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D&D presents a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can craft countless scenarios. However, D&D also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Brennan and his other series 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 truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine editions 12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a tradition of beings known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their masters to act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the god who made 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 make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a blight that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate large areas if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the place.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM focuses on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to security following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {