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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a lineage of beings known as celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to serve as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped compared to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: 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 quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens once the god who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that ended 70 years before the beginning of the story. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a plague that devastated whole nations. A lot about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the deities were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the place.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; one more terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the idea that, no matter how “just” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to security following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {