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D&D offers a distinctive creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “fresh” content for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine editions 12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a lineage of beings called celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the faith of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from 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 lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines 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 impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by humans in a massive war that concluded seven decades prior to the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy large areas if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; another terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope Mulligan focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to security following death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {