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D&D presents a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a tradition of beings known as celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes 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 specific personalities. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. 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 limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that ended seven decades before the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a blight that devastated whole nations. A lot about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the deities died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could destroy large areas if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth 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 madness infusing the place.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; another terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {