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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive creative space. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you get things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by the DM 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 Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, initiating a lineage of beings known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could kill 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 is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings 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 still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years prior to the beginning of the story. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; another dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {