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D&D offers a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a lot of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you get elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine issues #12 (February 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 hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a lineage of beings known as celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting 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 online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years before the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a blight that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the gods were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate large areas if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the place.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 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 terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, I hope the DM concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to security after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {