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D&D offers a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

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 its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the god who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the deities 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 gods?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a plague that devastated entire countries. A lot about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the deities died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate large areas if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the location.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to security after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {