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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you get things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially 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 introduced new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, starting a lineage of creatures called celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the god who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; another dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the humans who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to security after death, are now terrifying calamities.

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 shrieking, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {