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Dungeons & Dragons offers a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (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 impressed 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 evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine issues 12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of 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 be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate 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 help uphold the belief of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys 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 sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens once the god who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years prior to the beginning of the story. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a blight that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could destroy entire regions if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending 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 “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the location.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; one more terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the humans who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to security following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {