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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6364441" data-attributes="member: 4937">Heraldry is an example of a medieval means of positive identification.  It's regulation has to be understood in that context, and its elaborateness functions as a barrier against forgery.   An equal barrier against forgery is the rigor with which you had to protect your identity.  But 'positive identification' exists as a ritual even before objects were used as the most trustworthy marker of identification.  Good example would be the means by which Beowulf identifies himself when challenged, or the ways in which Odysseus and others are identified in the Odyssey.  That is, "If you want to be welcomed, I better have heard of you, or at least we need to share a contact, and you and I have to share common knowledge about that person.  This establishes you are at least potentially a friend."   Tolkien, being a scholar of the relevant literature, returns to this repeatedly in questions of establishing identity in Lord of the Rings.   Aragorn is caught in Rohan without a passport.  How do we establish he isn't an enemy?  Frodo is caught in Gondor without a passport.  How is his identify to be established?Trade in the middle ages was not understood in that 'fair trade' free market context.  Guilds were an example of reaction against free and unregulated trade, and they would provide the means of identifying who was legally allowed to trade in the city in various commodities by validating their members.  There were considerable barriers to trade even between two cities, and often particular families had paid the rulers of the two cities to have legal monopolies on that trade.   So, in that case, identification would come down to 'not who we are used to seeing'.  As trade begins to open up, you start to see the emergence of external forms of identification.  Forgery was of course widespread.  In fact, I'm fairly sure that my ancestor entered America on forged identification.  There actual country of origin was Ireland.  The two brothers seem to have successfully passed themselves off as Scots, with commiserate higher social status and better marriage opportunities, to the extent that we (their ancestors) believed they were Scots for the last 200 years or so.  There own children didn't know their real history.You are probably right about Henry V, since it's the right time frame, but by the 16th century even beggars carried passports proving that they had the license to beg.  Identity papers go back to the 12th century, but they weren't in wide use before then.  Since my default D&D culture is a blend of early modern/medieval, 'papers' of some sort don't feel anachronistic to me.  Generally, in my game, if you leave town you are expected to carry proof that you are a citizen of a particular town, your passport as you were, and you are expected to have proof that you came through the gates if you are walking around in the town.  This goes double if by your accent and appearance you wouldn't appear to be a local.  If your claiming to be from somewhere, your papers will probably not be believed unless you look and sound it and you'll be questioned about the city you claim to be from.  If you are claiming to be a someone, you are expected to have the heraldry and panoply of being that someone, and at the least have a letter of introduction.  So for example, if you are a minor functionary of some religion, you are expected to have a letter from the priest stating who you are and what you are about.  If you are claiming to be a major functionary of some religion, you better look like one.</blockquote>

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