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Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can craft countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon issues 12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens once the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities 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 followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a plague that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the deities died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing 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 weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; another dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife 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 solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I am also very intrigued by this fresh variation 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 {