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Dungeons & Dragons provides a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and players can paint any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also bears a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “fresh” content for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you get elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a tradition of beings known as celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs after the god who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that ended 70 years before the start of the story. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the location.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {