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D&D presents a distinctive creative space. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and participants can craft any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon editions 12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, starting a tradition of creatures called celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their masters to act as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the 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 Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are created to be divine minions. 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 etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a many ways 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 good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the start of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the gods were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; another terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the humans who won it may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to security 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 justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {