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D&D presents a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a great deal of “new” material for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show 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 the new world Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original take on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon editions 12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a lineage of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their creators to act as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their domains 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 mortal world. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs after the god who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that concluded seven decades before the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience 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 entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; another dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope the DM concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “just” 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 beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to security following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {