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D&D offers a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you encounter things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as warriors, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that ended seven decades prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the deities died, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, 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 led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, I hope the DM concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to security after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {