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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive creative space. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and players can craft countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. 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” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you get things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, initiating a lineage of beings known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to serve as warriors, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. 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 interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

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 cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens once the deity who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that concluded 70 years before the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a blight that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods died, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. 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. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the location.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM focuses on the idea that, no matter how “just” that war was, the mortals who won it may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just 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 shrieking, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {