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D&D presents a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine issues 12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a tradition of creatures called celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could kill in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years before the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods died, the celestials went “feral”. They became creatures that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the location.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; one more terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who won it may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {