The Silk Road Pavilion
Lore
The ancient crossroads of the world was given ice, and the assessment team reports that The Almighty Ice treated the location as self-evident—it knows, the team concluded, where everything passes through. The ice is of the givre form. Under the Toll designation, visiting skating stats are reduced: you pay to cross the Silk Road, and Samarkand takes its cut of everything in transit. The Seagulls are landlocked by a thousand miles in every direction. They are named Seagulls regardless. Le Council did not name them and declines to explain them, and has asked that correspondence on the subject be directed to the Office of Naming Conventions, which no longer opens it.
The Building
Tilework in cobalt and turquoise across every exterior surface, in geometry that resolves at a distance and refuses to at close range. Three iwan portals face the square; only the eastern one is used, and the other two are open to the concourse and lead nowhere in particular. Inside, a ribbed dome carries the roof over 14,200 seats in a single steep bowl, and the ribs are picked out in gold that catches the light off The Almighty Ice and puts it back on the ceiling. The concourse is a covered bazaar and is trading throughout the fixture. Every visiting player passes beneath the eastern portal on the way in. Le Council notes, without conclusion, that the portal is the only entrance and that there is no other route to the ice.