Quote
“Don’t get me wrong. You need to have one to do this job safely. This worn out old thing saved me more than a few times when I got cocky, especially when I was still just a careless little Poliwag. But the ones they’re giving the kids these days are so much cheaper than they used to be! I’ve had this badge for decades and it would still warp me right out of danger just as well as it did on day one, but I look at these younger teams and I always see pokémon scrambling to answer alarms before something bad happens to their friends and peers. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
— Politoed, a retired Explorer, during an interview with The Glimmering Times about insights from his career.
Rescue Badges are safety devices usually created and distributed by Guilds and commonly worn by Dungeoneers, typically clipped to a scarf or a bag, and are often used by Guilds as a form of identification. Rescue Badges must be attuned to a given individual’s aura in order to function correctly, and the conditions to do so depend on the exact model in question. Most Guilds manufacture Rescue Badges so that they cannot be easily re-attuned after they are first distributed.
Attuned Rescue Badges automatically activate and link up with other nearby Rescue Badges when the holder enters a Mystery Dungeon. The exact functions of a Rescue Badge can vary, but they are typically triggered when every connected Rescue Badge on the same floor of a Mystery Dungeon simultaneously detects that their owners have fallen unconscious due to fainting. Most Rescue Badges, such as those most commonly given out by the Custodian Guild, simply send an alert back to the Guild which created them that a rescue mission is necessary. Such alerts will automatically end when the badge is removed from the Mystery Dungeon, indicating that the owner is safe. More expensive Rescue Badges may also function as temporary shields or instead activate the effects of an Escape Orb, among other things, but Badges of this make are uncommon on the Ash Continent.
The distress signals being sent by a typical Rescue Badge may have trouble reaching the nearest Guild depending on the geographic distance from there to the Mystery Dungeon in question, the depth of the user, and the Mysteriosity of the Dungeon. To counteract this, Guilds will issue/upgrade Rescue Badges to be more powerful based on the Dungeons a given member is allowed to enter.
No Rescue Badge can send requests for help across continents, and even if they could it would usually be impractical or impossible to send a rescue party that far abroad. For this reason Independent Teams travelling to a new continent must be issued new Rescue Badges which work locally or have their existing badges modified.
While it is rare to have multiple Guilds in a single area, members of a particular Guild can typically be identified by the design of the badge they wear. Members of the Custodian Guild wear badges which bear a gold Poké Ball motif surrounded by feathered wings, with a jewel in the center denoting their rank. Members of independent teams recognized by the Sentinel Branch for legal operation on the Ash Continent wear badges which bear an unadorned silver Poké Ball motif cradled by an azure wave.