EMPYREAN

The Aethons are celestials, native to the heavenly realm of Yrion, and they are its appointed guardians and inheritors. Like many other celestial beings, the Aethons are passionate embodiments of ideals, virtues and heroic traits. They are, themselves, descendants of the divine Ashar, Ancients that existed since the dawn of creation. Most of the Ashar perished during the War of Light and Shadow, while protecting Yrion from their sworn foes. They were later miraculously reborn as Aethons from the Pillar of Eternity, an axis of divine flame that runs vertically through Yrion. Although most of them have no recollection of their past lives, they keep them within, while using their rebirth as an opportunity to learn and build anew rather than dwell on the past. Yrion, the home of the Aethons, consists of multiple divine realms, divided according to the Celestial Spheres. The Aethons are often likewise divided from one another according to the Spheres they follow, but also according ...

So what is "Empyrean"? Empyrean derives from the Medieval Latin empyreus, an adaptation of the Ancient Greek ἔμπυρος empyrus "in or on the fire", which when ascribed to a person describes someone who is "of fire" or "contains fire". Empyrean has been used in ancient and medieval times to describe the higher realms of heaven where everything is divine fire. In our context, an Empyrean (sometimes also referred to as an "Incarnate") is an Aethon who has incarnated as a human. Therefore in that context we are actually talking about empyrean humans, but that is needless semantics. So what is an Aethon, then? The word Aethon is also ancient greek in origin. It translates as "fiery" or "burning" and has the same root as Aether which is, in other words, the quintessence of heaven. An Aethon could be a being of the flame of heaven, or someone who burns with that flame. In our context, an Aethon is very...

Welcome to the online home of Empyrean RPG. This is a place where you can find stories, game rules, and lore information about Empyrean. Empyrean is a very ambitious personal labor of love that I first tampered with some time around 2007, probably earlier. At the time, I was heavily invested in creating something original and at the same time with a strong personal signature, based off of my own personal influences, past world-building and game design attempts, and an incessant desire to break all the rules. One of my primary goals, back then, was to build a consistent, powerful, story-driven, and inspiring setting that transcends strict genres, ("high-fantasy", "sci-fi", "steampunk", "low-fantasy", "heroic fantasy", "epic fantasy", "grimdark" etc.), and a solid yet simple system that transcends the traditional RPG conventions, ("skill-based", "level-based", "class-based", "gamis...