How would you do the Empyrean?

[ArcaneArts]

I think it depends what you mean by 'the same'. I vaguely remember Dave Brookshaw commenting once that Malcolm Sheppard liked to put in references to other settings in CofD as a way of implying a greater degree of cohesion to the cosmology than was actually present (and he's probably not the only one). I suspect this is probably one example. To compare, the same sidebar in IM also refers to the Empyrean as "a Principle", whilst the sidebar in Inferno refers to angels in passing as "Qashmalim" (which they certainly act quite similar to). Now, those aren't direct references exactly, but I don't think they were chosen accidently either.

And it was in this vein that I made the statement.

[Enderdragon1201]

So,we know a little bit about the Empyrean,we know it's a counterpart of the Inferno and it's less focused on human Vice than the Inferno. And i'd like to know, if you were to develop the idea further,what would your Empyrean be like? Would you base it's inhabitants in abrahamic angels or would you situate pagan gods there too? what woud the inhabitants be like in general?

If I were to do something with the Empyrean, it would be a realm of Essence in a far "purer" form than the Essence used by spirits, and its inhabitants would be a kind of "super-spirits"; each one is immensely powerful, and whereas spirits are resonant with certain aspects of reality the Empyrean "angels" each represent a given aspect, and are the sole representations of that aspect; there are many owl spirits, however there is only a single Empyrean of Owls, a single Empyrean of Toys, a single Empyrean of Disease, and so on. Each one would be comparable to or more powerful than spirits of Rank 10. Some may take on a vaguely humanoid form and those that represent animals would look somewhat like those animals, but even those would look less like actual creatures and more like ethereal or divine beings that look somewhat like them, and those that represent less physical aspects of reality would look about as alien as one might except from the representation of an abstract concept. They rarely ever interact with our world however, as even the Shadow's Essence is too diluted to sustain them for long, and our world proves toxic after a relatively short amount of time.

Keep in mind with all of this that 1; I'm not a fan of statless beings in ttrpgs, so when I say that they are stronger than Rank 10 spirits I would still be giving them traits, along with also providing systems for ephemeral beings of Rank 6+, and 2; while I like Mage, I'm not a big fan of trying to explain every other gameline through their cosmology and lore, so the above outline isn't intended to go along with the whole "higher than Supernal" idea, though that being said it wouldn't be a hard tweak to make, just say that they are the "Super-Supernal" conceptual embodiments of their aspects and there you go.