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D&D provides a distinctive creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint countless scenarios. However, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you get elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “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 Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon editions 12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a lineage of beings called celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to serve as warriors, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general 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 faith of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass 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 fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could kill in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing 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. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that concluded seven decades prior to the start of the story. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope Mulligan focuses on the notion that, no matter how “just” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to security following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {