As the power of urban settlements expanded, so too did their populations. Whereas once every agent in government could be expected to know all others by name and face, such was no longer viable. With this change came new administrative difficulties, as individuals began to impersonate government officials or else worked with people they didn't know at all. Corruption became a significant problem, as the lack of personal ties meant that functionaries had no problem skimming from the top and passing off the margin of error as the result of corruption somewhere else in the hierarchy.

Various solutions were attempted. Those found to be corrupt were variably tortured, publically shamed or - if the offence was great enough - executed. Lists of the names of all public officials were made available in the private back rooms of of the governing temples, and all officials encouraged to memorise them on pain of dismissal and punishment if they made easily avoidable mistakes. Dursarr were also recruited, their responsibilities being to press the unique and temporarily used seals they were given into clay tablets which recorded key information, such as taxes that were due, and then verify that every item that bore that given seal was legitimate.

Even still, these solutions did not totally resolve the problem. Greed still enticed men who thought they could get away with it or who were prepared to face the consequences for their family's benefit, and the corrupt were known to sell the lists of public officials to criminals to better facilitate impersonation efforts. Moreover, the anti-corruption dursarri were only as effective as they were themselves committed to stamping out corruption; some who used their seals without regard to the veracity of what they stamped actively contributed to the black market.

So it was that the anti-corruption efforts went one step further. The theocrats of Adadach commissioned ceramists to create dozens of hollow works of clay, shaped into boxes which they termed kharatini, or carob seed boxes. Whilst still wet and workable, these kharatini would have verified clay tablets on which was written key governmental information stamped with a seal placed into them, alongside a specific number of carob seeds. The ceramists would then seal the kharatin and make the surface smooth, before another seal was added to the exterior of the kharatin and the kharatin fired, albeit at a much lower temperature than was the norm to preserve the carob seeds within.

These kharatini were then delivered to wherever they may need to be, whilst those who could expect a kharatin would be informed beforehand what seals and how many carob seeds to expect within. If a kharatin had an irregular surface, it could be determined that it had already been broken into and repaired, and was therefore rather unlikely to be legitimate. If the seal and number of carob seeds within a kharatin were not those that the receiver had been told to expect, then the kharatin was most certainly a forgery and was therefore not legitimate.

Lower level functionaries were also given personal seals and a number of carob seeds to utilise in their own kharatini which were to be sent back to the central administration, with those performing roles like tax collection expected to make regular updates using their own personal codes. Through cross referencing the information given under particular codes, it became much easier to identify where discrepencies in expected returns were from and thus more readily root out the corrupt offenders.

The extreme difficulty of forging kharatini, which would require foreknowledge of the internal seal and carob bean count as well as access to copies of both the internal and external seal, made the kharatini themselves representative of social value. If one held a kharatin, that meant that whatever it contained could be verified as legitimate.

Before long, the value of a kharatin was abstracted. Rather than used solely in official capacities, merchants and nobles began to use them too. For example, a merchant might agree to take a kharatin containing a tablet which asserted they were to be given a certain value of goods in lieu of those goods themselves. If debtors refused to honour their debt, a merchant could then take the kharatin to local authorities and break it open in front of them after having cited the expected seal (that of their debtor) and carob bean count within; the government could then enforce whatever agreement lay within, or else penalise those who reneged on them. The theocrats were keen to assert their willingness to uphold these merchant kharatini, as through doing so they expanded their own power... and they could charge collection feeds.

This abstraction could go yet further, however, as merchants might offer to exchange their debt. Through letting a purchaser of said debt know the carob bean count and seal of the original kharatini, and through providing their own to verify that they were not lying (or perhaps that they were lying and would be inevitibly caught), they could effectively transfer the value owed to themselves to another individual.

As a direct result of the kharatin system seals proliferated in use. Whereas previously they had been used almost exclusively by the government, and by those dursarri who claimed to have seals used continuously from the days of Urapivarta, it was now expected that almost anybody involved in the transfer of wealth would own their own seal. These seals were to be kept unique and were extremely valuable, as their loss could amount to identity theft and people making illegitimate deals on one's behalf. Most individuals would have but a single seal and would wear it on their person at all times, such as on a necklace.

Edit: Changed name of the currency from kurint > kharatin coz that's a bit more linguistically legitimate, and also gold karats are named after carob seeds and I clearly need to wind up doing the same.