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D&D provides a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and players can craft any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you get elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a lineage of beings called celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the faith of their god on the mortal world. Despite 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 mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that concluded seven decades before the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a blight that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the history of this world, the war against the gods, 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 became creatures that could annihilate large areas if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope Mulligan focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who won it may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {