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D&D presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can craft any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “fresh” content for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on 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” column in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar, and the solar 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 Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to act as soldiers, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that ended 70 years before the start of the story. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a plague that devastated entire countries. A lot about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the location.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; one more terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who won it may still regret the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to security following death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {