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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive creative space. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “angels” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a lineage of creatures called celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as soldiers, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years before the beginning of the story. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a plague that devastated whole nations. A lot about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the location.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped the DM focuses on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to security after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {