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D&D offers a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can craft any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter elements that are as brilliant 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 unique worlds of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a lineage of creatures called celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, 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 Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gary 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 is also a limit to what you can do with 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 much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended 70 years before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a blight that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the deities died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to security after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated 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 monstrous celestials to the flat {