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D&D provides a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can craft countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers 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 familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a tradition of creatures called celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as warriors, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that concluded 70 years before the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a plague that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the gods were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the location.

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, or led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to security after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {