What Followed McMurdo

Le Council's last dispatch on this subject closed with a name and no explanation: Curtis FavelD · WPG · ●●●●● · Foggy, Foggy, Doubled, Hollow, Ancient, Quiet, Enveloped, Awake, Echo, on the 22nd, at The Remote RangeMcMurdo Monoliths · 2,347,816 capacity · Penguins, looking like himself and not like himself. Le CouncilThe governing body of Hockay and Unexplained Ice Phenomena. said then that it could not tell you when the ground was laid for it. Le Council still cannot. What Le Council can do, six nights later, is report that it has kept happening, that it has stopped being confined to one building, and that the ledger now runs to twelve entries across four parishes.

The Ledger

Everything below is on the broadcast record, in the order it was witnessed. Each entry was named by the Church of the Ice at the moment it occurred. Le CouncilThe governing body of Hockay and Unexplained Ice Phenomena. did not name any of them and is not naming the list.

Nine of these changed nothing. The ice hummed, the boards sounded, the net came up and went back down, and the game continued around all of it without a whistle. Le CouncilThe governing body of Hockay and Unexplained Ice Phenomena. records the measurement and does not interpret it.

Le CouncilThe governing body of Hockay and Unexplained Ice Phenomena. does note, without further comment, that The IceThe living force that created Hockay. It appeared. It is spreading. Vibrated was recorded at 34 hertz and 80 hertz, and that The Blue Glaze was recorded at 1.4 hertz and 0.9. These figures are not on the same scale. Le Council has been asked what that means. Le Council has forwarded the question.

The Three That Carry a Name

Three entries are of a different kind, and Le CouncilThe governing body of Hockay and Unexplained Ice Phenomena. reports them separately because they did not happen to a building. They happened to a person.

Curtis Favel, defenseman, Winnipeg WendigosWinnipeg, at The Remote RangeMcMurdo Monoliths · 2,347,816 capacity · Penguins on the 22nd. Six point nine seconds. The Church records him as Enveloped.

Lars Henriksen, left wing, McMurdo MonolithsMcMurdo Station, at his own parish on the 26th. Three point three seconds. Recorded as Wrapped.

Saga Ekström, right wing, Stockholm SirensStockholm, at The Still StraitStockholm Sirens · 14,263 capacity · Lure on the 27th. Four point six seconds. Recorded as Enveloped, the same as FavelD · WPG · ●●●●● · Foggy, Foggy, Doubled, Hollow, Ancient, Quiet, Enveloped, Awake, Echo.

Le CouncilThe governing body of Hockay and Unexplained Ice Phenomena. is being deliberate about the verb, as the broadcast was. None of the three went anywhere. None of them came back from anywhere. This is not a trip through the Sixth and the call was careful, all three times, not to let it sound like one.

Fans have asked plainly what it does, so Le CouncilThe governing body of Hockay and Unexplained Ice Phenomena. will answer plainly. For as long as it holds, whatever the Sixth had left on that player stops applying—it is still theirs, still on file, and it is simply not legible while the light is on them. What replaces it is one number applied evenly to everything they do, in whichever direction the Church recorded. Enveloped and Wrapped are two of five gradings. Le Council does not select the grading and cannot appeal it.

Le CouncilThe governing body of Hockay and Unexplained Ice Phenomena. notes one further thing about the three and asks that nothing be built on it. The recorded durations fall in the same order as the gradings: FavelD · WPG · ●●●●● · Foggy, Foggy, Doubled, Hollow, Ancient, Quiet, Enveloped, Awake, Echo at 6.9 seconds and EkströmRW · ●○○○○ at 4.6 were both graded Enveloped, and HenriksenLW · MCM · ●●○○○ · Awake, Wandering, Echo, Wrapped at 3.3—the shortest of the three—was graded one step below them. Three is not a sample. Le Council has recorded the observation so that it is on file when it stops being true.

All three Marks remain in place at time of writing. Le CouncilThe governing body of Hockay and Unexplained Ice Phenomena. is aware they lift and has been asked when. The Church's position is that a Mark is held up by the parish that drew it, and lifts when that parish stops holding it up. Le Council will report each one when it goes and not before. Nothing lasts past the JambonoResurfaces reality. Caretaker or corruptor. Nobody knows..

On What These Buildings Share

Le CouncilThe governing body of Hockay and Unexplained Ice Phenomena. has spent six days looking for what the four have in common, and reports the search rather than a result, there being no result to report.

They are not in the same conference: The Remote RangeMcMurdo Monoliths · 2,347,816 capacity · Penguins plays in La Conférence du Verglas and the other three in La Conférence du Givre. They are not in the same part of the world, unless Antarctica and three European cities are to be counted as one. They are not of a size—the smallest of the four seats 14,263 and the largest seats 2,347,816. They do not share an arena modifier; PenguinsVisiting team's physicality and aggression stats are suppressed. You can't play mean in front of 2,347,816 penguins., LureVisiting teams take riskier, more aggressive shots than their stats would suggest. The Strait tempts you., ToleranceEvery penalty at The Floating Canal is reduced by one tier. A minor becomes a warning, on the operating principle that Amsterdam has seen worse. and ResolveThe Kestrels gain a stacking bonus for every period they finish behind. The larger the deficit, the larger the correction. The Arch has never fallen and the crowd has never left early. are four different things and have never been anything else. Le CouncilThe governing body of Hockay and Unexplained Ice Phenomena. also checked the visiting sides, the hour of the puck drop, and the day of the week. Nothing.

Nothing seems common between these four buildings except, perhaps, the attendance at the parish. Le CouncilThe governing body of Hockay and Unexplained Ice Phenomena. raises this because it is the only thing left on the list, and not because Le Council is prepared to stand behind it.

Set out plainly: The Remote RangeMcMurdo Monoliths · 2,347,816 capacity · Penguins and The Still StraitStockholm Sirens · 14,263 capacity · Lure are first and second on the public roll, and between them account for eight of the twelve entries above and all three Marks. Read on its own, that is very close to an answer.

It does not stay on its own. Nairobi sits third on that roll, Guadalajara fourth, Montréal fifth, and nothing whatever has happened at any of the three. The Golden ArchKyiv Kestrels · 34,500 capacity · Resolve sits twelfth and has been visited once. The Floating CanalAmsterdam Aardvarks · 17,400 capacity · Tolerance sits twenty-seventh, on four recorded attendances in the whole of its existence, and has been visited three times—the most recent of them last night, and the most recent of them the Glaze.

Le CouncilThe governing body of Hockay and Unexplained Ice Phenomena. will go no further than the following. Two parishes at the top of the roll have seen a great deal. Three parishes above the rest and below those two have seen nothing at all. One parish that most of the league outranks was glazed last night. Le Council notes the correlation. Le Council does not promote it, and is not aware of an instrument that would settle the question either way. The roll ranks what it ranks. Le Council has never claimed The IceThe living force that created Hockay. It appeared. It is spreading. reads it.

What Le Council Does Not Know

Le CouncilThe governing body of Hockay and Unexplained Ice Phenomena. does not know what is causing this. Not at The Remote RangeMcMurdo Monoliths · 2,347,816 capacity · Penguins, where it started, and not at the three parishes it has since reached. Le Council does not know why the Glaze was recorded in its own right at two of these parishes and has, at a third, only ever arrived already closing over somebody. Le Council does not know why the light settled on a visiting Winnipeg defenseman at one parish and on a home winger at the next. Le Council does not know whether there is a fourth name coming, or a fifth parish, or neither.

Le CouncilThe governing body of Hockay and Unexplained Ice Phenomena. is not withholding an answer in the interest of calm. There is no answer on file to withhold.

Your parish keeps its own count, whether or not any of this has reached it. Le CouncilThe governing body of Hockay and Unexplained Ice Phenomena. encourages attendance for its own sake and notes it would say so regardless.

If you have theories, Discord remains the appropriate venue. Le CouncilThe governing body of Hockay and Unexplained Ice Phenomena. is not reading those conversations. Le Council has, in the past, found them uncomfortably accurate, and has elected not to make a habit of checking.