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D&D offers a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “new” content for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

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 show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, initiating a lineage of beings known as celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and 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 compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: 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 general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs after the god who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by humans in a massive war that ended 70 years before the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the deities died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the place.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or misled by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; one more dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope the DM focuses on the notion that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to security following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated 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 nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {