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D&D offers a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can craft any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you encounter things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “angels” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, 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 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a tradition of beings known as celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and 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.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, 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 still don’t know what happens once the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, 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 transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the humans who won it may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to security after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I am also very intrigued by this fresh variation 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 one-dimensional {