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D&D presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a lot of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their creators to serve as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens once the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy entire regions if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the location.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; one more terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with multiple fangs, 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 loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {