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D&D presents a distinctive creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” 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 (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine 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 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a lineage of beings known as celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples include 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 the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines 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 quickly. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs after the god who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that ended seven decades before the start of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a blight that devastated whole nations. A lot about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate large areas if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the place.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; one more dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, I hope the DM focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the humans who won it may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to security following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {