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D&D presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and participants can craft countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, initiating a tradition of beings known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to act as warriors, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their domains 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 deity on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords 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. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for angels they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own interpretation. The DM 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 humans in a great conflict that ended seven decades before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the deities died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the location.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; one more terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped the DM focuses on the notion that, no matter how “just” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to security following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {