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Dungeons & Dragons provides a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also bears a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “new” material for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon editions 12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their masters to serve as soldiers, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their realms 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 belief of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings 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 after the god who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by humans in a massive war that concluded 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a plague that devastated whole nations. A lot 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 after the gods died, the celestials went “feral”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the location.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; one more terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped the DM focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I am also very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {