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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, 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 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “new” content for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He 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 Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially 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 Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a lineage of beings called celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their creators to act as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. 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 deity on the mortal world. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass 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 less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens once the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended 70 years before the beginning of the story. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy large areas if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; another terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to security after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {