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D&D presents a unique creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and players can craft any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, 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 great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

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 heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, starting a lineage of creatures called celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, 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 devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that ended seven decades prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that devastated whole nations. A lot about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted 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 developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the place.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; one more terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to security after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {