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D&D provides a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s 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 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a tradition of creatures called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to serve as soldiers, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious 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 demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could murder in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. 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 created them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by humans in a massive war that concluded 70 years before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a plague that devastated whole nations. A lot about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to security after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {