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D&D offers a distinctive creative space. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, starting a lineage of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. 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 Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels 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 side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens once the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended seven decades before the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the gods were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player 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 Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the place.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {