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D&D offers a unique creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and players can craft countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a lot of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get things that are as brilliant 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 due to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a lineage of creatures called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their creators to act as soldiers, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. 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 Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens once the god who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by humans in a massive war that concluded seven decades before the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a plague that devastated entire countries. A lot about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the deities were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the Blood War led to her being tainted by 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 became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the location.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; one more terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to security following death, are currently frightening disasters.

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 shrieking, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. 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 flat {