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D&D offers a distinctive creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and players can paint countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” 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 unique worlds of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their creators to act as warriors, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs once the god who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to come up with 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 slain by humans in a massive war that concluded seven decades before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the gods were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became creatures that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the location.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope the DM concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the humans who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to security after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {