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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “new” material for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

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 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; 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 fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, starting a lineage of creatures known as celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their creators to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials 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 Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed 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 creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the god who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended seven decades before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a blight that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities died, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; one more terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “just” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing 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 mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {