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D&D presents a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and players can paint countless scenarios. However, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you get things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 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

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine editions 12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a lineage of creatures called celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to serve as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, 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 expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. 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. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for angels they could murder in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings 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 (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings 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 implies 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 free to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that concluded 70 years prior to the start of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a plague that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the deities were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the location.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the humans who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to security following death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to address 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 mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {