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D&D offers a distinctive creative space. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also bears a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a great deal of “new” content for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted 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 (Brennan really hates the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, starting a lineage of beings called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as warriors, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics 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 hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors 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. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a plague that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became creatures that could destroy entire regions if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; another dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, I hope the DM focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to security after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {