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D&D presents a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also bears a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a lineage of creatures known as celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and 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 markedly less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could murder 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 do with creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the deity who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by humans in a massive war that ended seven decades before the beginning of the story. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the gods were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling 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 led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to security following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {