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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 carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “new” material for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He really hates the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a lineage of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their masters to serve as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes 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. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens once the god who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that concluded 70 years before the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a blight that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the deities were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became monsters that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound 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. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the place.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; another terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign 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 consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to security following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {