The approach to Tontou from inland is through cotton fields — long rows of it, the white bolls visible even at a distance, stretching toward the lagoon's edge where the land thins into reed and water. The smell is vegetable and damp. The roads here are well-traveled, rutted by the carts that carry processed cotton toward the port.

Then the lagoon opens. The Kelta is broader and calmer than it looks on a map — a wide expanse of sheltered water where the Mbashe and Bubi rivers pour out and the sea reaches in. The city sits on the mainland shore and on a cluster of islands close to that shore, the buildings running together across a series of low bridges. The elite neighborhoods are on those nearest islands. The outer islands, quieter-looking, have a different character visible in their lower, solid construction — defense platforms, not residences.

The thing that registers immediately and keeps registering is the color. Funtan cities are not uniformly drab, but Tontou is specifically vivid — the textiles hanging out to air, the clothes on people in the market, the dyed cloth drying on racks at the edge of the dye quarter. The range of color is not accidental. It is the city's primary product and its most legible social code, and both facts are understood by everyone present.

The Majiwe Theatre announces itself by its size. The building is larger than any place of worship in the city and its facade has been repainted recently in a blue that reads clearly across the market square.

Tontou sits at the intersection of three water systems: the Mbashe River from the northwest, the Bubi River from the north, and the Kelta Lagoon, which opens to the sea through a navigable channel to the east. The lagoon is shallow — too shallow for deep-draft vessels without dredging — and the Tamrat family has invested in maintaining that dredging for two generations. The result is a port that handles more tonnage than its water depth would suggest.

The cotton-growing land extends west and north of the city for a significant distance, benefiting from the river alluvial deposits. The Njoku farm at the Mbashe bend is the oldest continuously operated piece of agricultural land in the region; the baobab grove on its northern boundary is treated as a natural landmark.

The island neighborhoods are connected to the mainland by four bridges, three of which are commercial and one of which is private. The outer defensive islands are accessible by boat only. The city's official territory includes the lagoon out to the channel entrance.

Tontou's population is predominantly human, in keeping with most of eastern Funta. The artisan and industrial communities have drawn in Dwarves and Gnomes over several generations — Dwarves in the shipyard, Gnomes in the dye trade — and these communities have integrated well enough to be unremarkable rather than notable. The market districts have a Halfling population proportionally higher than anywhere else in eastern Funta; the Bountiful Harvest Market in particular is substantially Halfling-operated.

The permanent population is supplemented by a continuous flow of traders from Jazirah and, to a lesser extent, Irna. These visitors are accommodated but not absorbed — Tontou's hospitality is commercial and its social life is not open to people who will leave in a week.

Cotton is the foundation. The farms west of the city produce raw cotton, the Mills process it, the dye houses color it, and the finished textile leaves through the lagoon port. This chain employs more of Tontou's workforce than any other industry and sets the city's commercial relationships with Jazirah and Irna.

Shallow-draft boat construction is the second industry — a specialized trade driven by the lagoon's navigational needs. The Lagoon Shipyard produces vessels calibrated for Kelta conditions; these boats are also exported to other shallow-water trading contexts along the Funta coast.

Theater and cultural production have recently developed an economic dimension. The Majiwe Theatre draws audiences from surrounding towns and has begun attracting visitors from further distances. This is new enough that it is not yet fully integrated into how the city thinks about itself economically.

Tontou eats the river and the farm in equal measure. The lagoon provides fish — tilapia and the larger brackish species that move between fresh and salt water — and these appear in the stews, grilled over the market fires, and preserved in the smoked form that travels with the caravans. Cotton-growing land is not primarily food-producing land, so grain and vegetables come in by trade, which makes the market correspondingly lively.

The city's most distinctive food products are the herb-based condiments developed by Amara Njoku and sold through the general market. These are extracted from the baobab grove understory plants and are not available anywhere else in eastern Funta.

The beverage culture runs to fermented fruit drinks — the palm wine available at the lagoon-side stalls is specific to the Kelta's palm stands and is not the same product as what's made elsewhere. The Chieftain's household keeps a supply for formal occasions.

The most legible cultural fact about Tontou is the clothing system. Lower-class residents wear undyed white. The transition to colored clothing — when a family can afford it, when a person earns it — is a recognized social event, celebrated informally in the immediate community and noted widely. Reversing the transition, through economic failure or social disgrace, carries a stigma that the city applies without formal mechanism. The dye houses are, in this context, not merely producers of color but administrators of a social language.

This system is particular to Tontou — it emerged from the textile industry's dominance and has been absorbed into the culture to a degree that makes it self-sustaining. Visitors from other Funta cities find it striking. People from Jazirah find it comprehensible in structure if specific in content.

The rise of local theater is the other major cultural development of the current generation. Tontou's stage had long been dominated by Irna touring companies performing Irna stories. Lulu Mwamba's Majiwe Theatre changed that deliberately — Funtan stories, Funtan performers, Funtan audiences. The response has been significant enough to make it a cultural movement rather than a single venue's success.

When the first cotton of the season is ready to harvest, the city marks the opening of the agricultural year with a morning ceremony at the Njoku farm. The Chieftain attends. The oldest member of the Njoku family makes the first cut. It is straightforward and is given weight by its repetition over generations.

Each year, the Kaleidoscope Dye House opens its process — partially — to public view. Jengo Bahari selects a formula each year that he is willing to demonstrate publicly, and the festival around this demonstration has grown into a market day, a performance night, and a general occasion. The new colors produced that year are formally displayed. This has become the most significant annual commercial event in the textile trade calendar.

The Lagoon Shipyard sponsors a race for shallow-draft boats each spring. The race is competitive, and boats from other coastal settlements enter. It is, in practice, a demonstration of Azibo Nia's designs — they tend to win — and the combination of spectacle and commercial point has made it a well-attended occasion.

Theater is the dominant art form in Tontou, and it has a specific character: the tradition that Lulu Mwamba has built is oral and communal first, theatrical second. The stories being told are drawn from Funtan tradition, performed in Funtan languages, and directed at audiences who recognize the references. This is not accessible to outside visitors in the way Irna theater is, which is a feature rather than a flaw.

Music in Tontou accompanies social occasions rather than forming standalone performances. The djembe and the kora are the instruments of the working neighborhoods; the lagoon-side evenings typically have both. Nia Tamrat's beadwork has become its own art form — her pieces are displayed in the Chieftain's residence and are occasionally gifted as diplomatic objects, which has given them a visibility beyond the city.

Tontou has no single dominant faith, which distinguishes it from most major settlements in the region. Multiple traditions coexist in a framework that is tolerant by disposition and pragmatic about allowing each community to maintain its observances. The closest thing to a civic faith is an animist tradition tied to the lagoon and the rivers — not formally organized, without a clergy structure, but present in the small offerings that fishermen leave at the water's edge and in the ceremonies that mark seasonal changes in the water levels.

Irna-origin faiths are represented, primarily among the elven and human artisan communities who arrived from the north. Bethsia has a small temple in the craft quarter. Caminus has a shrine at the Lagoon Shipyard. The Majiwe Theatre has a small altar to a Funtan performance deity whose name is not well-documented in outside sources.

The earliest settlement at the Kelta Lagoon was a farming and fishing community established by the Makalani Clan, who chose this location for the river access and the agricultural potential of the alluvial flats. The Njoku family arrived in the following generation and established the farm that has operated continuously since. Both families are regarded as founding families; the Makalani have drifted toward commerce while the Njoku have stayed on the land.

Chieftain Sefu's great-grandfather was a minor chieftain who pledged loyalty to the ruling family of the time. Over two generations, through strategic alliances and consistent investment in the lagoon infrastructure, the Tamrat family accumulated enough influence that when the previous chieftain died without a clear heir, Sefu's grandfather was positioned to unify the fragmented leadership. The current Chieftain is the third generation of Tamrat governance.

Sefu's father commissioned the first major dredging of the Kelta's commercial channels and established the permanent maintenance schedule. Before this, the lagoon could handle only seasonal deep-water traffic. After it, Tontou became accessible to the trade volume that its cotton production could justify. This is the investment that made the city's current prosperity possible.

Lulu Mwamba's founding of Majiwe Theatre and the subsequent displacement of Irna touring companies from Tontou's cultural calendar is still recent enough to be contested. The Irna companies have not formally withdrawn; they simply play to smaller and smaller audiences. The shift is being watched by cultural institutions across eastern Funta.

Tontou is prosperous and confident in a way that reads to some as arrogance and to others as justified self-assessment. The cotton trade is strong, the dye business has established formulas that competitors have not replicated, and the city is aware that it is the cultural center of eastern Funta in a way that was not true twenty years ago. The principal tension is between Chieftain Sefu's modernizing instincts and the older families — particularly the Njoku — who regard some of the changes as moving faster than the traditions that underpin the city's identity can accommodate.

The Tamrat family holds the chieftaincy through a combination of hereditary claim and practical authority — they own the mills, control significant commercial infrastructure, and have invested heavily in the city's development. The governance style is consultative in form: the Chieftain maintains a council of prominent families including the Njoku and Makalani, but the council's function is advisory rather than constraining. Final decisions are the Chieftain's.

Human, Male — fifties

Sefu is a large man who moves carefully, as if aware of the space he occupies. He is genuinely strategic — not calculating in a cold sense, but oriented toward outcomes over decades rather than seasons. He was the force behind the second major lagoon dredging, the reorganization of the cotton processing chain, and the decision to allow Majiwe Theatre to occupy a building that the city owned and had been using for storage.

His weakness is succession. Kwame, his eldest, is being prepared for leadership but does not have his father's instincts, and Sefu knows it. Zola is sharper but her interest is scholarship rather than governance. Jengo is a child who wants to be a ranger. The Chieftain has another decade at minimum, but the question of what comes after him is one he circles without resolving.

Human, Female — fifties

Nia manages the household and her beadwork with equal competence. The beadwork has grown beyond a private craft — it is now formally recognized as Tontou artistic production, displayed, gifted, collected. She is more accessible than her husband and is the person that most community matters actually get raised with first. Her network of relationships within the city is more extensive than his.

The Njoku farm at the Mbashe bend represents the oldest institutional continuity in Tontou — the family has farmed the same land for longer than any governance structure has existed. Okeke Njoku is the current patriarch: quiet, deliberate, with an opinion on every proposal that affects agricultural land that carries significant weight in the chieftain's council. His daughter Amara's herb work has given the family a secondary reputation in the culinary trade.

Human, Female — forties — the Majiwe Theatre, most hours
Lulu founded the theater against significant skepticism and has built it into the most influential cultural institution in eastern Funta within a single generation. She is visionary in the specific way of people who have a clear objective and are competent at everything required to reach it. She is not particularly interested in the city's politics except where they affect her programming.

Gnome, Male — age uncertain, appears middle-aged
Jengo arrived in Tontou forty years ago following a formula he had developed for extracting colors from specific plant species found in Funta's eastern region. The Dye House he built around it employs twenty people and produces pigments that have not been successfully replicated by competitors. He is gregarious, interested in almost everything, and willing to discuss his methods in general terms while being precisely uninformative about the specific details that matter.

Dwarf, Male — seventies — the shipyard
Azibo builds boats specifically for the Kelta's conditions. His designs are the result of thirty years of iterative adjustment, and they are good in a way that visitors from elsewhere don't immediately recognize because the boats look modest until you watch what they do. He is indifferent to recognition from outside the trade and cares significantly about recognition from within it.

Human, Female — thirties — the Njoku farm
Amara works at the intersection of herbalism and dye production, using the baobab grove's understory plants. Her work has attracted attention from Jengo Bahari, and the two have an ongoing collaboration that is productive for both and that her father regards with some suspicion.