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D&D provides a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and players can craft any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a lot of “new” content for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

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 setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, 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 quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that concluded seven decades before the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a blight that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the gods died, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate large areas if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; one more terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped the DM focuses on the idea that, no matter how “just” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad creature 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 divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {