User blog comment:Stormwell/Timeline of Events/@comment-24029008-20140602202300/@comment-24029008-20140602212837

Didn't think of that... yeah, it's entirely possible they just went "Okay... aaaand NOW" and voila, the counting began, instead of some event that marked it. But it would be cool if there was some significant event.

One theory of mine would be that maybe humans arrived to the Isles 1837 years ago, as I somewhat suspect humans evolved on Pandyssian continent, rather than vice versa. So it could be in the lines of Aegon's Landing in A Song of Ice and Fire.

Interesting is that the Isles, or at least Dunwall, was inhabited by an Outsider-worshipping civilization circa thousand years ago. Perhaps their epoch was the coming of the Outsider, which happened circa 4000 years before Dishonored.

So maybe the current time's epoch was the founding of an organization that was a forerunner of the Abbey, a group that was as despised and shunned by the nation as heretics are in present-time Empire; a group that denied The Outsider, and conspired from the shadows and orchestrated the fall of that civilization circa 1000 years ago, and afterwards began using a new calendar that began its counting from the year this Old Abbey was founded.

Random thoughts, I know. I just love sharing theories about the Dishonored Universe :P