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D&D offers a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions 12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their masters to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. 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. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. 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 storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have established masters (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 unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens once the god who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades before the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a plague that devastated whole nations. A great deal 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 after the gods died, the celestials went “feral”. They became creatures that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the place.

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 arrogance or fixations. They are victims; one more terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {