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D&D provides a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and participants can paint countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon issues #12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, initiating a tradition of creatures called celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to act as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of 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 Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings 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 kill in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that problematic origin 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 restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. 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 that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens after the god who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended seven decades before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestials went “feral”. They became creatures that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence 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 ending the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; another dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan focuses on the idea that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {