Nandy Slumps/Rumor Registry
Rumors
Nandy Slumps has 2 Rumors written about so far.
Nandy Slumps/IF-1667
The waters beyond this point are uncharted, tales from distant shores echoed back into our reality.
Background
The following accounts can be traced to a single leather-bound journal originally found in a locked wooden chest alongside a sextant-like device of indeterminate origin and a shell that matches no known species of mollusc. The chest was located in a storage room in the Legscraper’s lower levels that was described as “smelling faintly of the sea”. Subsequent attempts to locate and navigate to said room have been unsuccessful thus far. The journal details the exploits of the crew of a large sailing vessel, The Tokyo Adrift, descriptions of which are largely consistent with mid-17th century galleons.
With The Tokyo Adrift
The Slumps are a series of sand and gravel banks located just outside of The Tokyo Adrift’s home harbour. The journal describes them as “requiring a perfectly coordinated crew led by a deft hand to navigate” and “a pain in the butt”. Located at the confluence of several oceanic currents, they have been pejoratively described by some as “the centre of the whole damn world”. The Immateria Seas’ currents ensure that no two journeys through the Slumps are the same. Routes through the shallows had to be planned on the fly, necessitating both skill of the highest calibre and a healthy amount of improvisation from a captain and their crew. An entry quotes the head of a notable merchant fleet as saying “Those damn Slumps ruin my plans week after week.”. “Down in the Slumps” appears to have been a phrase roughly analogous to modern day usage of “down in the doldrums”.
Despite these challenges, The Tokyo Adrift and its crew were notable for their high rate of success when navigating through the Slumps. Led by Captain Strongbody, the Adrift expertly slalomed its way through the Slumps with minimal casualties and time lost. This meant that having the Slumps barring the only entry point to their harbour became a strategic advantage for the Adrift. However, they too were not exempt from its dangers and on at least three separate occasions, found they had run aground on a gravel bank. Out of those three, one entry quotes crew member Cudi Di Batterino as stating “that place gives me the creeps” and urging the crew to extricate themselves quickly, citing “an unshakeable feeling that [they] were being watched, and judged”. In yet another incident, Cudi claimed to have seen someone attempting to board the vessel while it was lodged atop a gravel bank but was unable to get another crewmate to corroborate his story.Nandy Slumps/IF-17.919
Biographical information
Background
Fernanda "Nandy" Slumps is widely hailed as a splorting legend and has been identified (often by herself) as "the last living link to the Golden Age of Blaseball".
Slumps was born in Manila to Mexican-Japanese parents and raised in Kyoto by her paternal grandmother, from whom she acquired a love of Mahjong and a healthy disregard for authority. While still in her teens she joined local Blaseball team the Kyoto Capitals "because somebody said I couldn't". This was only the first step in a long journey as serial confounder of team strategy.
Her pitching career took off during the so-called Golden Age, and included championship wins with the Peoria Sockdolagers, the Waukegan Myrmidons and the Shreveport Hoobastank. She may be evasive about when the Golden Age of Blaseball actually was, but Slumps is an unrivalled source of information about this era. Hundreds of teams, thousands of players and innumerable events are today known only from her bottomless repertoire of anecdotes and five volumes of lurid score-settling memoir.
Retirement
After a spell with the flashy, cash-rich but fanless Quezon City Quetzals ended in fiasco, a jaded Slumps was forced to come to terms with how much the splort had evolved from the barnstorming days of her youth. It seemed the passing of an era when she announced her retirement from Blaseball to focus on cracking the high-stakes backroom Mahjong circuit.
Her ruthlessness, tactical nous and subtle yet chilling intimidation techniques soon earned her the nickname "the Shark". Other gains included a large stake in Japan's third-largest blimp operator, a seat on the IOC, the rights (now lapsed) to produce an ice show based on the Most Valuable Primate trilogy and, fatefully, title deeds to the abandoned Dilsneyland Tokyo theme park.
Alongside her burgeoning business portfolio, Slumps was for several decades an occasional colour commentator on televised Blaseball matches. Her input consisted mainly of criticising "these fancy-ass modern players", berating their "hopeless" coaches and sharing outrageous stories from her own extraordinary career. One such broadcast became NHK's highest-rated show of XX7X, running to eleven hours of unbroken edge-of-the-seat live coverage despite the match itself being cancelled due to high winds.
She is a regular contributor to long-running AM radio show Splortsnight with Blob Blurnett, and was recently presented with a gold plaque marking her 10,000th use of the phrase "the problem with these modern players is their attitude". It was these appearances, more than her on-field achievements, which inspired made-for-tv biopic The Problem With These Modern Players Is Their Attitude: The Nandy Slumps Story.
With the Tokyo Lift
During Season 9 of the Internet League Slumps was approached by Stijn Strongbody for help in assembling a new team. Keen to benefit from her experience, contacts and training regime, Strongbody offered her the position of Head Coach. Slumps agreed on the condition that she have a free hand in player recruitment. This granted, she offered herself a long-term contract as Star Pitcher, accepted it on the spot and immediately resigned from the coaching role.
Fears that decades out of the splort might have dimmed her competitive instinct were dispelled by the Lift's first press conference, in which she demanded to arm-wrestle Strongbody for the captaincy, forcibly ejected the team's media officer for interrupting her and responded to a patronising question about whether she could "still keep up with the youngsters" by staring at the offending journalist until he fled the room in tears.
Switch to batting
On the last day of Season 15 Slumps was attacked by Consumers. She returned to the Legscraper with an eyepatch, a skateboard under her arm and a new pair of sharkskin boots, and announced a move into the batting lineup with immediate effect.
"I've carried these pitchers as far as they're going to get. It's only fair that the lineup also feel the full benefit of my expertise. That's right, Nandy is a batter now. I mean how hard can it be." -Nandy Slumps
During a brusque and one-sided strategy discussion (Yusef Fenestrate later labelled it a "tactics tirade") she awarded herself third place in the order and further proposed that the stadium's newly-installed grind rail be renamed the Nandy Slumps Memorial Rail. When Fenestrate pointed out that Slumps was not yet dead, she replied "you're damn right".
Slumps was swept Elsewhere halfway through Season 19, causing her to miss the team’s sensational Championship victory. On her return players drew lots to determine who would share the good news. The veteran took it surprisingly well, with only minor damage to the weights room and captains’ office. Speaking to journalists afterwards, Slumps claimed that she had stayed away for nearly a hundred playing days and an entire Grand Siesta "to make those freeloading punks stand on their own damn feet for once", a plan wholly vindicated by results. In subsequent interviews she downplayed the significance of the Lift’s success, asserting variously that it would have been her seventh, ninth or eleventh Championship anyway and therefore No Big Deal.
After her first extended stay Slumps made frequent visits to Elsewhere, often in pursuit of Lift teammates. Several describe Slumps as having helped them through a difficult and in some cases life-changing experience. She would not comment on rumours that this apparent selflessness was merely a cover, and that she was taking the opportunity to maintain control over business interests based in the forests beyond.
Late in Season 21 Slumps lost her spot in the active roster. Uniquely, during two long Seasons in the Lift's Shadows she was never seen to serve in the Beef Wings truck. She claimed to have spent the time trying to teach Concrete Mandible to play Mahjong, though many have reason to fear she has been working on a sixth volume of memoir.
With the Mexico City Wild Wings
Slumps' career took another turn in Season 23 with a remarkable run of games in Mexico City. On Day 73 the Wild Wings' Phantom Thieves Guild stole her Passionate Rock Glove. On Day 75 they took the bold step, questionable on several grounds, of stealing Slumps herself. Fans can only speculate at the conversations which took place behind the scenes, but on Day 76 the Guild purloined Steals Mondegreen's Hearty Ring and presented it to Slumps as a small token of their esteem. How effectively she was mollified might be judged by the following match, in which Slumps faxed on to the mound and gave up 9.4 runs to seal a comprehensive Lift walkover. She boasted to journalists of her pride at having "taught those batters everything they know".
The veteran remained a fixture of the Mexico City rotation until their Nullification. As she crossed the Event Horizon Slumps could be heard complaining that the problem with these modern cosmologists is their attitude.
Personal life
As perennial recipient of the World's Buffest Grandma award Slumps does set her teammates a high bar - she had thirty-seven of these trophies melted down to make a Thomas Inch dumbbell - but they have found her to be as supportive in the gym as she is predatory at the Mahjong table.
In Tokyo she was close to regular workout partner Wyatt Quitter and for many Seasons kept a wary eye on the progress of Gerund Pantheocide. Her presence on the team was a key factor in securing the signature of self-confessed fan Cudi Di Batterino and was an oppressive restraining influence on Val Hitherto. Beyond these former teammates she is known to be friendly with Paula Mason but nurses a bitter dislike of "that smirking viper" Lowe Forbes, the basis for which she refuses to discuss.
In addition to her on-field duties Slumps was pilot of the Tokyo Lift's moving stadium, known as The Legscraper, and the de facto team owner until transferring her Dilsneyland title deeds to head janitor Gronk Sewergas. She is famously dismissive of "mere talent" and attributes her long and storied career to "green tea and hard work, dammit".
Create New Rumor
To create a new Rumor for Nandy Slumps, 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 Nandy Slumps for inclusion in the main page. Visit Interdimensional Rumor Mill/Guide to read more about how to create a new Rumor.
