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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and players can craft any kind of picture. However, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons 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 the publication Dragon issues 12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a lineage of creatures known as celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to act as soldiers, commanders, 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 faith of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for angels they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens once the god who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that concluded 70 years prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the deities died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the place.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 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 fixations. They are victims; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the humans who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {