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D&D provides a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “angels” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, starting a lineage of creatures known as celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by humans in a massive war that concluded 70 years before the beginning of the story. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a plague that devastated entire countries. A lot about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the deities died, the celestials went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, 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 transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the location.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; one more terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope Mulligan focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to security after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {