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D&D offers a unique creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also bears a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “new” material for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to serve as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, 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 notably underdeveloped in contrast 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 interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs after the god who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that concluded 70 years before the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar 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 infusing the location.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; one more terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope the DM focuses on the notion that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the humans who won it may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety after 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 divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {