The Lava Shelf
Lore
The Almighty Ice appeared on volcanic rock above the Pacific, and the rock was, at the time, warm. Le Council's understanding—supported by the assessment team and disputed by no instrument—is that the lava flow stopped precisely at the boundary of the manifestation and went no further. The Ice did not stop. The two now share a shelf. Geologists contacted for comment declined to provide it, and have continued declining at intervals since. The ice here resolved to the verglas form: clear to the depth, hard, without grain. Under the Aloha designation, physicality between the teams is suppressed. Nobody fights on The Lava Shelf. The assessment team reports, in the whole of its deployment, that nobody has tried.
The Building
An open-sided pavilion on black rock, roofed in weathered timber and built without a single exterior wall—the trade wind moves straight through the seating bowl and out over the water, and the building is designed to let it. The seating is shallow and wide, 9,500 places on low terraces that follow the natural fall of the shelf rather than correcting it. The boards are set directly into the basalt. Along the eastern edge the rock is still visibly molten at depth, glowing a dull orange after dark through fissures that stop, all of them, exactly at the rink line, and the heat coming off them does not reach The Almighty Ice. Le Council's facilities office has measured the gap at eleven centimeters and has no explanation for it. Flowers are placed on the boards before every fixture, by whom Le Council has not established, and are gone by morning.