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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a lot of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine editions 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, starting a lineage of beings known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to serve as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. 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 Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The 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 Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that ended seven decades prior to the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a plague that devastated whole nations. 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 when the deities died, the celestials went “feral”. They became creatures that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the place.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; one more terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope the DM focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {