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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a lot of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you encounter things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, initiating a lineage of beings called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to act as warriors, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a lot of directions 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. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that ended seven decades before the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a plague that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy entire regions if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint seen 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 pride or obsessions. They are casualties; one more dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “just” 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 creatures that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {