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Dungeons & Dragons offers a distinctive creative space. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and participants can craft countless scenarios. However, D&D also carries a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “new” material for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon 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 wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a tradition of beings known as celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against 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 divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens after the god who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by humans in a massive war that concluded seven decades prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a blight that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the deities died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, I hope the DM focuses on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to security after death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {