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D&D offers a unique creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and players can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you get things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon editions 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting 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 agents of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to serve as soldiers, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship 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 world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens after the god who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that ended 70 years before the beginning of the story. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a plague that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the place.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; one more terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I am also very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {