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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “angels” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a lineage of beings called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to act as warriors, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation 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 celestials can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that concluded seven decades prior to the beginning of the story. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the deities were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures that could destroy entire regions if not contained. 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 (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the location.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; one more dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {