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D&D presents a distinctive creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Brennan and his 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 classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a lineage of creatures called celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their masters to act as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out compared to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances 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 divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that concluded 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the history 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 deities died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy large areas if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the location.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; another dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope Mulligan focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {