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Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures called celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, 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 Lower Planes and support the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out compared 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 interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs after the god who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended seven decades before the beginning of the story. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight that devastated whole nations. A lot about the past of Aramán, 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 became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to security following death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {