s first goal was to get a job in this new fascinating city, and she quickly picked up many side gigs throughout Baltimore to cover her tuition, including what might have been every single job the Crabitat had to offer. Passerbys would see her working construction on new sections of the fortress, residents would catch her working a barista gig at the local tea place in the Stilts, she was the rower for the gondolas, and she sold concessions at every home game.
Joining the Baltimore Crabs
Finally Perez’s time at the Crabitat came to it’s natural peak, where she was given a chance to join their blaseball team - the Baltimore Crabs. Perex took the offer immediately citing many reasons from the better pay to getting access to Kennedy Loser’s couch to crash on. That’s not to say she didn’t enjoy her time with the team outside of that. Perez got along well with Winnie Hess during her season with the Crabs as the two enjoyed gossiping about other teams in the ILB together, and her and team captain Combs Duende worked closely together, with rumours starting to form that Duende was training Perez into the Crab’s next captain.
Unfortunately Perez’s captaincy bid, thesis, and life were all cut short when in Season 2 Day 25, she became the 5th player in the ILB ever incinerated by a rogue umpire. Upon her incineration Perez's ashes were made into Memorial Pearls and distributed to Combs Duende, Forrest Best, and Kennedy Loser.
Nora Perez Enters the Hall of Flame
While Perez was alive, she had a number of other jobs alongside her blaseball career to pay for her tuition. One of the only other jobs that she managed to hold consistently was working part time as a reaper of the departed. She would help them get acquainted with their circumstances, walk them through passing into the Beyond, and comfort them if they were particularly upset with the whole situation, of which a good few were. Participant surveys reported that she had above average bedside manners for a reaper, though she was reportedly "a bit of a klutz" about it. Due to signing an NDA with her employer, she has been physically unable to actually tell anyone where their souls might be going or who in particular is collecting them.
After her incineration, thanks to her relevant job experience, and also because she seems to be the only one who's figured their way around in the Trench, Perez was able to land an assistant gig from The Monitor as a psychopomp to the recently departed. She is usually the first person to find the newly crisped, and is familiar enough with comforting and grounding very frazzled lost souls. As one of the few really familiar faces to those among the dead, she also helps delegate between the Null Team and the Monitor if anything comes up that needs its fleeting attention.
As Perez spent more and more time in the Hall she began to see familiar faces. The first crab she ever greeted was her former captain Combs Duende who seemed to shadow Perez through the trench though much of their time together, with Duende acting as strong silent backup to Perez’s often bubbly demeanor. Many followed, and some left (a prospect that, to Perez, was more terrifying than their initial death), and she met many other familiar faces, taking pride in showing them just how far she had come. When Duende’s close friend and ally Brock Forbes joined them in Season 22, Perez was able to facilitate a touching reunion, and still thinks back on it with pride.
The Hall Opens
As the expansion era drew on and the leagues relationship with death began to muddy, Perez found herself vexed by the coming and going Debts, Returns, Roams, and Vaulting, but she had built a place for herself here, and she kept the Hall together the best she could with her deceased and deceased-adjacent colleagues. When the Breath Mints were incinerated in a solar eclipse Perez watched in awe as for the first time she saw exactly what the Monitor was capable of in collecting entire teams to be brought back into the Hall. Perez felt deflated, realizing that all she had worked on was still no match for the powers of an actual god, and spent the next few days trying to get her head together with Combs Duende and the newly dead Winnie Hess.
This lasted up until the incineration of Adalberto Tosser, and old Crab and old friend just waiting to be brought into the fold. Perez personally located and talked to an older, more tired Tosser, and helped him find his partner Brock Forbes who had died several seasons back. When the monitor came for the Fridays, this time Perez just watched and took notes, remembering that she too was capable of her own greatness.Nora Perez/IF-223.01
Study of Marine Biology in Baltimore
Nora Perez was a marine biologist who joined up with the Baltimore Crabs in order to research the effects of carcinization, as well as the ecological ramifications of a god corpse's infinite viscera spilling out into the Chesapeake Bay forever from its fatal wounds and feeding the nigh uncountable crustacean population beneath the waves.
She had a batting rating of a whopping two stars, the highest on the team, and was essential to the Crab's hard-fought victory over the Tacos for second-worst team in the league. All the while, she was working on her thesis between games and practice and her second job and her other like fourteen jobs.
Perez got on well with Pedro Davids, who similarly came to the Crabs in order to pursue his PhD and ended up sticking around, and with Adalberto Tosser, who joined the Crabs after dropping out of art school. Between her STEM studies, Pedro's humanities and anthropology experience, and Bertie's art school experience, the three of them had a tightly knit friend group of academic-minded folks.
She borrowed one of Pedro's vans to get to her shifts inland and had to sleep in it about once a week because some manager screwed up the schedule again.
Perez’s breadth of knowledge extended well beyond the seafloor thanks to her constant barrage of new hyperfoci, and she was the strategic powerhouse behind the Crabs' domination of trivia nights across the eastern seaboard, side by side with Winnie Hess who was her closest friend on the team. She had almost zero math skills however.
Death and Post-Death
Unfortunately Perez’s captaincy bid, thesis, and life were all cut short when in Season 2 Day 25, she became the 5th player in the ILB ever incinerated by a rogue umpire. Upon her incineration Perez's ashes were made into Memorial Pearls and distributed to Combs Duende, Forrest Best, and Kennedy Loser.
When she died, Perez was worried that she would go mad without stimulation, but the Trench turned out to be a fascinating place in and of itself, and she's managed to keep herself occupied by studying its make and structure and trying to speculate on the physical and metaphysical characteristics of the space. Alongside her scientific pursuits, Perez quickly found her take charge attitude and customer service skills propelling her to start keeping tabs on the new arrivals to the hall, showing them what she had learned and helping them carve places for themselves in the life after death.
Of the many souls she helped carry, none were quite as serendipitous as York Silk . During his brief time in the trench, York received what had become a standard onboarding package from Perez. Who had been playing this role for years it seemed and was happy to help Silk acclimate. Nora’s friendly nonchalance and facts about marine life were a welcome reprieve for Silk’s rather intense last few seasons, and when he was unexpectedly revived it was to none other than Perez’s old team, eventually taking up both her old locker, and beginning his own studies into Marine Biology at the University of Baltimore.
The Hall Opens
As the expansion era drew on and the leagues relationship with death began to muddy, Perez found herself vexed by the coming and going Debts, Returns, Roams, and Vaulting, but she had built a place for herself here, and she kept the Hall together the best she could with her deceased and deceased-adjacent colleagues. When the Breath Mints were incinerated in a solar eclipse Perez watched in awe as for the first time she saw exactly what the Monitor was capable of in collecting entire teams to be brought back into the Hall. Perez felt deflated, realizing that all she had worked on was still no match for the powers of an actual god, and spent the next few days trying to get her head together with Combs Duende and the newly dead Winnie Hess.
This lasted up until the incineration of Adalberto Tosser, and old Crab and old friend just waiting to be brought into the fold. Perez personally located and talked to an older, more tired Tosser, and helped him find his partner Brock Forbes who had died several seasons back. When the monitor came for the Fridays, this time Perez just watched and took notes, remembering that she too was capable of her own greatness.Nora Perez/IF-59.685
Hello!
Hi there! Funny seeing you in a place like this! My name is Nora, and I’m here to help you figure out what’s going on. What’s the last thing you can remember?
-
Okay well that sounds like a lot. What do you think happened?
-
Are you sure? Does it look like you’re recovering? You know the umpires don’t miss. And even if there’s a fire eater around sometimes they're just not in the right place at the right time, and that’s not their fault - it’s just bad luck. So what do you think happened? Where do you think you really are?
-
Mhm. That’s right, this is the Hall of Flame. You’ve been incinerated by a rogue umpire. Don't worry it happens to the best of us. It’s not the end of the world though! There’s still plenty of life left for you to live out - even if it wasn’t quite what you were expecting.
-
Oh me? Well I died a long time ago, and I wasn’t that big of a deal back then either. I was actually on the worst team in the league if you can believe it!
-
What? No - The Crabs.
-
People keep saying that but I’m still pretty sure they’re making it up. Tillman even tried it and that’s how you know this is just an extended joke at my expense.
-
Anyway, back when I died there wasn't really anyone down here, it was only Season 2, so there were just a handful of folks scattered around trying to figure out what to do next, but now there’s loads of people here to meet!
-
That’s right! Everyone who’s ever died is down here! Well mostly everyone. Is there someone in particular that you want to see? I’ve actually got a list of folks that I wanted to introduce you to. You might not know all of them yet, but I’m sure you’ll be good friends once you get talking.
-
Nora Perez/IF-66.804
In Literature
The Crabs Poet Laureate Runolfio Peeper immortalized Perez in his famous poem "Perez at the Bat":
There is a place called Mudville
In B'More's Crabitat
Where players sit and wait until
They get a chance to bat.
And from those soggy dugout seats
Rose Nora—"The Perez"
She slowly dusted off her cleats
Then screamed, the story says.
Her battle cry was felt all 'round,
And fans raised pincers high.
She stamped her foot upon the ground,
Then looked out to the sky.
The sun was blotted, black and dark,
And shadows bathed the bleachers.
The Discipline had brought this stark
And somber set of features.
But Nora boldly grabbed her bat,
And marched upon the field,
The Crabs were losing; given that
She knew she could not yield.
She passed the umpire by the plate
And glanced into his eyes—
She witnessed boundless depths of hate
And learned her own demise.
She paused to try to understand
What vision she had spied.
She felt a tremor in her hand.
But Nora never cried.
She looked down to the pitcher's mound,
Resolved to see things through.
And though she contemplated death, profound,
Blaseball was all she knew.
The pitch came fast, both high and in
She wasted little time
Her bat swung hard, she hoped to win
A final hit, sublime.
A heavy thwack did echo out
The ball floated away.
The fans all rose to give a shout.
It sailed into the bay.
She dropped her bat, began to trot
Then looked over her shoulder
And saw the umpire, eyes white hot
His body all a smolder.
There was flash, the crowd went mute,
And from the murky harbor deep,
A great crab rose, gave a salute,
And honored Nora's final sweep.
Oh, somewhere in some universe
The sun is shining bright,
The Crabs are not under a curse,
and somewhere hearts are light;
Forbidden books lie closed somewhere,
Despite our base desire.
But there is no joy in Mudville—
The mighty Perez has been incinerated by a rogue umpire.
Nora Perez/IF-736.22
Side Gigs in Baltimore
Nora Perez had to pick up so many side gigs throughout Baltimore to cover her tuition that alongside her blaseball career and reaping gig she also may have also worked every job in and under the Crabitat. Passerbys would see her working construction on new sections of the fortress, residents would catch her working a barista gig at the local tea place in the Stilts, she was the rower for the gondolas, and she sold concessions at every home game. Because nobody could buy concessions while Perez was at bat, they had to take the lost revenue out of her paycheck, requiring her to pick up even more jobs.
She wasn't omnipresent or super fast or anything, she was just really, really tired, and often relied on rides from Kennedy Loser between shifts, and slept in Pedro Davids’ RV when required she didn’t have the energy to get all the way home after a late game. Perez spent many nights snacking on leftover concessions, going over her thesis paper with David, and then getting a ride back to her apartment with Loser so she could get up and do it all again the next morning.
When she was incinerated Season 2 day 25, Perez was missed by many of the team, with her pearls begging distributed amongst them, and Davids in particular keeping her unfinished thesis, still marked up with red pen after their last writing session. Upon her incineration Perez's ashes were made into Memorial Pearls and distributed to Combs Duende, Forrest Best, and Kennedy Loser.
Post-Incineration
After a lifetime of activity, Nora Perez quickly discovered that not even death could slow her down for long. Upon realizing that despite the presence of the Monitor no one was really doing much to keep the hall up and running, Perez quickly made herself a niche of finding and greeting the new arrivals and getting people together in the Hall. What began with simply finding and greeting guests quickly became a practiced art, with Perez integrating the newly dead into the growing community of players in the Hall.
After several seasons, Perez realized to her annoyance that she no longer had a good grip on what the shape of the league was up above. While many would rather not think about the splort that cost them their lives, just as many were interested in seeing how their teammates were doing this season, leading to Perez keeping a running board of who was on what team, who had won the latest season, and what was the latest goings on with that giant peanut. Perez did encounter a slight hiccup when players first started reporting that the Baltimore Crabs were at the top of the league however, as she assumed that they were messing with her. This was eventually resolved with the death of Tillman Henderson who confirmed that they Crabs “Used to be incredible, but now that he’d died it was all going to go downhill for them.”
Time passed and Perez moved on, as more and more people entered the hall (and a few people ``left``), she greeted them all with the same knowing smile and confidence, whether they were the legendary Landry Violence or the lesser known Paul Barnes. As the work piled up Perez did eventually take on allies in her work with fellow psychopomps Velasquez Meadows and Rylan O’Lantern providing assistance alongside the haunted Esme Ramsey and eventually, to her delight, her old now haunted friend Kennedy Loser.
The Hall Opens
As the expansion era drew on and the leagues relationship with death began to muddy, Perez found herself vexed by the coming and going Debts, Returns, Roams, and Vaulting, but she had built a place for herself here, and she kept the Hall together the best she could with her deceased and deceased-adjacent colleagues. When the Breath Mints were incinerated in a solar eclipse Perez watched in awe as for the first time she saw exactly what the Monitor was capable of in collecting entire teams to be brought back into the Hall. Perez felt deflated, realizing that all she had worked on was still no match for the powers of an actual god, and spent the next few days trying to get her head together with Combs Duende and the newly dead Winnie Hess.
This lasted up until the incineration of Adalberto Tosser, and old Crab and old friend just waiting to be brought into the fold. Perez personally located and talked to an older, more tired Tosser, and helped him find his partner Brock Forbes who had died several seasons back. When the monitor came for the Fridays, this time Perez just watched and took notes, remembering that she too was capable of her own greatness.
Create New Rumor
To create a new Rumor for Nora Perez, use the Page Creation tool to the right. The IF number needs to be a randomly generated 4 or 5 digit number with a period placed somewhere within, and it cannot match any numbers currently used on this page. We've generated one for you to use, but feel free to use a different number. This will create a subpage under Nora Perez for inclusion in the main page. Visit Interdimensional Rumor Mill/Guide to read more about how to create a new Rumor.
