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Dungeons & Dragons provides a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds 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 sampled tracks. Sometimes you get things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures called celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to serve as warriors, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and the fallen 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.

The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out in contrast 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 the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs after the god who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that ended seven decades before the start of the story. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the gods died, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the location.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who won it may still regret the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an divine being 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 D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {