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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can craft any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been part of 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 were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” 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 angel, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a lineage of creatures known as celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to act as warriors, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the faith 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 the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, 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 demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs after the god who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that ended seven decades before the beginning of the story. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a blight that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to security after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {