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Dungeons & Dragons provides a unique creative space. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and participants can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to serve as warriors, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for angels they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens once the god who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a blight that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the gods died, the celestials became “wild”. They became monsters that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.

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 pride or obsessions. They are casualties; one more terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope Mulligan focuses on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to security following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {