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D&D offers a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. However, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon issues #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures called celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their masters to act as warriors, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs once the deity who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a plague that devastated 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 appears that when the deities died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could annihilate large areas if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {