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D&D offers a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a great deal of “new” content for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He really hates the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original 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 Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a lineage of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their creators to act as warriors, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder 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 mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens once the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades before the beginning of the story. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the place.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another dreadful 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 war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {