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D&D offers a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a lineage of creatures known as celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their masters to serve as soldiers, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons 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 don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs once the god who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the gods died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became creatures that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the location.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; one more terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {