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D&D presents a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original take on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “angels” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the faith of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades prior to the start of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the deities were slain, the celestials went “feral”. 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) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to security after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {