It is the current practice of the various regions, cities, guilds, scholarly institutions, and religious bodies of the Ur-Empire to date their documents, agreements, and records from whichever local founding event is considered significant by the dating party. This office has, in the course of its duties, encountered documents dated from no fewer than thirty-seven distinct reference points, including but not limited to:
- The founding of individual cities, of which there are currently forty-two within imperial territory, each with its own Year One
- The tenure of local governors, of whom there have been a great many, resulting in documents dated "the third year of Governor Wess" that are entirely uninterpretable without knowledge of which Governor Wess is meant and when their tenure began
- Agricultural events of local significance, including "the year of the great flood," "the year the river changed course," and, in one instance from the southern territories, "the year the bear came into the market," none of which can be cross-referenced with any other regional record
- Rootwarden holy years, of which there are three competing systems currently in use across different branches of the order
- The reign years of monarchs who preceded the Empire's founding, whose reigns this office must now reconstruct from fragmentary records in order to interpret documents that reference them
The practical consequences of this situation are as follows. A trade agreement signed in what the northern mining district calls Year 14 of the Stoneseal Compact may refer to the same period as what the coastal fishing cooperative calls Year 7 of the Silver Harvest, or it may not. Without extensive research into both local dating systems, which this office is not staffed to conduct for every incoming document, there is no reliable way to determine whether two parties signing an agreement are agreeing to the same delivery date. This has resulted in seventeen commercial disputes in the past four years alone, two of which proceeded to imperial arbitration at significant cost to all involved.
This office submits that the situation is untenable and requests authorization to implement the solution described below.
