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D&D offers a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a great deal of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you encounter things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by 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 Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine issues 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 hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, starting a lineage of beings known as celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even 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 expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs once the god who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that ended seven decades prior to the start of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the gods were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the location.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, I hope the DM concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the humans who won it may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to security after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {