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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that sound as good 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 original settings of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon issues #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures called celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended 70 years prior to the beginning of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a plague that devastated whole nations. A lot about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the deities died, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing 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 weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope Mulligan focuses on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who won it may still regret the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {