About half the chars I play are empowered, and about half of those have been empowered by made up/generic forces or beings.

I think that, assuming you can rp well, and learn the easily accessable history of Thera quickly, that empowerment chars are perfect for beginners. You are much less gear/prep/whatever dependant than other chars. Especially a healer. So if you are an experienced enough rper to get empowered, and stay that way, a healer is probably the best possible first char possible.

If you have a fun role, and pray to something general or original, in my experience, empowerment is easier, and usually a more fun experience than getting empowered by a specific god (because usually when you pray to something non IMM, it fits more exactly with your role, and there for the empowerment session meshes more exactly with your char). However, there is one big drawback. You will never get a tattoo, unless some imm decides your char is so cool that they are going to code one up for you, and that would probably be on the level of getting a quest form or lich quest or something, so rather than having a specific immortal to have that priestly relationship with, you will have to generate your religious stuff personally, which I think is fun, but puts the entire onus on you.

All that being said, I would strongly, strongly, strongly suggest against praying to an imm who is dead or inactive. The imms have posted repeatedly that they do not want to touch each others followers like that, unless they have made specific arrangements.

Good luck.