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D&D offers a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a lot of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine issues #12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 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 “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their creators to act as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour 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 providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens once the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that ended seven decades before the start of the story. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They became creatures that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the place.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; one more terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the humans who won it may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {