New Vance City

Tribunal Plaza is the Citadel Council’s public theater of justice—a curated spectacle of order and punishment staged beneath the digital banners of pre-Collapse law. Designed less for deliberation and more for deterrence, the plaza hosts daily proceedings where suspected Syndicate affiliates, water thieves, and insubordinate citizens are tried before sterile-faced judges in augmented robes. Cases are resolved in minutes, often streamed to public terminals across the district as a “civic morale initiative.” The Council frames it as accountability; detractors call it performative repression. Every ruling feeds the social metrics algorithm, determining housing, rations, and status. The Plaza is not a place for redemption—it’s a neon-lit reminder that obedience is the only currency that truly spends in the Citadel.

The Plaza sits in the heart of the Glass Ring, its perimeter lined with polished metal archways and holographic banners rippling with abstract justice motifs—gavel icons, faceless silhouettes, scales tipped in sterile symmetry. The judge’s dais hovers above a hexagonal dais outfitted with microneon filigree and reinforced plexglass shielding. A tiered semi-circle of carbon seats hosts curated audiences—mostly loyal citizens or drone-recording nodes. Surveillance rigs orbit like hummingbirds, projecting trials in real-time across surrounding skyscraper walls. Soft ambient music laced with calming tones plays under the sharp cadence of charges being read. Cold blue lighting clashes with bursts of red during sentencing, and when executions are carried out via neural overload, the lights dim briefly—like the Citadel itself blinking.