La Puerta del Sol
The Sun Gate
Lore
At three thousand four hundred meters, La Puerta del Sol is the highest arena in league play, and the assessment team's early reports consisted largely of the assessment team asking to be reassigned to a lower one. The ice is of the verglas form. So is the altitude, which is not a form of ice, but which behaves here as though The Almighty Ice recruited it: visiting players fatigue at twice the ordinary rate, and the effect begins at the door rather than on the ice. The Crows have never played at sea level and have expressed, through their conduct, no wish to. Le Council notes that no visiting roster has ever finished a third period at La Puerta del Sol at the pace it started one.
The Building
Cut stone, fitted without mortar, in courses so exact the assessment team was unable to insert a blade between them. The lower half of the building is older than the manifestation by an amount nobody has been willing to put in writing; the upper half—a light steel canopy and 11,900 seats in steep tiers—arrived with The Almighty Ice and matches the stonework closely enough that visitors cannot reliably tell where one stops. There is a single trapezoidal gate on the eastern face, aligned so that on two mornings a year the sun comes through it and lands flat on center ice. The concourse is unheated and the air is thin, and the stairs to the upper tier are counted, by tradition, out loud. The Crows do not count them. The Crows are already at the top.