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Dungeons & Dragons offers a distinctive creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can craft countless scenarios. However, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine editions #12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a lineage of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the deity who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by humans in a massive war that ended seven decades prior to the beginning of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the deities died, the celestials became “wild”. 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 the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {