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D&D presents a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their creators to serve as warriors, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out compared to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed 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 designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who created 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 chose to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that concluded seven decades prior to the start of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the deities died, the celestials went “feral”. They became monsters that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. 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. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan focuses on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the humans who won it may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {