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D&D provides a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and players can paint countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a lot of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you get elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “angels” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine issues 12 (February 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 wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, starting a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their domains 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 belief of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that ended seven decades before the beginning of the story. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a blight that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the deities died, the celestials went “feral”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the location.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped the DM focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who won it may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {