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D&D offers a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and participants can craft any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a lot of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative 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 longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, starting a lineage of creatures known as celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to serve as warriors, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs 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 center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended seven decades prior to the start of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a blight that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; another dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {