The Tonelays is a small square area in the heart of Jalkin, its borders on Bavaran Road, Fountain Avenue, Nightwood Lane and Cuelon Road to the north, east, south and west. The first great construction wave which produced central Jalkin called forth the father of Tonelays. Jalkin was built in a torrent of great idealism. It was planned in the visions of rich men to be a gentle refined town, a spacious showpiece capital of parks and avenues and elegant architecture. Suinti Road and their ilk were to be stately thoroughfares, addresses where large, picturesque townhouses would stand in front of ample and pretty gardens; where the wealthy could live a gracious existence. It all went wrong, naturally. During the 1000's migrants arrived fleeing the conflict in the countryside, immigrants arrived fleeing the conflict in their homelands, the population went bang, the manufacturing base took off, the trade routes began converging, the political system mutated, the people grew pushy... The inevitable happened; Jalkin became a fully functioning city, a crime which some have yet to forgive it for. The rivers began to smell, the houses mounted up and the rich fled from Jalkin's centre to its newly-built north west corner. They sold their old homes to speculating landlords who promptly dug up the gardens, put fresh buildings on them and partitioned the existing houses to increase the number of residents therein a hundredfold. In the early 1100's the Tonelays was identical to any other Cities poor district of its time, with bedraggled settlers snatching up a tiny room for exorbitant prices and miserably scratching an existence forever after. Then, just as political reforms were moving the rest of the Cities in another direction, the settlers took on a certain type and irreversibly made the Tonelays their own.
Though largely escaping the Great Collapse, few of the original Tonelays houses still survive. Their style, however, remains. High and dense, each floor overhanging, built of grey granite with dozens of tiny windows and little adornment; maybe surrounded by gardens they would look bearable. But when standing in unbroken terraces to line narrow streets, the effect is one of strolling through a lifeless valley in a forsaken mountain range. Tiny front yards are guarded by high walls, iron shutters bedeck the windows, heavy barred doors lock out strangers and the sun itself is kept at bay as dense shadows cover the cobbled streets at all times except noon. There isn't a blade of grass to be seen, though this at least isn't rare for central Jalkin. As to the rest, Jalkin Council do occasionally try and proselytise the residents to modern ways, offering grants to help update the buildings and generally make everything more liveable. They are always politely declined. The Tonelays has kept its appearance intact by design. Houses are replaced piece by piece, a new roof here, a fresh wall there, a steady process of maintenance giving the illusion of permanence. And the same dark stone is always used, the same grey roof slates, and each new window is of identical thick, lead lined glass. Strangers can become thoroughly unnerved, not merely by the architecture but by the watchful and curious stares in the street and by the faces which appear at every window. The residents, meanwhile, cherish the appearance of the Tonelays, for it has stood unchanged since their childhood. It is a timeless world which has wrapped inexorably around their own lives. Their memories and their environment are identical and by these means they know they belong. The sharp distinction between strangers and residents is vital for the Tonelays. This is because those who live there are almost exclusively worshippers of the god Torgu.
The Torgun faith is the closest the Cities has to a sizeable persecuted minority. By any standards their persecution is fairly lackadaisical. The Torguns are equal in the eyes of the law and free to worship in their own way. Their main annual festival is recognised as a holy day and they are even theoretically given a token seat on the Privy Council, as the Garran and Ellan churches are. But even in a society where liberalism permeates from top to bottom there is still a subtle prejudice against the Torguns. It rarely manifests itself, the case of a few snide remarks here, a couple of insensitive edicts there. Yet it has become ingrained in the culture, the sense that somehow the Torguns don't really belong in the Cities. And, isolated from the lynchings and mass arrests that bigotry fuels in other lands, the Torguns feel this attitude with a chafe skin, and answer like with like. Ironically, the new modes of thought which protect the Torguns are largely what they reject, linking their ideals to a conservative view of society. The dogmas of the church are: tradition, stability, strong families with fixed roles, clear patterns of behaviour for men and women. Respect for elders. A sense of duty. A sense of duty and obedience, of doing what should be done, of suppressing one's own feelings and private beliefs. The man in the workplace, the woman in the home. Or so the stereotypical presentation goes at least, and for such a philosophy to exist in the free thinking, semi-anarchic Cities is a wild anomaly. In response, the Torguns shut themselves away, working with, mating with and meeting only other Torguns, rarely moving outside the invisible walls of the Tonelays. When people talk of it they don't call it a neighbourhood, they call it an enclave.