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Dungeons & Dragons offers a unique creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show 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 setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine editions 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, 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 servants of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to serve as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the belief of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that concluded 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a blight that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the deities died, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the place.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or misled by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; another dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {