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D&D provides a unique creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a lot of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon issues #12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a lineage of beings called celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and 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 less fleshed out compared 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 version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that concluded seven decades prior to the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, 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 appears that when the gods were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {