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D&D presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “angels” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a tradition of creatures called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to serve as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons 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 notably less fleshed out compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, 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, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, 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 world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended seven decades before the beginning of the story. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the deities died, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if not contained. Viewers 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 “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; another dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “just” that war was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {