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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique creative space. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and participants can craft countless scenarios. However, D&D also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a great deal of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive 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 crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine issues #12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a lineage of beings known as celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to serve as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the faith of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, 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 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 the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential 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 fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs after the god who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, 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 yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the location.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; one more dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope the DM focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {