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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. However, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a lot of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a lineage of creatures known as celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their creators to act as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms 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 the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels 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. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs once the god who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM 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 gods have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the deities were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding 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 called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the location.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “just” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to security following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {