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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint countless scenarios. However, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He really hates the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially 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 Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their creators to act as warriors, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of 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 each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades before the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became 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 still to be revealed, but it appears that after the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the location.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; one more terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {