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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. 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” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original take on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine editions 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, starting a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. 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 later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs after the god who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years 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 went crazy and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the location.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; one more terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope the DM focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to security after death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {