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D&D provides a unique creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also bears a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine issues #12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, 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 appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a tradition of beings called celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to act as soldiers, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped compared to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs once the god who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that ended seven decades before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a blight that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the deities died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the location.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; another terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel 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 stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {