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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique creative space. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and players can craft countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels 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 fresh creatures 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 known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their creators to act as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious 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 less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of that much 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 devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that ended seven decades prior to the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a plague that devastated entire countries. A lot about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy large areas 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 (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the place.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; one more terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope the DM focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their world 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 frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with multiple fangs, 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 loathing for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {