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Dungeons & Dragons offers a unique creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you encounter things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “angels” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine issues #12 (February 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 the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their creators to act as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their god on the mortal world. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens after the god who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended 70 years prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy entire regions if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; one more dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to security following death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {