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D&D presents a unique creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and players can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “new” material for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional 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 the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; 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 appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could murder in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy 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 happens once the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able 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 killed by mortals in a great conflict that concluded seven decades before the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the gods died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the place.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; one more terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who won it may still regret the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to security after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {