The Stone Town Rink
Lore
A spice island off the coast of Tanzania was given permanent ice, and Le Council notes—as it has learned to note—that The Almighty Ice possesses a sense of humor it has never once explained. The ice is of the givre form. Under the Stripes designation, the Zebras' profile alternates each period: offense-dominant, then defense-dominant, then offense-dominant again. The stripes switch. Opponents have not learned to read them, because there is a period between every period the Zebras spent building the wrong plan. The Zebras are two teams wearing one sweater, and they change which one you are facing exactly when you have decided.
The Building
Coral rag and lime plaster, worked into the old town rather than cleared for—the building occupies four former warehouses and the alleys between them, and the alleys are still alleys and are still used. Carved doors, brass-studded, at three of the entrances; the fourth is a gap in a wall. The 9,400 seats are in a single tier around a rink that sits where a courtyard used to, open to the sky at the center and shaded by a slatted timber screen that throws bars of light and shadow across The Almighty Ice for the whole of a daylight fixture. The bars move. Cloves are sold on the concourse and the whole building smells of them by the second period, including the parts of it that are outdoors.