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Dungeons & Dragons provides a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and players can paint any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original take on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a lineage of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that concluded seven decades prior to the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a plague that devastated whole nations. A lot about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; another terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {