The Balogh-Isoherranen Exams, usually referred to as the "Baloghs" or, informally, the "wrackers", were a series of examines administered to fourteen-year old girls and boys seeking employment in the Uzdumalian civil and scientific services, navy, and air corps. The Baloghs replaced previous systems of gathering recruits, which were frequently based on cronyism, scapulamancy, bribes, or tribal affiliation, depending on the region of the Empire. (The more traditionalist Army retained its methodology of selling posts and promoting those officers who could recruit troops during war time; during this period, the various religious sects found within the Empire were not formally under state control and thus exempt from the requirement of using the Baloghs, although many did.) They were first developed early in the reign of the expansionist and reform-minded Devon-Lars I, who sought a scientifically calculated method of staffing his embassies and intelligence services in the furthest-flung reaches of his empire. 

The Baloghs were given twice yearly in urban centers; travelling exam-masters ("nobs") also travelled the hinterlands, asking schoolteachers about promising students who would be pressed into examination. Taking part in the exams was a required duty of the children citizens, freeholders, and serfs; as the three-day examination period frequently interfered with the work children were expected to do in rural settings, parents were frequently reluctant to send their children, but the heavy fines that could be imposed on those whose children did not participate generally ended resistance. 

After a ritual cleansing and the donning of nobs-provided garments, the exams began with a series of multiple choice questions on a range of historical and scientific subjects, moving to logic and philosophical puzzles, and concluding with a series of essays on religious themes. Students were also frequently presented with erroneous judgments committed by Empire officials and asked how they would rectify the situation or to diagnose what errors in had been committed; these examples were gathered from court testimony and given heavy weighting during the scoring. 

The Baloghs functioned well for decades. Tampering with the exams on the part of Empire officials was punishable by forfeiture of name, position, and property, while cheating on the part of exam-takers ("nubbins") was punished by bodily forfeiture. Interestingly, those nubbins convicted of cheating were not subject to dismissal or further punishment; the tactician and game theorist Erikoinen-Watches-Skies of the Later Empire is known from Court records to have been caught attempting to smuggle notes into the examination chambers and to have, upon conviction, lost the tip of a finger. Nonetheless, her score was the third highest from her year of the examination, and she was given the post in the air corps that began her storied career.   

The downfall of the Baloghs was the essay portion of the exams. Usually these were short essays involving parables or maxims taken from well-known religious works. Initially designed simply to measure candidate's communication skills, the character of the scoring slowly changed over the years as they became used as a way to measure "earnest thinking", or religious, philosophical, and aesthetic orthodoxy. "Chit clubs", schools begun to provide instructions to students before the exams, transformed first into rival schools of thought within the civil and scientific services and later into full-bore political factions competing to ensure the success of their members and allies and punish their opponents. In the most prominent incident during the Jacini Dynasty, a simple political allegory involving the interpretation of Borpo's planting of the Tree of Arpapella was used to disqualify (and, in two instances, try on charges of heresy) some eighty top-ranked candidates from the Dynamo Club. Following an investigation by the Midnight Guard, dozens of administrators were found guilty of having leaked exam questions and were stripped of their names and executed. Following this, the Baloghs were formally abolished in favor of recruitment through secondary and higher educators as well as tribal headman. The scandal is thought to have weakened support for the Emperor from a number of chit club members throughout the government, contributing to the bureaucratic malaise and inaction (and, in some cases, active work at cross purposes to Imperial goals; the Dynamo Club, for example, used the opportunity to settle old scores, directly causing the airship disaster during peacekeeping maneuvers during the Míshnay Glowny riots) during the end of the Uzdumalian empire.

See also:

Arpapella

Dynamo Club

Erikoinen Kervovasdottir