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Dungeons & Dragons provides a unique creative space. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint countless scenarios. However, D&D also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you get things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times 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 the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures called celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning 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 storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years before the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the place.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; one more terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope the DM focuses on the notion that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {