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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft any kind of picture. However, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a lot of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you encounter elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background 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 handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures called celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass 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.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the god who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that concluded seven decades before the start of the story. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a plague that devastated entire countries. A lot about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; another dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the humans who won it may still regret the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I am also very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {