High City Passes to the city of Tammisaari are folding bear leather cards that hold small pieces of etched parchment treated with water-resistant lacquer. (They'll hold up through a bad rainstorm or quick dunking, but if soaked they'll go blank in an hour.) They can be forged (roll WIS + DEX checks +4 with a good copy to work with, +2 checks for half-elves, no penalty for full elves), but if checked against the central records (1 in 6 chance of full records check) they'll be revealed as forgeries.
Can be applied for an obtained at the guardhosue at the plank steps, and can be had four ways:
1. The usual way - fee is 150cp a person
An alignment and background check is made of anyone applying for a pass, and evil aligned applicants are denied, as are anyone with major law enforcement trouble more than a year old. Takes 2-5 days to process.
2. An "Expedited Pass" - 750cp a person
A background check is still required, but the alignment check is waived. Processed same day.
3. Stealing a pass
Passes are encoded (in Elven) with the description (name, weight, height, age, race, place of origin) of the holder. If you steal a pass from the wrong person and get checked, you're subject to arrest, a 1,000cp fine, and expulsion.
4. Buying a forged pass from the Cliffsiders. Certain cliffsiders can falsify passes. Fee starts at about 300cp for a fairly crude forgery up to 1,500cp for a forgery backed by records inserted by a corrupt guard.