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.