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D&D provides a unique creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, 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” content for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon issues #12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a lineage of creatures called celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to act as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their god on the mortal world. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and the fallen 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.

The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens after the deity who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by humans in a massive war that concluded seven decades before the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the deities died, the celestials became “wild”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the location.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to security following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {