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Dungeons & Dragons provides a unique creative space. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and players can craft any kind of picture. However, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine issues 12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their creators to act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall 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 help uphold the belief of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens after the god who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by humans in a massive war that concluded 70 years before the start of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a blight that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the deities died, the celestials went “feral”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the place.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; one more terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope Mulligan focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to security following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {