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D&D offers a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can craft any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you get things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon issues #12 (Feb. 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 be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a tradition of beings known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could murder in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the god who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that concluded 70 years before the beginning of the story. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the deities died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, 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 didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; one more dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {