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Dungeons & Dragons offers a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also bears a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you encounter elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a lineage of beings called celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their masters to act as soldiers, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the belief of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped in contrast 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 version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. 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 creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs once the god who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own spin. 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 mortals in a massive war that concluded 70 years before the start of the story. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the place.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the humans who won it may still regret 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 following death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {