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Dungeons & Dragons offers a unique creative space. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can craft any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to act as warriors, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped compared to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens once the god who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that concluded seven decades prior to the start of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a blight that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the gods died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the location.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope Mulligan focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {