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D&D presents a distinctive creative space. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and participants can craft any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, starting a tradition of beings called celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their creators to serve as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the belief of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the god who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that concluded seven decades prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped the DM focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {