The Fjord Watch
Lore
The Fjord Watch is cold even by the standards of a sport played on ice, and the assessment team notes that it has never, in their tenure, been warm. The ice is of the givre form—pale, feathered, sound-absorbing. Under the Silent designation, the Owls' passes and shots carry no tell: no sound, no visible wind-up, nothing for the visiting team to react to until reaction is no longer useful. An old city watches from a dark winter, and its team sees in conditions built to blind everyone else. Every play at The Fjord Watch arrives without warning, and then it is too late, and the crowd, which has seen the play and made no sound either, watches the visitors work out what happened.
The Building
Dark timber and darker glass, built out over the water on piles, so that the northern face of the building is a single unbroken window onto the fjord and the fjord is, for most of the season, black. The 23,200 seats are steep and close-packed, and the acoustic treatment—applied to every interior surface, on a specification Le Council has requested twice and not received—takes the top off every sound in the building. Skate on ice registers. Puck on tape does not. The lighting is kept low and directional, pooled over The Almighty Ice, leaving the seating bowl in a dimness that visiting broadcasters have twice reported as a fault. It is not a fault. Owls are resident in the roof structure and are not discouraged.