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D&D provides a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and players can paint any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you get things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials 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 appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, initiating a lineage of beings known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped in contrast 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 the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for angels they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs after the god who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that ended 70 years before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the deities died, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy large areas if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope the DM focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to security following death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {