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D&D presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint countless scenarios. However, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by DM 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!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, starting a lineage of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, 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 Infernal Realms and help uphold the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential 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 ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens after the deity who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the start of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a blight that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the history 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 deities were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the location.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; one more terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, I hope the DM concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to security after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {