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D&D offers a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and participants can craft countless scenarios. However, D&D also bears a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you encounter things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He really hates the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation 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 included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging 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 wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens after the deity who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed 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 answer is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the deities died, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the location.

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 led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who won it may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {