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D&D offers a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons 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 “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original take on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 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 “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters 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 beings known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, 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 creatures that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (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 unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs once the deity who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by humans in a massive war that ended 70 years before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that devastated whole nations. A lot about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy entire regions if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as 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 celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the location.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, 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.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {