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D&D provides a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can craft countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “new” content for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “angels” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a lineage of beings called celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their masters to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples include 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 the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately 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

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens after the god who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that concluded seven decades prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities died, the celestials went “feral”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; another terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope the DM focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {