13.2 Personal Power

The median person in the world of Rise is not particularly more or less capable than the median person in the real world. Training can help people improve their skills, but as in the real world, anyone who tries to improve themselves through training and practice eventually reaches an upper limit to their potential. However, unlike in the real world, people in Rise can reach beyond their ordinary limitations. By defeating powerful foes and performing great deeds that influence the world around them, people can gain levels, which allows them to reach new heights of power. At high levels, people can perform clearly superhuman feats that would be impossible for ordinary humans, even without the influence of magic.

People in Rise wouldn’t usually talk about "levels" as a discrete concept ranging from 1 to 21. They would perceive the world as a spectrum, and the specific divisions would be more subtle. However, they would be aware that some people are fundamentally stronger and more skilled than others. Individual scholars or scholastic groups may create their own concepts in-universe to categorize and explain the phenomenon of levels, since the growth of personal power over time is observable and studiable. However, those in-universe concepts would never exactly replicate the metagame concept of a level.

It is common for people in positions of political power to also wield unusually large amounts of personal power. High level individuals can be savvier, wiser, and more persuasive than any ordinary human. They are more likely than low-level individuals to be able to gain political power through whatever means they see fit, and more likely to maintain their hold on that power. In addition, political power can grant further opportunities for performing great deeds, which helps those in power to gain levels and stay ahead of any competition.

The fastest path to acquiring personal power does not come from pursuing political power. It comes from adventuring. Adventurers can defeat powerful monsters, help towns in need, and otherwise have a significant personal influence on the world. In the process of these adventures, they can amass personal power much more rapidly than ordinary people. Of course, adventuring also has an unusually high risk of death. Even worse, people who die while adventuring often leave their corpse in the middle of nowhere - in a monster’s stomach - which prevents them from being resurrected without incredibly rare magic. Adventurers must constantly seek out new challenges to test their limits, or else they will stagnate and stop acquiring personal power, so it is never a sustainable long-term activity. There are many people in the world who were adventurers at some point in their past, and everyone is familiar with the concept, but active adventurers are still unusual.