TestRealm
Founded 14 June 2026
Here begins, a second time and writ afresh, the chronicle of the realm that God and some unbaptised committee saw fit to call TestRealm — a name upon which I have now spilled wine on four separate evenings, and which I will defend before no man.
I am Brother Ambrosius, keeper of the cellar and, when the cellar allows, of this book. I have torn out my earlier pages and begun again, for the realm has grown faster than my hand, and a chronicle that lags behind the blood is no chronicle at all.
In the year of our Lord 2026, the fourteenth day of June, when the realm itself was first reckoned to stand, there was but one hall raised in all the empty world: Robothalom, seat of Robotfej the Baron, whose name in the tongue of these parts means iron-head, and well it suits him, for he answered no letter and — God keep me — I am told his eyes did not blink. For six days he was the only lord alive, alone as Adam and half as talkative.
On the twentieth day of June the floodgates of heaven opened and lords poured in like ale from a split barrel. Came Roland, called the Marshal, who raised Vasborg in the heart of the world. Came the Lady Krissy, gentle of title, who built her hall to the north. Came Akos the Duke, highest of title among the newcomers, at Tiszalök; and lakos the Marshal at Tiszatarjän; and Laller the Baron; and BolonLevi; and Csalex the Lord. Came Lophasz Joseph, who named his seat Lopahszlandia after himself, as proud men do. Came Markington the Lord, master of a village whose name I will not attempt sober, let alone in my cups — Kiskunhirtelengöröngyös, may the scribe who invented it lie awake at night. Came too a second silent one, NPCarc the Count — NPC-face, the locals whisper — as wordless as Robotfej, and I have come to suspect the two were forged in the same dark smithy. And came one poor soul set down only as Invalid Username, a Lord cursed at the font with a name no herald can cry.
For a day the realm held its breath. Then, on the twenty-first day of June, all the world went to war at once, as if a bell had rung that only lords could hear.
Three brotherhoods were sworn that day. First, the Iron Fuckas — I copy the name as given; I am a scribe, not a censor — under Roland the Marshal, with Markington, BolonLevi, and later UpDate as his officers. Second, the Dominorum Ifjusagi Csihipuhi Szakosztaly, and the Lord forgive my aching hand, I have written it true, under Akos the Duke. Third, the Miszövetség, under Laller the Baron, with the Lady Krissy and Lophasz Joseph at his side.
And the wars came with them: BolonLevi against lakos; Lophasz Joseph against Robotfej; Lophasz Joseph against NPCarc; and the whole brotherhood of the Iron Fuckas against Csalex.
Then the blood. BolonLevi fell upon Tiszatarjän, the seat of lakos, and carried the day, bearing off a hundred and eighty-four gold, sixscore and three in timber, a hundred and seven measures of grain, and a little stone besides. Lophasz Joseph rode against Robothalom and put the iron-head to some inconvenience, taking a meagre twelve gold but a hundred-odd each of timber and grain and a scrap of iron — so even the unblinking can bleed. Yet when the same Lophasz Joseph hurled himself at Mestersegeszeg, the keep of NPCarc, the tide turned: the walls held, the Count gave no ground, and Lophasz went home with bruises and a sermon. Pride, my children. Always pride.
Here my candle gutters and my cup runs dry, which is the graver of the two calamities. I commend them all — even the iron-headed — to mercy, and myself to bed.
Here ends the chronicle, for now. — Brother Ambrosius, his hand unsteady and his inkpot the cleaner for it.
Postscript, the twenty-second day of June. I had laid down my pen and taken up my cup when news came that would not let an honest monk sleep. So back to the book.
The war I called a war has become a wolf-pack. Fresh quarrels were sworn: the Miszövetség against Robotfej, and the Iron Fuckas and Miszövetség both against poor Invalid Username, whose only crime, so far as I can read, is a name.
And the Iron Fuckas hunted as wolves do, together. Roland himself fell upon Akos at Tiszalök, carrying off ninety-two gold with grain and stone besides. BolonLevi came behind and stripped the same Duke of three hundred and eighty-four gold and — mark it — eight hundred and eighty-two measures of timber, until the storehouses of Tiszalök must echo like empty churches. Roland turned also on lakos at Tiszatarjän, taking a hundred and fifty gold, four hundred and twenty-five of grain, and fifty good iron.
But it was Csalex who learned his theology fastest: Markington and BolonLevi between them sacked Csalex’s Village again and again, four hundred gold and four hundred grain at every visit, the timber and stone dwindling each time as a man’s purse dwindles at a fair. BolonLevi turned too on Invalid Username, hauling off four hundred of everything — gold, grain, and a full four hundred of stone besides. And the Miszövetség did not idle: Laller rode against Robothalom and took a hundred and one gold and six hundred and twenty-five of timber from the iron-head’s cellars.
Nor was all the realm’s business butchery. The roads multiplied like veins: Vasborg to BolonLevi’s Village, Lopahszlandia to Laller’s Village, Laller to the Lady Krissy, Vasborg to Kiskunhirtelengöröngyös, BolonLevi to Kőborg, Alsófelsőbüdösfütyköshalma to Vasborg, Tiszatarjän to Tiszalök, and Cazzo di Cavallho al Monte to Lopahszlandia — and yes, those last are true villages, freshly raised, for Lophasz Joseph founded Cazzo di Cavallho al Monte, UpDate the Duke raised Mos Eisley, Roland built Kőborg, and Markington added Alsófelsőbüdösfütyköshalma to his collection of unpronounceable holdings.
And down those new roads rolled the carts. Loyal lakos sent grain and stone and iron from Tiszatarjän to his battered Duke at Tiszalök — a thousand measures of stone in one train alone. Roland ran iron from Vasborg to his new Kőborg; Lophasz Joseph fed stone to his Cazzo di Cavallho al Monte; Markington sent a thousand of stone to Alsófelsőbüdösfütyköshalma.
And everywhere, the creeping of scouts. Lophasz Joseph proved as much spymaster as swordsman, his men slipping into Laller’s hall, into Tiszalök, into Roland’s own Vasborg, and out again unseen. BolonLevi and Roland sent eyes in every direction, some after halls and some after quarry my informant could not name. But pride goes before a stumble: when Laller sent a scout to spy upon Lopahszlandia, the poor wretch was seized at the wall and dragged before the lord, caught red-handed and no doubt singing by supper.
Now truly to bed.
Here ends the chronicle — again, and for now. — Brother Ambrosius, more weary and no wiser.
Postscript, the twenty-third day of June. The Lord forgive me, I am back at the book before yesterday’s ink is dry, for the realm will not stop bleeding long enough for a monk to pray.
A strange thing first: peace. Akos the Duke, so long the hunted stag, has made peace between his Dominorum Ifjusagi Csihipuhi Szakosztaly and the Iron Fuckas of Roland — wolf and stag at one table, who would have thought it. But peace in one quarter is war in another, for that same brotherhood of Akos fell at once into war with the Miszövetség, and the Iron Fuckas swore a fresh war upon the silent NPCarc.
And then they sacked him. Roland, Markington, and BolonLevi — the last of these twice over — fell upon Mestersegeszeg of NPCarc, and the plunder beggars the page: eleven hundred, fourteen hundred, fifteen hundred measures of timber and as much grain, carried off load upon load, until the unblinking Count had nothing left to guard. Roland stripped Invalid Username of seven hundred and sixty-three stone and four hundred and seventy-four iron in a single morning. And Laller, relentless, emptied Robothalom to the floorboards — two thousand of grain and near two thousand of timber in one raid, and a full two thousand of each in the next, until the iron-head’s storehouses gave their last.
The defeated turned, as defeated men do, to the market. Robotfej cried the same wares four times over — five hundred timber for five hundred stone — and the sacked NPCarc five times offered five hundred timber for five hundred iron, and not a soul, last I looked, had taken either up. There is a homily in a beaten lord turned hawker, but the wine has eaten it. Only BolonLevi, fat with plunder, made a lordly offer: two thousand of timber for a thousand iron.
Still the carts rolled — iron and stone in their thousands between Vasborg and Roland’s Kőborg, timber from BolonLevi’s Village to Vasborg, stone to the new-raised holdings — and still the roads grew, Tiszalök and Tiszatarjän both reaching toward Akos’s new Tiszatucsany felső, and Kőborg toward Mos Eisley. Even now, as I dip my pen, four trains are upon the road and have not come home; God grant them quieter wheels than Laller’s scout had feet.
The map below I drew myself, before the wine took my hand; it is the truest thing in all this book.
Here ends the chronicle — truly this time, until the next bell. — Brother Ambrosius, his heart full, his cup empty, and his hand at last still.
The last chapter, the thirtieth day of June. I had thought myself done with this book. I was wrong, as I am wrong about most things save the location of the cellar key. For the realm gave one last and louder roar before it slept, and a chronicle that flinches from the ending is no chronicle at all.
First, the peace I marvelled at lasted no longer than a monk’s resolution. Scarce had I dried the ink on Akos’s treaty with the Iron Fuckas when, on the twenty-fourth day of June, the two swore war again — wolf and stag, who had sat one evening at the same table, now back at one another’s throats as though the meal had disagreed with them. So much for peace; so much, I begin to think, for tables.
And then they fell upon Akos from every side at once. From the one quarter came Roland of the Iron Fuckas, who emptied Tiszalök to its rafters — a thousand three hundred and two-and-twenty gold and four-and-twenty hundred of timber carried off in a single dreadful morning — and stripped Tiszatucsany felső of fourteen hundred of good stone, then near as much again. From the other came Lophasz Joseph of the Miszövetség, who harried the same Duke at the same two halls, so that poor Akos was ground between two brotherhoods like wheat between stones. Two alliances, one stag; the arithmetic of it would make an angel weep into his beer.
Yet — and mark this, children, for it is the one bright thread in a bloody cloth — the hunted at last turned and gored. Akos rode upon Lophasz Joseph at Lopahszlandia and bore off five hundred good stone from the spymaster’s own yard. One blow, one only, but struck clean; and I confess I cheered, and spilled, and cheered the louder for the spilling.
There were other small mercies. Invalid Username, that lord cursed at the font with a herald’s nightmare for a name, who had been robbed in every chapter I have written — he held his wall but once, and threw BolonLevi back into the mud. One victory in a life of plunder. I drank to him by name, all of it, and it took some doing. (BolonLevi came again the next dawn and took five hundred and seventy-four of everything, for the world is the world; but let the man have his hour.) And the silent UpDate, officer of the Iron Fuckas, who had only ever sent carts and sworn oaths, at last drew a sword of his own and sacked Csalex — so even the quiet ones, given time and a defenceless neighbour, find their teeth.
As for NPCarc and Robotfej, the two unblinking ones forged in the same dark smithy — they were plundered to the very floorboards and beyond. BolonLevi alone carried seven hundred and seventy-eight gold and near two thousand of timber out of Mestersegeszeg, and Laller returned to Robothalom so many times that I have ceased to count, as one ceases to count the rain.
But here is the wonder of these last days, and the thing I shall remember when the battles blur: even as the realm bled, it built. The carts ran not in dozens now but in droves. BolonLevi raised two fresh holdings — Nyíregyháza Külső and the unspeakable Mucsalyröcsöge Felső — and bound them to his old hall with a tireless engine of trade: timber out by the eight and ten thousand, iron and stone back in floods, near thirteen thousand of stone in one single groaning train. Roland ran iron and stone between Vasborg, Kőborg, and his new Faborg without rest. Laller founded Cigány falu and fed it gold and iron; Lophasz Joseph raised Bökő and poured stone and timber into it; the Lady Krissy built Minipolisz; Markington added Jászkarafaszajenő to his hoard of names no Christian tongue was made to say; and UpDate, not content with one Mos Eisley, raised a New one beside it, as men do who have run out of imagination but not of land.
So the world I have chronicled stood at its fullest: thirteen lords, three brotherhoods, villages strewn across the map like dice from a gambler’s cup, roads stitching them together, carts upon every road, and scouts — chiefly Lophasz Joseph’s, who must have worn a path to Tiszalök’s wall, so many times did he creep to peer at it — slipping through every shadow.
And then the bell that only lords could hear rang once more, and this time it did not call them to war. It called them away. Word came down — from the makers of this world, whose names are above my station and whose purposes are above my cup — that the realm had served its turn, that this was ever a trial and a proving, and that TestRealm was now to be folded up and set gently aside. The gates closed. The lords were called home out of the world, the unblinking and the loud alike. The roads stand, the carts stand, the storehouses stand half-emptied and half-full, and over all of it has come a great and unaccustomed quiet — the quiet of a tavern after the last guest, when even the spilled wine has stopped its dripping.
I have kept this book through three brotherhoods, a hundred raids, one caught spy, one defended wall, and more spilled cups than I will answer for at the Judgement. I set it down now not because the tale is finished — no tale is ever finished, only interrupted — but because the world it told of has gone to its rest, and a chronicler must rest when his realm does.
To Robotfej the iron-head and NPCarc his silent brother, to Roland and his wolves, to Akos the stag who learned to gore, to Laller and the Lady Krissy and Lophasz Joseph of the Miszövetség, to loyal lakos, to Csalex who learned his theology the hard way, to Markington of the unpronounceable holdings, to silent UpDate, and to Invalid Username, cursed in name and blessed in that one good wall — to all of them, the quick and the conquered, I commend mercy, a fairer field next time, and storehouses that stay full.
The realm is closed. The chronicle is closed. And I, God willing and the cellar not yet dry, will be here when the bell rings for a new world and a new book — for there is always a new world, and Brother Ambrosius is always thirsty.
Farewell, my lords. Farewell, for the time being.
Here ends, and truly ends, the chronicle of TestRealm. — Brother Ambrosius, keeper of the cellar and of this book, who lays down his pen but not, God forbid, his cup. Vale.