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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and players can paint any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, 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 good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as warriors, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the belief of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, 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 demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs once the god who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that ended 70 years before the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that devastated whole nations. A lot about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the deities died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became creatures that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in D&D, 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 Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the location.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; another dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope Mulligan focuses on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {