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Dungeons & Dragons offers a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and players can paint any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on 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” column in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, starting a tradition of creatures called celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens once the god who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that ended 70 years before the beginning of the story. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a blight that devastated whole nations. A lot about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening 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 held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped the DM focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I am also very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {