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D&D presents a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a lineage of creatures known as celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to serve as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and purposes, 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. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs once the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended 70 years prior to 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 destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the deities died, the celestials went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding 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 summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption seen 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 pride or fixations. They are casualties; another dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, I hope Mulligan focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that conflict 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 formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to address Gygax’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 new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {